Category: Asia and Pacific

Russia’s strategic ambitions in South Caucasus and beyond

WASHINGTON – On August 20 Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed amendments to a 1995 bilateral treaty extending Russia’s use of its 102nd military base near Armenia’s border with Turkey through 2044.

The signature launched long and controversial debates over possible causes and implications of the agreement.

On one hand, some are confident that the main purpose of such a move is directly linked to the Armenian-Azerbaijani contention over Nagorno-Karabagh and is clear evidence of Russia’s strategic-military support to Armenia in the event of military force used by Azerbaijan.

On the other, this view is contradicted by those who believe that “Russia’s reported plans to sell two of its S-300 Favorit air-defense systems to Azerbaijan” is a balancing enterprise to maintain a strategic parity between Armenia and Azerbaijan and thus, keep the status quo of “no war, no peace” situation.

Are these two mutually excluding moves part of Russia’s South Caucasian policies or are they part of a more far-going agenda?

Russia's Dmitry Medvedev (center) flanked by French and American presidents during G20 meeting last June. Photolur

All about East vs. West?

Affected by a historical inferiority complex vis-à-vis the West, Russia has initiated a reaction to Western superiority.

Development of Russia’s ambitions of modernization can be traced through a tripartite evolution of the Russian far-reaching strategy.

The first attempt was undertaken by Peter the Great in 17th century who sought to launch radical reforms of “westernization” of Russia. Some of his successor Tsars followed this path until 1917.

The second phase of the project was based on the promotion of Marxist and then Leninist ideas and resulted in the creation of a de-facto Soviet Empire that incorporated, mostly by force, nations of the Russian empire.

Consequently, the Cold War not only became the driving force in the antagonism between the West and Russia after WW2, but a source of new ideological tensions. End of the Soviet Union marked another failure of the Russian project.

In the 1990s, Russia found itself as the successor of the two previous (Tsarist and Soviet) attempts and it was consequential to set up the third platform that Russia would use as a tool to (re)gain the control it lost over former-Soviet countries. New ideas were needed and Russia’s old ambitions took on new forms.

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was created and many of those countries including the South Caucasian states joined it. Since then, any Western ambitions and interplay of CIS countries with Euro-Atlantic structures were seen by Russia as “treachery” by these newly independent states.

Russia has since also established the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) in effect to “tame” any NATO or other Euro-Atlantic inspirations deemed a direct threat to Russia’s national security.

First, it created regional military alliances. Second, Russia strongly enforced its economic presence in the former Soviet area. Third, it sought to undermine initiatives by non Russia-oriented states toward the West.

The Russia-Georgia armed confrontation and the ascendance of Russia-favored Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych to power are central elements of this strategy.

Russia is also taking revenge against the West’s unilateral actions in former Yugoslavia and NATO’s enlargements into Eastern Europe.

Russia seems ready to make more moves towards Iran and Turkey to make sure its presence in the region and its influence over the greater Caucasus is not undermined by the US and the EU-led projects such as NABUCCO, Georgia’s (and Ukraine’s) accession to NATO, pumping Central Asian hydrocarbon resources to Europe by bypassing Russia etc.

Although Russia is trying to present itself as open to engaging the West on matters such us Iran’s nuclear program, its real priority is enhanced control over the South Caucasus, on one hand, while increasing contradictions between the West, China and Middle East players.

Thus, the extension of the lease of the Russian military base in Armenia for another 34 years and Moscow’s possible delivery of anti-aircraft missile launchers S-300 to Azerbaijan underscore the third attempt of Russia in its far-reaching strategy.

Russia has strong ambitions both for the West and the Rest. By the same logic, Russia has recently canceled its plans to supply Iran with S-300. Russia doesn’t need now to put a spoke in US’s wheel and to have a stronger Iran. Over time Russia-Iran-US triangle is likely to reveal new dynamics.

We can therefore presume that Russia’s endeavors in the South Caucasus and beyond are not partner- or friendship-oriented.

Rather, these policies are based on a strategy and pursue the objective to see Russia as a rising instead of falling power.

The cold peace may be on its way.

by Gevorg Melikyan
Armenian Reporter

November 1, 2010
Is China in the Bible?

From the December 2010 Trumpet Print Edition »

The scriptural, prophetic identity of the most populous nation on the planet.

BY DAVID VEJIL

China: The Next Superpower.” “China: America’s Number-One Enemy.”

Such headlines have become common. It is logical that the nation with nearly 20 percent of the world’s population, the second-biggest economy and the biggest military (in terms of manpower) would inspire such discussion.

But will China become the world’s next superpower? The truth is, you cannot know China’s future unless you understand that nation’s identity in the Bible, the only source that can reveal the answer!

Yes, if you believe the Bible, you can actually know for certain—without a doubt—who will dominate the world very shortly!

Hundreds of think tanks spend countless hours and vast sums of money in search of an answer to this question. Yet, the Bible reveals the answer—if they would only believe!

The Bible is a book primarily about Israel, physical and spiritual. When other nations are mentioned, it is typically in relation to Israel. In biblical times, the interaction between the Chinese and the Israelites was of no major consequence, and so China was rarely mentioned.

However, the Bible does speak prophetically of China’s role in end-time events. Technological advances in communication and trade have shrunken the distance between China and the modern descendants of Israel considerably (for an explanation of who these nations are, request our free book The United States and Britain in Prophecy). Today China has considerable global influence: Witness, for example, the amount of U.S. debt China holds and the huge trade imbalance between the two nations, and the fact that China is the world’s most dominant trading nation.

An understanding of these prophecies hinges on knowing the biblical identity of the Chinese people. Before delving into this, however, we must gain a basic overview of Chinese history.

