By David Boyajian
“It’s all about the Benjamins [$100 bills], baby,” Tweeted Congresswoman Ilhan Omar in February. She was accusing super-wealthy AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) of bribing Congress into supporting Israel.
AIPAC, ADL (Anti-Defamation League), AJC (American Jewish Committee), B’nai B’rith, and Congress condemned Omar as anti-Jewish.
2,153 persons at JewsWithIlhan.org, though, defended her.
AIPAC can’t legally donate to politicians. Its Congressional Club members, however, must do so. AIPAC members ‘bundle’ individual political contributions. Some AIPAC officials head political action committees (PACs) which back candidates. And an AIPAC affiliate flies Congresspersons to Israel.
After Israel, Jewish organizations’ imperative is the Holocaust.
They’ve steered Holocaust legislation — regarding commemorations, education, monuments, museums, reparations, and war crimes — through Congress, state and foreign legislatures, and the U.N.
America has special Holocaust and Anti-Semitism envoys.
Diminishing/denying the Holocaust is a crime in many European countries.
Yet leading Jewish organizations have long diminished/denied the 1915–23 genocide Turkey committed against 1.5 million Christian Armenians on their ancient homeland.
Also, AIPAC, ADL, AJC, B’nai B’rith, and JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security of America) have colluded with Turkey to defeat Armenian Genocide resolutions in Congress. Demanding Holocaust legislation while thwarting recognition of another genocide is hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy.
“The Holocaust,” says Israeli journalist Yossi Melman, is often “an instrument of policy, not a moral compass.”
Turkish-Israeli-American Jewish collusion
Beginning in or before the 1980s, Turkey sought help against critics, including Armenian and Greek Americans, of its human rights abuses. Turkey’s then-ally Israel enlisted Jewish American organizations into defending Turkey. Jewish/Israeli/Turkish media have penned millions of words confirming this.
JINSA’s Yola Habif Johnston confessed in 2006 that AIPAC, AJC, B’nai B’rith, and her organization “have been working with the Turks” for more than 15 years. “The Jewish lobby has quite actively supported Turkey to prevent the so-called Armenian genocide resolution from passing.” ADL was similarly guilty.
In 2007–8, Massachusetts’ Armenian Americans confronted the ADL. Hundreds of principled Jewish and non-Jewish activists, scholars, journalists, and organizations throughout America and internationally approved of the Armenian-led campaign.
Arlington, Bedford, Belmont, Lexington, Medford, Needham, Newburyport, Newton, Northampton, Peabody, Somerville, Watertown, Westwood, and the Mass. Municipal Assoc. expelled ADL’s phony No-Place-for-Hate program.
Numerous Jews and Israelis have sympathized with Armenians more than have many Christians. Though Israel won’t acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, the Knesset’s Education Committee wants it to.
Three years ago, ADL finally recognized the Armenian Genocide but merely on a “blog.” And its pledge to boost Armenian resolutions remains unfulfilled. Too little, too late anyway. The ADL is certainly no civil/human rights group.
For example, in 1993-2002 the ADL settled two lawsuits and paid compensation to San Francisco after — among innumerable illegalities — spying on thousands of civil rights, labor, progressive, Democratic, Black, Latino, Arab, Asian, Jewish, anti-Apartheid, and LGBT organizations and individuals.
More genocide hypocrisy
In Turkey’s propaganda film Blonde Bride, AJC Director Barry Jacobs illogically claimed the Armenian massacres couldn’t be genocide since the Holocaust was “unique.” Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin, however, coined the word ‘genocide’ in 1944 and cited the Armenian massacres as a seminal genocide.
Jacobs once cruelly boasted that AJC’s stance on the Armenian Genocide was “bs.” AJC, he vowed, “will be Turkey’s friends officially in Congress.”
“Official” AJC-Turkish collusion probably violates the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
AJC board member and Maryland State Senator Cheryl Kagan once maliciously compared an Armenian Genocide resolution to designating a state cat.
According to Israeli Pres. Shimon Peres, AJC Executive Director David Harris is Jews’ “foreign minister.” Harris and AJC are allies of Azerbaijan (Turkey’s corrupt, repressive ally) and its Armenian-Genocide-denying tyrant, Pres. Ilham Aliyev.
AJC’s “Democratic values for all” motto rings hollow, especially as Harris proudly accepted the tyrant’s coveted “Order of Friendship” award.
Azerbaijan’s “lobby in the U.S.,” declared Aliyev, “is the Jewish community.”
Indeed, Boston-based Rasky Partners officially represents Aliyev’s brutal regime. CEO Larry Rasky is an ADL board member/honoree and Joe Biden adviser/fundraiser. Interestingly, Rasky’s friend, workmate, and fellow ADL board member Peter Meade, a Catholic, loudly opposed Boston’s Armenian Heritage Park.
Shamefully, many Jewish writers worldwide have been gratuitously slandering Armenian Americans and Armenia, all because Israel buys oil from and sells billions in weapons to Azerbaijan, Armenia’s adversary.
