Armenian payrol speaks : Israeli Scholar Speak Out On so-called Armenian Genocid

Israel Charny

 Israel Charny is not a true scholar. He is much too emotionally involved to be taken seriously, and dangerously defamatory.

Charny provides the following to ridicule: “Muslims as well as non-Muslims also suffered from the ravages of vicious foreign invasions as well as robber bands that sprang up throughout Anatolia due to the weakening of government control. As a result of these conditions, as many as 20% of the deportees, some 100,000 Armenians, may have died between 1915 and 1918, but this was no greater a percentage than that of the Turks and other Muslims who died as a result of the same conditions in the same places at the same time.” (From a pamphlet on “Armenian Propaganda,” published by a Turkish group.) Nobody who is sane can argue with the first sentence. The number of Armenian casualties is less than what is typically agreed on from the Turkish perspective (300,000-600,000 is the norm), which makes Charny’s choice of “evidence” less than honest. Still, the 100,000 figure is closer to the truth than what Charny likely supports, the typical Armenian figure of 1.5 million.

Then he has the audacity to compare the above with a Holocaust denier’s 1976 work called “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century,” which alleges only a million Jews died during WWII, deaths brought on by disease and starvation, perils shared by many non-Jews following the collapse of the German economy near the war’s end. A despicable comparison.

 

Robert Jay Lifton

 

Charny describes the Smith, Markusen and Lifton “Professional Ethics” publication as “a truly classic paper on denial of genocide,” displaying how out of touch with reality he is. He actually describes the memo by Professor Heath Lowry as “neglectfully enclosed,” and as “one comic faux-pas,” when in reality Lowry’s memo was included purposefully in order to demonstrate the shoddy scholarship of Robert Jay Lifton by example of a fellow academician. Lifton did not simply “(dare) to make several references to the Armenian Genocide in the course of his major work on the doctors in the Nazi concentration camps,” but provide amateurish parallels to Ottoman Dr. Mengeles strictly on the basis of sources by Prosecutor Vahakn Dadrian.

“What Smith, Markusen and Lifton in effect show us is the systematic propaganda machinery of the Turks through the cooption of ostensible scholars who brazenly ignore any accepted rules of objective inquiry and evidence. They are out to make a point — namely, denial of the Armenian Genocide — at any cost.” That is the kind of sentence that truly makes me wonder about Mr. Charny’s being on another planet. “Brazenly ignore any accepted rules of objective inquiry and evidence”??? It was precisely because Lifton neglected to seek other sources that was the cause for the protest… that is, the lack of objectivity and evidence.

Here again, Charny goes off the deep end: “(See also Smith’s review [1992] of the cheap allegations by Lowry [1990] that the famous book by Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Sr. [1919], who was the American ambassador to Turkey at the time of the Armenian Genocide who resolutely described and protested the genocide, was a forgery! Lowry’s book is an obviously bigoted polemic, written loosely, and also published shoddily [in English] in Turkey.)”

Did Israel Charny bother to read Heath Lowry’s immaculately researched “The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story”? “Obviously bigoted polemic, written loosely?” Is that how the “scholar” Israel Charny defines comparison with Morgenthau’s actual letters and diary, while Morgenthau’s book was ghostwritten with propagandistic intent? And what does that mean, “published shoddily”? The fact that the booklet was printed in Turkey…. is that what he means by “shoddily”? What a terrible insult.

Israel Charny then dissects the statement by 69 scholars that appeared in newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post in 1985… complaining that it is referred to “in support for other Turkish propaganda efforts to censor scholarly publications.”

“In the immediate shock of the appearance of the new virulent form of double talk back in 1985, the Armenian Assembly of America rapidly undertook investigation of the academic records and especially the history of research grants received by the 69 signators (Armenian Assembly of America, 1987).” Yes, the Armenian Assembly of America, with its $2.5 million annual budget, obviously went on the attack, and tried to uncover whatever dirt it could. Supposedly, “a very large number of the signators were recipients of grants from Turkish government sources.” (What is “a very large number”? 20? 30? 60?)

Is it any wonder academicians are afraid to speak the historical truth regarding the Armenian “Genocide” with these mad dogs awaiting, unscrupulously ready to destroy valuable reputations? We can expect that sort of dishonorable lack of ethics from the Armenian Assembly of America, but what is Israel Charny’s excuse to try and stifle honest academic debate?