A Brief History of a Great People

The Chinese people comprise one dominant ethnic group and many small minorities. The ethnic Han comprise more than 90 percent of the 1.3 billion people living in China. Though minority ethnic groups—such as the Uygurs, Tibetans, Mongols and Manchu—make up a small percentage of the Chinese population, in absolute numbers they are still large populations. For example, there are actually more Mongols living in China than in Mongolia.

These other ethnic groups have been absorbed into China through conquest by the Han Chinese. The Han have long dominated the heartland of China, usually defined by the Yellow River in the north, the Yangtze in the middle and the Pearl River on the south. This rich agricultural region is surrounded by border regions occupied by non-Han peoples, such as Tibet, Xinjiang (home of the Muslim Uighurs), Inner Mongolia and Manchuria, the historical name given to the territory north of North Korea.

Historically, fierce nomadic cavalry armies from the northern border regions have posed a difficult challenge to the agriculture-based Chinese. The incursions motivated the building of the Great Wall.

When the Han were strong, just like today, the border regions were under their rule. When they were weak, they lost control of those buffer regions and in some cases were even invaded by their Turkic and Mongol neighbors.

The foreign invaders all achieved measures of success, controlling portions of Chinese territory for various periods, mainly in northern China. The most complete conquest was the Mongol invasion started by Genghis Khan in the a.d. 1200s: The resulting dynasty fully controlled China for a century.

All these invasions had one thing in common, however: They all met their end by the Han Chinese.

No matter which foreign invader occupied the throne, China always remained Chinese.

One remarkable demonstration of the resilience of their society and culture was the survival, amid all the invasions, of the Chinese language—a feat few other languages have managed.

This was partly due to the size of the Han population. In a.d. 2, the first available census shows a Chinese population of about 60 million, one fourth of the world’s population at the time!

To better rule this immense population, nomadic invaders typically adopted Chinese administration techniques and the Chinese language, a language quite unrelated to their own. Eventually their descendents adopted Chinese culture and the agricultural lifestyle as well. When the Han reasserted themselves, they easily absorbed the invaders that remained.

All the mixing and migrating of different peoples has made it impossible to characterize what a pure ethnic Han is. Nevertheless, prophetically speaking, China refers to all the people of China, not just the Han ethnic group. And at any rate, the Chinese and all the minority groups living in China are of the Mongoloid race, which stems from Noah’s son Japheth.

The Mongoloid Race

As Herbert W. Armstrong taught throughout his ministry, Noah’s son Japheth married a woman of the yellow race, and went on to father the Mongoloid people. The Hebrew word Japheth means enlargement, according to The Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary,and a glance at the modern world shows that the Oriental populations have been enlarged and multiplied to an unparalleled degree. Japheth’s descendants have long been the most populous people on Earth, with the bulk living in China, Southeast Asia and Japan.

Genesis 10:2-5 show that the enlargement of Japheth began with the patriarch himself siring seven sons and an untold number of daughters. Obviously, these sons and daughters were a mix between the Caucasoid and Mongoloid races, the latter of which grew more definitive in subsequent generations. Soon after the dispersion at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:8), Japheth’s descendants migrated through Central Asia to the lands they occupy now.

One of the seven sons of Japheth bears special importance to the prophetic identity of the Chinese and even their nomadic neighbors. That is Magog, the second son of Japheth mentioned in Genesis 10:2.

Where Did Magog Go?

Again, the Bible deals primarily with Israel. Since Magog’s descendants migrated to an area largely independent of the civilizations developing in the Middle East, no sons of Magog are listed in Scripture.

However, Jewish historian Josephus indicated where Magog’s descendants settled. He wrote in the first century, “Magog founded those that from him were named Magogites, but who are by the Greeks called Scythians” (The Complete Works of Josephus).

In a prophecy in Ezekiel 38, the Bible labels this vast territory of northern Eurasia where the Scyths lived—a region that stretched from the Russian steppes east into modern-day China and Mongolia—as Magog.

This territory contained many different tribes of people of the white and yellow races, all of whom were called Scyths or Scythians by the Greeks (see last month’s installment in this series). The Ezekiel 38 prophecy demonstrates this as well, listing numerous nations and peoples associated with or dwelling “in the land of Magog.” The people who most prominently settled this land are typically identified as Mongolic and Turkic. The name Mongol is even derived from the name Magog.

The ancient history of this land is a story about different Turkic and Mongolic tribes vying for control of the area. Whenever a tribe grew strong enough, it would rule the area; in rare cases—such as with the Huns, Seljuk Turks and Mongols—if these nomadic tribes consolidated enough power, they conquered lands beyond their own.

The resulting conquests led to much cultural and genetic intermixing with the people of Central Asia—and makes their national borders largely irrelevant to defining their ethnic backgrounds.

Today the land the Bible calls Magog is dominated in the west by Russia—which is reasserting control over the region it once possessed through the ussr—and China in the east.

Details of the ancient history of Magog and its people remain obscure since the Turks and Mongols didn’t develop a written language until after their contact with the Chinese or Persian civilizations. Though these nomadic peoples have a sketchy history, they still play an important role in understanding China’s prophetic role.

While the Mongols’ connection to Magog is most obvious, they were just one tribe of a related people that carry the biblical name Magog. Ezekiel 38 is a prophecy about the land of Magog and all the distant “cousins” that live there and are associated with each other, such as the Russians and Chinese. One of the Mongolic nomadic tribes in this area bears a special relationship with China. They are the Khitan, a people responsible for China’s modern name and one of China’s biblical names, Chittim.

China Is Chittim

Isaiah 23:1 has a prophecy about “the land of Chittim.” To which modern nation does this end-time prophecy apply? This biblical name refers to both the island of Cyprus and to the nation of China, whose progenitors first populated Cyprus and gave it its name.