Only in 2015 did AJC say it would support U.S. acknowledgment of the Genocide. AJC’s promise remains unfulfilled. Too little, way too late.
AIPAC, revealed Turkish journalist Sedat Sertoğlu, once threatened House Speaker Dennis Hastert he’d lose “Jewish votes” if an Armenian Genocide resolution succeeded. Shimon Peres pushed President Clinton into stopping the resolution. Scholar Israel Charny blasted Peres: You’ve crossed “a moral boundary no Jew … should trespass … [your] denial of the Armenian Genocide [is] comparable to denials of the Holocaust.”
Investigations needed
Though Jewish groups aren’t solely at fault, their genocide hypocrisy and clout make them uniquely blameworthy.
Jewish organizations believe Holocaust diminishment/denial is anti-Semitism and, hence, “hate.” When those organizations diminish/deny the Armenian Genocide, are they not anti-Christian-Armenian “hate” groups?
Israeli-Turkish relations have soured. Jewish groups sold their souls for nothing.
Their opportunity to apologize, open their Turkish-related archives, and make reparations is gone.
Also gone is their credibility on civil/human rights and genocides.
Congress and state legislatures must now investigate and subpoena these two-faced organizations.
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This article was originally published in such non-Armenian media as ForeignPolicyJournal.com and CounterCurrents.org. Much of the author’s work can be found at www.Armeniapedia.org/wiki/David_Boyajian.
7 comments
Thank you so much for writing this article–as an Armenian-American who grew up in city with a large Jewish population–I can definitely see where the hypocrisy comes into play. While it does not in anyway mean that all Jewish people are hypocrites (I have many Jewish friends that whole heartedly accept and recognize the Armenian Genocide), there is still a disconnect.
I actually witnessed it first-hand when I was a young high schooler. I attended a private Catholic all girls high-school after graduating from an Armenian school that I attended since Montessori. Of course for me the Genocide was not only an important event in our history but I had been taught by my teachers and community to make sure to educate others about it. Because of this, I was able to teach my entire high school about the Armenian Genocide and was asked to attend a Holocaust and Genocide Forum conducted at one of the local universities in my city. While there, there was a Holocaust survivor who told us his story and then began to list the similarities of all other Genocides that happened after the Holocaust. I sat there and listened patiently, thinking that this educated professor and survivor would surely mention the impact of the Armenian Genocide on the Holocaust. But to my great disappointment he did not.
When the forum opened for Q&A, I knew that it was my duty to my culture and to my family that did not survive the genocide to make sure that they were not forgotten. I got up in front of about 100 other fellow students from schools around the city and first thanked the professor for sharing his story, but also relayed that I understood his story on a personal level and that I had lost family members to the 20th Century’s first Genocide, the Armenian Genocide. I expressed that while still unrecognized we lost 1.5 innocent lives in the Genocide and that Hitler even mentioned during a speech in Poland that
“After all who remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?” — Of course this very educated Jewish man replied to me in great remorse for “forgetting” to mention the Armenian Genocide and he came up to me a young high schooler, and took my hands in his and asked for my forgiveness.
While I appreciated his act of remorse, he omission of the Armenian Genocide ignited in me the thought that maybe the Jewish people want to make sure that their Holocaust is remembered as the only greatest atrocity of that time. While this is certainly not at all a contest of whose genocide was worse-but, in my mind the questions arose of: Why did he mention Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia, etc and forget the one that happened before any of the others? Why forget the one that set the tone for the rest? Why forget the one that should have been recognized?
As a young teenager, this made such a huge impact on me and made me think that, shouldn’t we band together and support each other? Both communities have suffered great tragedies and have lost so much–shouldn’t we make sure this never happens again instead of trying to sabotage the recognition of one?
Thank you again for bringing to light their hypocrisy and I hope that one day all the nations that have suffered any injustices should support one another, since they all share the same pain of losing their homelands and loved ones.
Along with the strength of political relations, close friendships between the people of Israel and Azerbaijan increase the importance of this partnership. It is always observed that the 20,000 Jewish community living in Azerbaijan and the 70,000 Azerbaijani community living in Israel have demonstrated unity in various issues.
Armenian nation widely benefits from Dashnaksutyun and Asala services for long years. I guess, everyone knows in what kind of activities members of these organizations are engaged in. This is the way how armenians solve their political problems
Armenian lobby wants to raise the scale of fake “Armenian genocide” recognition to the level of Holocaust recognition. However, Holocaust is proven history, while the “Armenian genocide” is an unproved claim.
I see that the Azeri & Turkish trolls have arrived. We know about the Turkic-Israeli-Jewish axis to demonize the Armenians and Artsakh. The long arm of denial, deflection, distortion continues.
Commenters Fuad, Kanan, and Lala reside in a parallel where everything is opposite of reality. In their parallel world they’d agree the sun rises in the west, the color of water is white, the moon is made of turkish delight, and Turks descend from Trojans… if Turkey says so.
Marcus, you are typical armenian troll. Intstead of answer, you are writing stupid things. Unlike Armenia, Azerbaijan had never made ethnical cleasing towards other nationalities including jews.