Once again, Israel Charny is much too genocide-obsessed, he appears to have lost contact with reality… and has forgotten the true meaning of scholarship. He is so emotionally wrapped up with the trauma of those who deny the Jewish Holocaust, he projects the same outrage upon those who question the validity of unproven “genocides.” How awfully irresponsible.

 

Charny complains: “Lewis (1968, p. 356) wrote of “the terrible holocaust of 1915 when a million and half Armenians perished,” but now insists (Lewis, 1994) (my paraphrase): ‘l am entitled, indeed obligated to change my position in light of many new researches.’ ”

Outrageous! Who would argue that it is the business of the true scholar to revise historical views, based upon better research? Should the German professor in 1937 not have been allowed to update Nazi-directed views on the Jews after the war ended? Should historic academic views be considered mathematically constant, for all eternity?

 

Bernard Lewis

 

Charny then complains Lewis failed to provide information, that Charny requested. I generally can’t blame Lewis (although Lewis did promise, at first, to “be in touch on his return from a trip”), as Charny does not play fair.

Charny takes exception with Lewis’ explanation: “Turkish documents prove an intention of deportation, not extermination,” asserting that “as if forced mass deportation, executed by government troops brutally and murderously, and exposing the transferees to many other murders along the way in addition to death by starvation, exhaustion and illness can be separated, by definition, from genocide.”

However, this is the danger when one simple-mindedly zeroes in on isolated incidents without regard for historical context. 1) The Armenians revolted while the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ was on her last legs, fighting mighty world powers on multiple fronts. Such a life and death struggle required able-bodied men to be at the front, trying to put a stop to enemies from barreling through. 2) The lack of manpower and resources meant the relocated Armenians could not be adequately protected, just like the Turks/Muslims could not be adequately protected from Armenians who were in control of the provinces; starvation affected all peoples of the empire, as Morgenthau testified with thousands of Turks dying daily, and even the soldiers. 3) The bulk of the relocated Armenians did survive, as Arnold Toynbee himself wrote in early 1916 (500,000, and surely growing until the end of that year) and some even comfortably, as Morgenthau’s private letters established in the Lowry report that Charny embarrassingly attempted to discredit.

Obviously not all government troops acted brutally and murderously, if the bulk of the Armenians survived. If Charny believes “forced mass deportation” equals “genocide,” then he has a broad definition of the word, well in tune with his fellow genocide scholars… and he is welcome to it. If he also wants to portray the “forced mass deportation” of Japanese-Americans being relocated during WWII as a genocide, he is similarly welcome to his own delusions. Almost all of us recognize genocide as what the Nazis did to the Jews, and that is exactly what Charny is comparing the Armenian “Genocide” to, in this very paper… so it wouldn’t be honest of him to portray the meaning of genocide in any other context.

Australian Genocide Professor Colin Tatz characterized Charny’s definition of genocide in a paper first outlining Hannah Arendt’s thoughts after the trial of Eichmann: “genocide is the desire (by Nazis) that certain distinct people (Jews) ‘disappear from the earth’,” a definition I like, but one that Tatz criticizes: “Perhaps if she had looked at that much overlooked half-brother to the Holocaust, the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Turks in 1915-16, she might have been less surprised and disconcerted…” (Do all these genocide scholars think alike?)

Tatz sheds light on his genocide scholarly brother: “Charny’s much broader view sees genocide, in the generic sense, as the ‘mass killing of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action …under conditions of the essential defencelessness and helplessness of the victims.’ He emphasises the victimness of essentially ‘defenceless and helpless’ people, but he insists on mass killing of substantial numbers…. However, many cannot share his vision that the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor was ‘genocide resulting from ecological destruction and abuse’.”

Israel Charny actually looks upon the Chernobyl disaster as… “genocide“?