Jewish historian Josephus records that some descendants of Japheth—such as the families of Gomer, Tubal and Togarmah—first settled in southern Europe before migrating east into Asia. Kittim was one such family, originally settling lands to the west of Mesopotamia before moving to the Far East.

Genesis 10:4 lists the sons of Japheth’s fourth-born son: “The sons of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim” (New King James Version). Kittim is synonymous with the Chittim of Isaiah’s prophecy. Verse 5 mentions that these sons of Javan settled the isles, or the coasts. This occurred shortly after the dispersion of the Tower of Babel, when the sons of Javan migrated to the northern Mediterranean. These tribes gave their names to various cities and islands, such as Cyprus and Rhodes.

The Mongoloid types of these families, including the Kittim, did not stay in the Mediterranean, however. Over hundreds of years and many generations, some of these families migrated east into Asia from Cyprus, where they are found today, according to research by Dr. Ernest Martin, formerly of Ambassador College.

The descendants of Javan’s son Kittim came to Asia some time after many of their cousins had already settled there. After their migration through Central Asia, the Kittim made their appearance in modern-day northern China and Mongolia under the name Khitan in the fourth century a.d. In the 10th century, the Khitan people managed to create a dynasty that subjugated the peoples, including the Chinese, in modern-day northern China. Their territory stretched from what is now Korea to eastern Kazakhstan, including Beijing, the seat of government in China today.

Because the Khitans controlled the overland trade and communication route from China through Central Asia to Europe, China was called Cathay, after the Khitans. The designation first applied to north China, but later designated all of China. It is a name the Russians still use for China today.

Isaiah 23:1-3 reveal that Chittim, modern-day China, will form a part of a global economic market along with Europe, one that is prophesied to shut out the nations of Israel. It should be no surprise that China will be an integral part of this economic partnership with Europe, as it is now the world’s greatest exporter. These two trading blocs will soon dominate the global economy!

The history of the Khitan demonstrates what has happened to many of the Mongolic tribes that once roamed the western portions of what the Bible calls Magog. These nomadic tribes were not considered Chinese when they were conquering the Han civilization, but after centuries of living inside China’s borders, much of their populations have been ethnically absorbed by the Han Chinese. Whatever remnants of these Mongolic nomads that have managed to remain distinct, such as the Mongols, are now classified as ethnic minorities in China.

In the Khitan’s case, their absorption was so complete that an ethnic minority group from their descendants doesn’t even exist!

The history of these nomads shows just how strong a connection China has with biblical Magog. To a certain degree, they even share the same borders and the same people. But if this explains the Mongolic nomads whose descendants now live in northern China, what about the original Han people who settled and continue to live in China’s heartland?

Handling the Han

The history of the Han Chinese is much less obscure. In fact, the Han people record their history all the way back to the time of the Tower of Babel!

Ancient Chinese records speak of China’s first emperors, Yaou, Shun and Yu.

One such record, The Shoo King, explains that one of Yaou’s tasks was to deal with the effects of a great flood that ravaged the land: “Destructive in their overflow are the waters of the inundation. In their vast extent they embrace the mountains and overtop the hills.”

While scholars explain the inundation as a local flood in China, it is clear from the biblical account, God’s sacred Word, that these annals are talking about Noah’s Flood. Consider:

During Yaou’s lifetime a new leader, Shun, came to power. According to another ancient Chinese manuscript, The Bamboo Annals, Shun is described as having a “black body.” He was obviously not Chinese, and his mother was called “the queen mother of the west,” indicating him as a foreigner. The Shoo King gives the name of Shun’s father as Koo-sow.

According to Dr. Herman Hoeh’s Compendium of World History, this Shun was none other than the Nimrod of the Bible. Therefore Koo-sow, which can also be spelled Kusou, is Nimrod’s father Cush! And the “queen mother of the west” can only be Semiramis. She was the mother-wife of Nimrod who called herself “queen of heaven,” as documented in Alexander Hislop’s Two Babylons. These are the three principal figures of man’s rebellion at the Tower of Babel.

Nimrod was a son of Cush and therefore of the black race. The Bible describes him as a mighty rebellious leader who caused the people to revolt against God shortly after the Flood (Genesis 10:8-9). He gathered the different races and peoples together to build the Tower of Babel, but was stopped when God intervened and confused the languages (Genesis 11:1-7). The different races and peoples were then scattered to different areas of the world (verse 8).

At that point, Yu became the next ruler. Yu, China’s first great hero, founded the Xia dynasty; from that point forward, leadership was given on a hereditary basis. The return of government to a Chinese ruler indicates that the Chinese immediately left the area of Babel and broke free from Nimrod and his successors’ rule. Under Chinese rulers, they migrated to their modern-day location.

The chronology as presented by The Shoo King places the rules of these three kings toward the end of the third millennia b.c. (The Chinese Classics). This time frame also agrees with the Bible.

The Chinese have preserved the most complete secular history of their civilization, dating back more than 4,000 years. There is a lot of myth and legend included as well, but the general chronology of emperors is verified by archeological finds, as well as what is recorded in Scripture.

Archeological Proof

Western scholars and the Chinese themselves, heavily influenced by Western thought after the 1920s, believed the Xia dynasty and the history immediately following were mere inventions, mythical heroes and kingdoms.

However, an archeological find in 1959 at Erlitou in the western part of the Henan province revealed an early Chinese society dating back to the same time and place that The Shoo King records the Xia dynasty existed! The city found at Erlitou is the largest of all cities found dating to this time period and is believed to be the capital city of the Xia government.