As the good little genocide scholar he is, Charny points to “evidence” from the biased New York Times that relied on propaganda from the missionaries and Armenians, and unproven Armenian statements such as “the organized murders of many Armenian men in the Turkish Army.” (Weapons were taken away from these soldiers when many deserted and rebelled, and they were used for labor; well, they had to be used for something. Were the Turkish soldiers having a picnic?) Charny also outlines:

“Even if not planned as such, forced deportations of hundreds of thousands necessarily bring about mass deaths. Cruelly executed deportations, which the deportations of the Armenians clearly were, bring about many more deaths…” Yes, there were excesses, and crimes committed. Given the circumstances, however, what would any other nation have done? If we can imagine Israel’s neighbors to be more powerful than an on-her-last-legs Israel, and Israel were attacked from all sides, and the Arabs within Israel would begin a revolt, hitting the Israeli army from the back… I have a strong feeling the current Israeli leader at the time of this writing, Ariel Sharon, would not even bother with a “deportation.”

“Abitboul clearly utilized, and in my judgment was virtually reprinting, known revisionist texts that none of the basic documents of the Armenian Genocide are in any way valid, they are all contrived forgeries and/or the mouthings of prejudiced parties who have an axe to grind like the Jewish Ambassador, Morgenthau!” What does that mean? Because Morgenthau was “Jewish,” he must be credible? What kind of reverse-racism is that?

 If Charny had an ounce of objectivity, he would recognize the validity of how unreliable the “evidence” for the Armenian “Genocide” is. But look at what he says further: “As if this were not enough, Abitboul then went sloppily off to a new extreme of charlatanism by citing the name of Professor Vahakn Dadrian, a scholar who has done much of the outstanding research proving the authenticity of the various documents of the Armenian Genocide…”

Brother. Well, we can expect Charny to be captivated by the likes of the deceitful prosecutor, Vahakn Dadrian, since these two are the same peas in a pod. He then cites Taner Akcam, “one of the rare but growing number of Turkish scholars who acknowledge the Armenian Genocide,” and there can be no further doubt as to where Israel Charny is coming from.

The conclusion: “Most of all, we need to link the battles against denials to civilization’s obligation to recommit itself to the cardinal principle, ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill,’ for that is the real issue underlying denials of genocide.”

Precisely the danger represented by men like Israel Charny. Wrapped by the Cloak of Good, for who can argue with the evil represented by killing? Exactly like the missionaries who similarly represented “Good,” since no one expected clergymen to lie?

What does this “genocide scholar” have to say about his country’s treatment of the Palestinians?

This is a touchy area, and charges of “anti-Semitism” won’t be far behind by the likes of those as Israel Charny. However, if we go to Jewish sources in such sites as Jews for Justice in the Middle East ), we can learn various factors such as the Israelis expelling 700,000 Palestinian refugees shortly after the nation’s creation (cited by “innocent denialist” Noam Chomsky, in “The Fateful Triangle”).
“By 1948, the Jew was not only able to ‘defend himself’ but to commit massive atrocities as well. Indeed, according to the former director of the Israeli army archives, ‘in almost every village occupied by us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murders, massacres, and rapes’…Uri Milstein, the authoritative Israeli military historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further, maintaining that ‘every skirmish ended in a massacre of Arabs.’” (Norman Finkelstein, “Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.”)

A group of Jewish intellectuals (including Albert Einstein) wrote a 1948 letter to the New York Times protesting the “fascist” actions of Israel, particularly the party led by Menachem Begin, who actually invited the press to gloat over the massacred bodies of Arab villagers. Ariel Sharon would lead a death unit in the 1950s, targeting Palestinian women and children.

 

IRONY OF IRONIES

Israeli Ambassador to Armenia, Mrs. Rivka Kohen, argued during a February 7, 2002 press conference in Yerevan (after declaring the Ottoman government had no intention to destroy a nation or a group of people):

“(The) Holocaust was a unique phenomenon, since it had always (been) planned and aimed to destroy the whole nation. At this stage nothing should be compared with the Holocaust.” [‘Israeli Ambassador Says No Parallels Between Holocaust and 1915 Genocide,’ Asbarez, February 8, 2002]

Among much of the hostile Armenian reaction to Kohen’s comment was the Armenian Aryan party’s declaration, via a  press release, that the entire nation of Israel was a “genocide denier”!

(As an additional irony, one way the Armenian Foreign Ministry responded on Feb. 15 — other than by calling Mrs. Kohen’s comments “unacceptable” — was by stating Armenia “has never aimed to draw parallels between the Armenian genocide and the Jewish Holocaust because every crime [against humanity] is unique.”) (rferl.org, Feb. 19, 2002)

However, it appears to be in Israel Charny’s nature to defame. The Armenian Reporter International reported on Dec. 30, 2000  that Macmillan UK cancelled publication of Professor Israel Charny’s article because it was “defamatory.” The article in question was the very one we have been referring to, “The Psychological Satisfaction of Denials of the Holocaust or Other Genocides by Non-Extremists or Bigots, and Even by Known Scholars.”

Charny hit back with “My article is in no way defamatory“… hoo-boy!… supported by his expert knowledge of British law. Jerusalem attorney Michael Oseasohn conveyed to Charny: “One cannot reasonably refer to genocide, its perpetrators and/or its deniers in glowing terms. Any discussion, written or oral, about Adolf Eichmann, Heinrich Himmler, or any denier such as David Irving, Ernst Nolte, or Bernard Lewis, or accomplices to denial such as Noam Chomsky, necessarily involves elements which would tend to insult them or lower their reputation.”

Look at this. Bernard Lewis and Noam Chomsky in the same company as Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler. The hysterical world of genocide scholarship is nothing less than amazing.

However, Israel Charny and those like him simply are too blinded by their genocide obsession, their inability or unwillingness to objectively analyze historical facts, and their haughty tone of superiority to recognize they are committing the crime of Rufmord. This is “the murder of one´s reputation — by defaming the name of the Turkish nation, the killing of one’s reputation,” as Prof. Erich Feigl wrote in “The Myth of Terror.”

Genocide scholars such as Israel Charny “brazenly ignore any accepted rules of objective inquiry and evidence.” He is “out to make a point — namely, denial of the Armenian Genocide(‘s not happening) — at any cost.”

Earlier in this essay, I mentioned this almost fanatical zeal that is easily found in the religious world, promising to get back to this analogy.  I’ll now do so by borrowing from my analysis of The Burning Tigris’ epilogue.

Terrence Des Pres asked (in a April 27, 1976 N.Y. Times piece called “Lessons of the Holocaust”): “Why teach such stuff? Why enroll in such a (Genocide) course? Why…allow such darkness to invade one’s soul when, ostensibly, no good can come of it?”

His answer: “Yet as if by miracle, this spring there are 141 students in ‘Literature of the Holocaust’ at Colgate. The room is filled with an intensity of concern I am tempted to describe as religious. And for all their shock and depression and, yes, also their tears, what emerges finally are things so clearly good and life-enhancing… For Jewish students there comes a renewal of heritage and pride.”

Obsession with “genocide”…has become some people’s “religion.”

Wallowing in genocides produces “ethnic” pride, while hypocritically, these genocide studies ignore so many other historic example of Man’s Inhumanity to Man, especially those committed by the Armenians and, yes, the Israelis too.

I guess this is why there are so many Jewish genocide scholars who blindly follow in step with the Armenians’ distorted version of history. It’s repulsive.

Over half a million Turks were systematically murdered by the Armenians, with a little help from the Russians, in the events around WWI. For roughly a century prior, five million Muslims were displaced mainly by the actions of Imperial Russia kicking the “Sick Man” around…. and five and a half million were killed. Is there any Turkish person in existence who says, boo-hooo? I don’t mean in the sense the knowledge is not painful; of course it is. That is, most Turks aren’t even aware of these numbers. Those who come across such facts say, “That stinks!” … and then they move on. No Turk is going to relate to the sad fate of their forefathers as a source of pride.

The date the Turkish-American community selected to represent their ethnic pride parade was the birth of the Turkish republic when …. against all odds… the Turks kicked out the imperial powers wishing to slice Turkey apart. The date Armenian-Americans have selected is the signing of the relocation orders… their date of “doom.” Over 2,000 years the Armenians have been around, and they couldn’t think of something more positive?

Armenian historian Robert John (Hovhanes) said it best (The Reporter, “America’s Leading Armenian Newspaper,” August 2, 1984):

“The Armenian, the Jew or the African should not damage their development with a continual conditioning of hate; neither should spurious guilt be vented upon others. These negative preoccupations and obsessions are obstructing our evolution.”