Since that find in the North China Plain off the Yellow River, archeologists have found some 200 sites revealing the same culture throughout a broad area, demonstrating a rapid settlement and urbanization during 1900 to 1500 b.c. This was the formation of the first Chinese state! (The Chinese Neolithic: Trajectories to Early States).

The Bamboo Annals records the existence of other Chinese states and how the Xia rulers expanded their control over them. Archeologists have found evidence of other Chinese states, but none contained as many settlements as those closely identified with the city found in Erlitou where the Xia ruled—clearly the center of power of the first post-Flood Chinese civilization.

Interestingly, the archeological record shows a period of extremely low-population settlement in the period immediately before the Erlitou culture arrived. The archeologists, steeped in evolutionary thought, call the time before the Flood the Neolithic period. They have found evidence of a thriving civilization in China in this time period, followed by a contraction in settlement, with evidence pointing to drastic flooding in the region (ibid.).

Though the archeologists won’t admit it, this is evidence of a great flood followed by a resettlement of the area led by the Xia dynasty!

Back to Gog and Magog

So if history is clear that Shun is Nimrod, who are Yaou and Yu? How do these names fit in our biblical identity?

A basic understanding of Ezekiel 38 gives us that information. That chapter speaks of the land of Magog and specific people or peoples living in that land: “Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog” (verse 2). Gog and Magog are also mentioned together in Revelation 20:8, showing a close connection between the land and peoples. When Arab historians talked of the Mongols, they used the terms Yagog and Magog.

According to Dr. Hoeh, Yaou in Chinese history is likely the same person the Arabs call Yagog in their tradition. Every prophetic indication is that China has a strong connection with Gog and Magog. Ezekiel 38:2 refers to China. Along with Russia, China dominates the entire area of Magog and is associated with the nations listed in subsequent verses.

Therefore, the Chinese Han people were ruled first by a Japhetic descendant associated with Magog—possibly his son, though the Bible doesn’t say specifically. During Nimrod’s rebellion at the Tower of Babel, the Chinese were ruled by Nimrod. After his reign, when God intervened and changed the languages, government over the Chinese returned to the Japhetic line, under Yu’s rule. These people then migrated north and east to modern-day China, setting up their capital in the North China Plain at the end of the third millennium b.c.

The location of China helps reveal other biblical identities as well.

Kings of the East

In a prophecy recorded in Daniel 11, a clash is foretold between “the king of the north,” a German-led European power, and “the king of the south,” a radical Islamic power led by Iran (these prophetic identities are explained in our booklets Germany and the Holy Roman Empire and The King of the South, both free upon request). Emerging victorious, the European army is then prophesied to conquer the tiny Jewish nation now called Israel. At that point, verse 44 foretells, “tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble” this European king.

Any map will show that north and east of Jerusalem are Russia and China, the two dominant powers of the land biblically referred to as Magog!

This event is further expounded in Revelation 16:12, where it is prophesied that the “kings of the east” will gather an army that numbers 200 million soldiers! (Revelation 9:14-16). Such a vast army could only be assembled with the massive population of China. Clearly China is one of those kings of the east!

So back to our original question: Will China become the world’s next dominating superpower after the decline of the U.S.? The answer is no!

Though it will grow to tremendous world power, even superpower status—especially through economic means, as indicated in Isaiah 23—it will not rise to the top spot. That position will be filled by the European power led by Germany! After a short economic partnership, China will violently contend with the king of the north for global dominance.

But this war will end when Jesus Christ returns and destroys both powers!

After that, according to biblical prophecy, Christ will restore His government on Earth, a government that will bring peace and prosperity for 1,000 years. Yet Ezekiel 38 prophesies that not every nation will submit to Christ’s rule voluntarily. Soon after the Second Coming, the people of Asia will form an army in order to attack the people living in Jerusalem!

This will be the last great rebellion in the 1,000-year period. Christ will utterly destroy it and deliver His people. It is a grand statement from God: “Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 38:23).

Believing the Bible gives us an understanding of ancient Chinese history that scholars reject, and reveals the future status of China and major events this world power will participate in. But even more, it gives us the final and inspiring end result: Christ establishing His Kingdom on Earth!

God is offering the wonderful opportunity to know, now, who is the Lord! Horrible wars are prophesied to occur shortly, but God will deliver His people, those who know He is the Lord and rely on Him. That should lead to the next big question: Are you one of those?

For further study, order a free copy of our booklet Russia and China in Prophecy.

November 1, 2010
Strong Turkey members spies in Armenia?

“That was the Strong Turkey Party was looking for in Armenia. No unequivocal answer to this question can be given. It may be political PR, spirit of adventure and even espionage,” the expert in Turkic studies Kristine Melkonyan told journalists Oct. 30.

According to her, the visit to Armenia by members of the Strong Turkey Party, a little-known political force in Turkey, was a cheap thrill aimed at reaching a certain level in the Turkish political arena. The expert also thinks that the aim of the visit may have been espionage. “Doubts arise due to the fact that they crossed the border unnoticed by the frontier guard on both sides. If they did so the Turkish authorities would arrest them for illegally crossing the border. That did not happen, which means the Turkish Government supported their action. I think their border crossing story is a great lie,” Melkonyan said.

The RA National Security Service reports that Tuna Bekleviç and Baybars Orsek were invited to the National Security Service and warned that their behavior and statements were unacceptable. The Turkish citizens were offered to leave Armenia.

NEWS.am reminds readers that on Oct. 10 evening Turkish mass media reported Chairman of the Strong Turkey Party Tuna Bekleviç and his associates crossed the Armenian-Turkish border. In his turn, Colonel Andrey Guzeev, Vice-Chief of the Frontier Department, RF Federal Security Service, refuted the media reports.

October 31, 2010
Turkey Removes Armenia from, Adds Israel to ‘Threat’ List

ANKARA, Turkey (A.W.)—Earlier this week, Turkey’s National Security Council (MGK) approved changes in its National Security document, removing Armenia from, and adding Israel to the list of countries that pose a “major threat” to Turkey.

Iran, Syria, Georgia, and Bulgaria were also removed from the “major threat” list.

In addition to referring to it as a threat, the document accuses Israel of driving the entire region into an arms race.

Other threats that were added to the list are global warming and online terror.

The document, also referred to as “The Red Book,” informs the country’s policy towards its neighbors, and is generally revised every five years.

The relations between Turkey and Israel have deteriorated in recent months. Most recently, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said he would boycott a climate conference in Athens if Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends.

October 31, 2010
Role of Cuban Pilots in Jewish Air Exodus to Israel Revealed

Following the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, a Cuban airline and a group of Cuban pilots were commissioned to transport all the Jewish people who wished to immigrate to the dawning state. Their many flights between 1951 and 1952 as part of what may be the largest air evacuation in human history had remained unknown until now.

By: Luis Hernández Serrano

Email: serrano@juventudrebelde.cu

They were not diplomats or delegates going to an international convention, nor pilgrims on the search for indulgences or archaeological relics. The group of pilots that departed from Cuba in 1951 to the Holy Land had a different mission.

The event remained unknown for almost 60 years. The Cuban pilots were to take part in the largest mass air evacuation in human history.

Aviation historian Captain Rolando Marron told Juventud Rebelde newspaper the details of their ordeal.

“In 1948,” he began, “the Republic of Israel was founded in a territory that had been part of Palestine and was under British control. The deficient economy of the country demanded arms to harvest the land and brains to administrate the dawning republic.”

“In Europe, as a consequence of the recently concluded world war, there were hundreds of thousands of dispossessed Hebrews eager to move to the new homeland they were being offered. Large groups of immigrants began to arrive in Israel from all over Europe, as it was easier for them to find ways to get there.

“As the relations between Jewish and Arabs became tenser in Arab countries, the Israeli government intervened to facilitate the evacuation of a larger number of Jewish people to their Promised Land.

“Arab governments prohibited Jewish immigrants to travel by road, and the Egyptian blockade of the Suez Canal made it impossible for them to get to Israeli territory by sea.

“The only option left was organizing a mass air evacuation. Negotiations began under acute time constraints. Since Israel had no diplomatic relations with Arab League member states, and planes bearing Israeli flags could not therefore be used for the exodus, they had to hire planes from a neutral country.

“By coincidence, an important official of the Israeli mission in New York was a very good friend of Cuban businessman and civilian pilot Narciso V. Rosello Otero, who was appointed chair of the company created for the plan: Intercontinental Aerea de Cuba S.A

“When the company had secured the required permits in Cuba, its central office opened at 464 Zulueta, in Old Havana, and a branch office was also inaugurated in Nicosia, Cyprus.

The historian said that while the final arrangements were made to the administrative structure of the company, Cuban pilot were hired, in compliance with Cuban laws, to fly the planes.

“The first group was made up of five pilots who were unemployed at the time because the company they worked for, Aerovias Cubanas Internacionales S.A., had gone bankrupt due to the incipient development of domestic commercial flights in Cuba.

The Air Exodus

Historian Marron adds that during the nearly two years that the mission lasted, more than 115,000 refugees were brought from Iraq; 25,000 from Iran, and a few hundred from India and Yemen. The Yemen refugees had to cross the border to reach the English territory of Aden to board the planes.

“Most of the refugees from Iraq boarded at the airport of Baghdad, and the rest in Bahra, near the famed Abadan oil refinery, at the important oil harbour located only a few miles away from the Persian Gulf border.”

The historian noted that it was in Iraq where the Jewish passengers experienced the most difficulties, given the persecutions and dangers they faced in that country, and it was necessary to evacuate them as soon as possible. The abovementioned number of Iraqi refugees was rescued over a period of approximately ten months.

“The Iranian refugees,” continued Marron, “were picked at the Teheran airport. They were not forced to leave the country, and all of them immigrated to Israel voluntarily, with the exception of 1,000 who had escaped from Iraq and Afghanistan through the border, and could not remain in Iran due to immigration regulations.

“The longest flights were to Bombay, in India, where a few hundred decided to immigrate. Many of them would return later to India because they were not able to adapt to the living conditions they found in their new homeland.

“Taking off from the modern Lydda airport in Tel Aviv, the flight had a stopover in Sharjah, at the Royal British Air Force base, in the remote area of Oman Trucial off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, in the Persian Gulf.

“A typical Arab village by the seaside and the barracks of the English troops were the only signs of life near the airfield in the middle of the dessert. The second part of the trip was the crossing of the Indic Ocean, battered by the dangerous monsoons, and the journey concluded at the Santa Cruz airport in Bombay.

“The hardest and more frequent routes were Lydda-Baghdad and Lydda-Teheran,” said Marron.

A Forced Landing

“Although the first of these routes was relatively easy in the winter,” explained Marron, “flying conditions would drastically change in the summer, when sandstorms considerably reduced visibility in Baghdad, impeding access to the airport. Sometimes pilots had to land in alternate airfields to wait for the weather conditions in their places of destination to change.

“Furthermore, high temperatures affected the performance of plane engines. In Baghdad, it was normal to have temperatures between 45ºC and 50ºC in the shade! And not only at noon, but also in the morning and late afternoon. That is why pilots always tried to take off in the night, in order to gain time.

“Adolfo Diaz Vazquez was the only pilot who had to make a forced landing during the evacuation program. One of the engines of the C-46 he was flying stopped on route between Baghdad and Lydda, at night! Thanks to his vast experience, all the passengers and the plane escaped unharmed. The passengers and the crew were taken to Israel in another plane. Some days later, Eugenio Ramos Escandon flew the plane to Lydda. The aircraft had been repaired by a group of Cuban mechanics under the guidance of Eduardo Segredo Salgado.

“By the end of 1952, the wave of immigration to Israel decreased and some of the planes that had been used for these ends began flying to European cities: Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Zurich, London, Athens and Geneva.

“In early 1953, the group of Cuban pilots returned to Cuba, after having successfully transported almost 150,000 Jewish immigrants to Israel. The crew of these flights wore an insignia with a Cuban flag on their uniforms.

“The main base of operations of the Intercontinental Aerea de Cuba S.A. Company was always in Cuba, but its planes never flew in the national territory; they never even touched Cuban soil. Part of the money earned in this operation was probably used to bribe the Cuban president at the time, since permits were only granted following a local inspection of the aircrafts.

Pilots who took part in the evacuation program:

Manuel Gonzalez Linares, with more than 6,000 hours of flight.

Eugenio Ramos Escandon, experienced C-46 capatain.

Guillermo Verdaguer Boan, survivor of a plane crash in which one of his comrades lost his life.

Miguel Acosta Rosellp.

Antonio “Nico” Fernandez Martinez

Adolfo Diaz Vazquez, also known as “Lindbergh,” an aerobatics champion. He was the sixth pilot on Narciso Rosello’s payroll.

Eduardo Segredo Salgado, the brilliant mechanic of the team.

The Zionist State of Israel

When the Second World War ended in 1945, Jewish political organizations led by Theodor Herzl pushed for the creation of a state that should have its capital in Jerusalem, Palestine, which was a British protectorate at the time. The plan was to give the Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide a place to start over after the war. It is said that the area was infiltrated by terrorist groups with a view to speeding up the British withdrawal.

Arab Palestinians, with the support of Eastern Arab states, energetically opposed the plan, which was paradoxically fascist. The wave of immigration had the support of US and British Jewish organizations, and a US-British supervising commission was created for the forced Jewish colonization.

After the failure of the Conference of Palestine in 1947, England brought the issue to the attention of United Nations, and in November of that year, a plan was drawn up to split the Palestinian territory into two states: a Jewish state and an Arab state. On May 14, 1948, when there were only a few hours left before the British rule was to expire, the Jewish proclaimed the independence of the Hebrew state, and they called it Israel.

Arab government representatives, who never agreed to the UN ruling, rejected this political decision, giving way to an armed conflict in which the Zionist groups, that were better trained and equipped, managed to expand their domain over a broader area, extending as far as the Jordan River. They would later gain more and more ground.

The foundation in 1948 of the Zionist state in the heart of the Arab region was the beginning of the historic suffering of the Palestinian people, which has come to be one of the most heartbreaking contemporary conflicts in the world.

In 1967, for example, the human cost of the conflict amounted to more than one million displaced Arab Palestinians, their homes and lands given to the Jewish settlers from Europe.

It is a fact that the state of Israel was founded by splitting up the Palestinian territory inhabited by Arab Palestinians who had been born in those lands, with the objective of bringing justice to the Jewish people but at the cost of a new injustice.

Israel’s subsequent history has been a history of unstoppable territorial expansionism in order to gain more land and water, and consolidate their privileged geopolitical position.

, 21.10.2010

[2]

In 1951-52, Cuban dictatorship operated Jewish immigration airlift to Israel

The Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) reported that an airlift was organized in the early 1950s by the Cuban company Intercontinental Aérea de Cuba S.A., owned by businessman Narciso V. Roselló Otero, to fly 150 000 Jewish immigrants to Israel (of which 115 000 were from Iraq and 25 000 from Iran).

These revelations shed light on a little-known operation until now.

In order to colonize Palestine, the Zionist movement planned to displace not only the European survivors of Nazi persecutions, but also the Jewish populations living in the Middle East.

To compel Iraqi Jews to emigrate, the Zionist movement mounted an operation in three stages:
An agreement was reached with pro-British Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said to force Iraqi Jews to accept a one-way ticket to Israel. On 9 March 1950, Parliament adopted a law requiring that Iraqi Jews leaving the country had to renounce their citizenship in writing and would not be allowed to return.
From 19 March 1950 to 30 January 1951, a series of bomb attacks targeted the venues of Jewish congregation. The attacks were falsely attributed to the Golden Square officers (who had sided with Germany against the British during World War II). As it is, they had been orchestrated by Israeli intelligence under the direction of Mordechaï Ben Porat (as endorsed in 1956 by Uri Avnery’s Israeli magazine Haolam Hazeh).
Immediately, an airlift was set up from Cuba by the dictatorial regime of General Fulgencio Batista enabling the evacuation of 115 000 Jews, terrified by the turn of events. Cuban planes and pilots took off from Baghdad stopping over in Nicosia (Cyprus). Towards the end of the operation, planes with a bigger capacity shuttled from Iraq to Israel directly so as to speed up the operation.

Mordechaï Porat, a terrorist with close ties to David Ben-Gurion, served four times as member of parliament and once as minister without portfolio. In 2001, he was awarded the Israel Prize for the whole of his career and in particular for having pushed Iraqi Jews to emigrate.

Narciso V. Roselló left Cuba for the United States after the attack on his home at the hands of Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries, who thus confiscated the weapons that they used to conquer Havana and overthrow General Batista.

==

“Pilotos cubanos en la Tierra Santa”, by Luis Hernández Serrano, Juventud Rebelde, 16 October 2010.

Bibliography:
Ropes of Sand : America’s Failure in the Middle East, by Wilbur Crane Eveland, WW Norton & Co (1981, 382 p.), ISBN-13 : 978-0393013368.
Ben Gurion’s Scandal : How the Haganah and the Mossad Eliminated Jews, by Naeim Giladi, Dandelion Books,U.S. (Seconde edition 2003, 364 p.), ISBN-13 : 978-1893302402.

https://www.voltairenet.org/article167398.html, 24 OCTOBER 2010

October 30, 2010
State of Denial

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Shimon Peres, and the Armenian Genocide. Collage: Tablet Magazine; Erdogan photo: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images; Peres photo: Amos BenGershom/GPO via Getty Images; background photo: Wikimedia Commons

It’s time for Israel to rethink its rejection of the Armenian Genocide

BY PETER BALAKIAN

There has been speculation about Turkey’s shifting international ties ever since the election of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of the Islamist AKP party, in 2003, and the Gaza flotilla incident of May created a new breach in the long-standing alliance between Turkey and Israel. Among the many issues that have emerged in post-flotilla relations between the two countries is the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

The flotilla episode is fraught with complexities and ironies on both sides. While the Turkish-led mission focused on a grave human rights crisis—Israel’s oppressive treatment of Gaza’s Palestinians—Turkey’s righteous indignation toward Israel both oversimplifies Israel’s distress about Hamas and seems glaringly hypocritical in view of its own human-rights problems. Those problems, which include Turkey’s repressive and violent treatment of its large Kurdish population, some 15 million or more, and its record of legal detention, imprisonment, and torture of Turkish intellectuals, journalists, and political activists, constitutes one of the world’s worst human rights records, as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports repeatedly show, over the past 20 years. Add to that Turkey’s occupation of Northern Cyprus in violation of international law and its international campaign to falsify the history of its genocide of the Armenians in 1915, and the ironies multiply.

While there remains a narrative among opinion-makers like New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman that frames Turkey as an exemplary friend and a real democracy, Jews should wrestle with some truths about past and present realities. Jews, like Christians, lived as designated infidels under the Ottomans, often under harsh and repressive laws; Zionists were jailed and killed outright by the Turkish government through the end of World War I (Palestine was under Ottoman rule then). The U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 1913 to 1916, an American Jew, Henry Morgenthau, said more than once that he feared that the fate of the Armenians at the hands of the Turks awaited the Jews next. It remains uncomfortable for Jews to recall that Turkey supplied the Nazis with large amounts of chromium during World War II, a mineral that was used, among other things, for killing in concentration camps. And today a virulent anti-Semitism has spread throughout Turkey so that recently a banner of the Islamic Saadet Party read: “Legendary leader Hitler, our patience is running out, we need your spirit.”

It’s a strange irony that in recent decades Israeli and Jewish diasporan groups have colluded with Turkey’s aggressive policy of denying and rewriting the history of the Armenian Genocide. In this equation the Armenian past has become a bargaining chip between Turkey and Israel, which have a regional partnership based on reciprocal needs. Turkey is an important source of Israel’s water supply and at least until recently, had been a friendly Muslim ally in a hostile region. Israel supplies Turkey with high-powered weapons, and the lucrative military manufacturing deals are important to Israel’s economy.

In 1982—by threatening the lives and livelihoods of Jews in Turkey—Turkey pressured the Israeli government to stop a genocide studies conference in Tel Aviv, at which a group of scholars were giving papers on the Armenian Genocide. As a result the Israeli government pulled out its support, Elie Wiesel decided he could not participate, and the conference was moved to an out-of-the-way location and was greatly diminished. In the 1990s, two Armenian documentaries that were to be aired on Israeli TV—one of them about the Armenian community of Jerusalem—were canceled at the last minute because of Turkish pressure. From 1989 on, Jewish-American organizations have worked at Ankara’s request to help stop a simple, non-binding Armenian Genocide resolution from passing in the U.S. Congress. When former Israeli Education Minister Yossi Sarid declared 10 years ago that he wanted to institute a new history curriculum with a chapter on genocide that would have “a broad reference to the Armenian genocide,” he was rebuked by his government and shortly thereafter left office.

In recent years, the Israeli government has mimicked at times the Turkish government’s propaganda about 1915. Shimon Peres, then Israel’s foreign minister, went as far as to say: “We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. What the Armenians went through is a tragedy, but not genocide.” Peres’ crude denial elicited angry responses from Israeli scholars, and Israel Charny, the director of the Institute on Genocide in Jerusalem, crystallized the anger of many when he replied: “As a Jew and an Israeli I am ashamed of the extent to which you have now entered into the range of actual denial of the Armenian Genocide, comparable to denials of the Holocaust.”

The question remains: Is aiding Turkey’s denial of a genocidal past something Israel can continue to do? And at what cost? Amos Elon, writing in Haaretz about the “hypocrisy, opportunism, and moral trepidation” of Israeli collusion with Turkey, put it well when he asked: “But where is the boundary between the natural chauvinism of exploitation and the cheap opportunism of hypocrisy? What happens when the survivors of one Holocaust make political deals over the bitter memory of the survivors of another Holocaust?”

***

While political events provide opportunities for moments of reform, change, or introspection, it is not crass opportunism, I believe, that should dictate a change in Israeli policy on the Armenian Genocide. Rather, might this be a time—when the ironies of history have surfaced in the wake of the flotilla episode—for Israel and some Jewish diasporan organizations to rethink the moral concession Israel has made in this ethical arena—not as revenge against Turkey, but as thoughtful reflection on painful truths?

Given Turkey’s relentless campaign to deny the Armenian Genocide and insinuate its own extreme national narrative into democratic societies around the world, Israel’s call for the genocide’s proper and long overdue recognition would have important ethical meaning. It would, among other things, be a redress to genocide denial in general. As scholars have noted, denial is the final stage of genocide. The distinguished Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt has written that “denial of genocide, whether that of the Turks against the Armenians or the Nazis against the Jews … strives to reshape history in order to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators.”

Recognizing the Armenian Genocide would allow Israel to embrace the deeply rooted relationship between Jews and Armenians in the modern age. When Hitler exhorted his military advisers eight days before invading Poland in 1939, “Who today, after all, speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?” he made it clear that he was both inspired by what the Young Turk government had done to the Armenians in 1915 and also noted that because the memory of what had been the most well-reported human rights catastrophe of the first quarter of the 20th century had been washed away, it was easier to commit genocide again.

Hitler learned a good deal from the genocide of the Armenians because Germany was Turkey’s wartime ally, and there was a great deal of documentation from German foreign officers and other German personnel in Turkey at the time. There are, of course, parallels—in bureaucratic organization, killing squad implementation, race ideology, and more—between the two events. Yet what ties Jews to Armenians even more deeply is the powerful role Jews have played in bearing witness to and later defining Turkey’s genocide.

Ambassador Henry Morgenthau’s life remains a crucial part of the history of rescue and resistance during the Armenian Genocide. As U.S. ambassador to Turkey, he had the courage to step outside his prescribed role as ambassador and confront Pashas Talaat and Enver—the two major architects of the plan; he implored both the U.S. and German governments to intercede and stop the mass killing of the Armenian population; and he was a primary force in helping to organize the first major relief campaign for the Armenians in the United States.

In the end Morgenthau would lose his job because of his stance on the Armenians. After leaving Turkey in 1916 and noting that it would remain “a place of unutterable horror” for him, he included in his acclaimed World War I memoir of 1918, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, the first full narrative about the Armenian Genocide in English.

Franz Werfel, the Austrian Jewish novelist who escaped Hitler’s death list by a hair in 1934, wrote the first majornovel about the Armenian Genocide, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, which depicted Armenian resistance to massacre in a small mountain village; it was also a novel that was a specific warning to the Jews of Europe about what might happen to them. The Nazis banned and burned the book in 1934, but the novel would inspire Jewish resistance during the Holocaust and became an important text in the educational curriculum for Jews in Palestine and then Israel.

Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish legal scholar who coined the word genocide, was the first to use the term Armenian Genocide in the early 1940s—noting that it was the precise term for intended group destruction of the Armenians in 1915. He underscored that the concept “genocide” derived from his understanding of the acts committed against the Armenians in 1915 and against the Jews in the 1940s: “Examples of genocide,” he wrote in 1949, “are the destruction of the Armenians in the first World War, the destruction of the Jews in the second World War.” He also noted in his autobiography that his study of the Armenian massacres was a turning point in his life’s work.

In the modern era, the contributions to the Armenian Genocide discourse made by Jewish scholars both in Israel and worldwide has been extraordinary, and a list would be long and include Elie Wiesel, Robert Jay Lifton, Deborah Lipstadt, Robert Melson, Jay Winter, the documentary filmmaker Andrew Goldberg, Israeli scholars Yehuda Bauer, Israel Charny, and Yair Auron, who wrote The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide. Recently, the Center For Jewish History and the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York put on brilliant exhibitions on the lives of both Raphael Lemkin and Henry Morgenthau—in which the Armenian genocide figured significantly.

Given this long-standing record of Jewish engagement and intellectual achievement concerning the Armenian Genocide, and the deep ties between the two cultures—it would seem an organic thing for Israel to finally say: The game is over. The truth of history, the meaning of genocide, the importance of ethical memory is a defining part of Jewish intellectual tradition and identity. And, in the Armenian case, the two genocidal histories commingle in deep and historical ways. As for fear of Turkey? The other 20 countries (including France, Italy, Sweden, Poland, Greece, and Canada) that have passed Armenian Genocide resolutions have witnessed Turkey’s initial diplomatic anger, an ambassador recalled for a short time, and then it’s been back to business as usual—proving that the hysteria passes and life goes on.

The Israeli government could recognize the Armenian Genocide by honoring the words of the great founding genocide scholar Lemkin—a Holocaust survivor who lost 49 members of his own family to the Nazis. In August 1950, Lemkin wrote to a colleague: “Let us not forget that the heat of this month is less unbearable to us than the heat of the ovens of Auschwitz and Dachau and more lenient than the murderous heat in the desert of Aleppo which burned to death the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Christian Armenian victims of genocide in 1915.”

As for Armenians, in the midst of this, they look on with bewilderment, anger, bitterness. For the sizable meaning and historical significance of the genocide committed against them, they feel endlessly embattled in the effort to preserve the truthful memory of what happened to them. It seems to most Armenians that the accurate memory of their history is an ethical necessity, a minimal thing to ask others to affirm in the face of the continued assault on historical truth by Turkey. Israel’s affirmation would be of distinct ethical importance given the common experience the two peoples have shared. For Israel, colluding with a denialism is too painfully ironic.

Peter Balakian, the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities at Colgate University, is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response, among other books.

, Oct 19, 2010

TurkishBoy says:

Oct 24, 2010 at 8:32 PM

I just noticed that this article was written by Peter Balakian – a virulent Armenian nationalist with ingrained hatred of anything Turkish. Balakian is an English professor, not a historian mind you, and he is known to travel around the country telling people how horrible the Turks are. His English degree does not give him any credibility as an expert in history. Even more, his book on the armenian genocide reads more like a work of fiction rather than an actual recount of historical events. For Mr Balakian to be taken seriously, he really needs to tone down the anti-turkish hatred in his speeches and lectures, one of which I had the misfortune to attend couple of years ago. I am sure he would be delighted to see Israel and Turkey go further apart, but I don’t think this would be in the best interest of the people of Israel and the people of Turkey.

October 30, 2010