He told the truth about old hatred. Will he defeat the new, Iranian hatred?
First, the good news. President Biden is the first American president to recognize the Armenian genocide for what it was: a genocide. What every American president going all the way back to FDR should have done, Biden did.
Not that Biden was the first American leader to see the truth. That distinction belongs to the American ambassador to Turkey during WW I, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., whose vivid and shocking reports back to Washington spurred massive aid from these shores to the persecuted Armenians.
But then the moral outrage and the moral response went dry.
The term and concept “genocide” was devised in 1944. President Roosevelt, indifferent to the genocide happening right before his eyes —the Holocaust — was not going to pick up on the new term and apply it to the Armenians. Shame on Roosevelt and shame on every American president since, particularly Nixon, Clinton and Trump, on whose watches the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and Myanmar, respectively, unfolded.
President Biden has finally ended the shameful American presidential response to the Armenian genocide.
Our country’s response has oscillated between silence and obfuscation, whether out of indifference or misplaced trust that affirmative American diplomacy with Turkey could grow against the background of a monstrous denial of the truth — the denial of the Armenian genocide by America and Turkey alike.
Israel, incidentally, fell prey to the same moral failing, and what did Israel get for it? The same thing that America got for it: an acid relationship with Turkey.
Some major American Jewish organizations also fell prey to the same moral failing. The ADL and the American Jewish Committee now sharply criticize those who buckled to pressure by Turkey, sacrificing the truth about the Armenian genocide. But the ADL and AJC themselves were the bucklers and the sacrificers of truth. The ADL even fired one of its Boston officials for stating that the ADL should recognize the Armenian genocide.
These two organizations have changed. We salute them for this, though perhaps a bit of humility should supplant their bitter criticism of those whose mistaken position on the Armenian genocide is precisely the same position they themselves held for many years.
Biden said: The truth must prevail, come what may. We salute him for this.
“Each year on this day,” Biden said on the 106th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian genocide, “we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring.
“And we remember so that we remain ever vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.”
How has Turkey reacted to Biden’s groundbreaking recognition? With its usual truth-denials and denunications, but not much else.
Particularly rich this time is Turkey’s claim that there could not have been an Armenian genocide because, unlike the Holocaust, the Armenian atrocities during WW I were not adjudicated in a court of law. The Holocaust was adjudicated at the Nuremberg trials in 1947; ergo, there was a Holocaust. The Armenian atrocities were never adjudicated; ergo, there was no genocide.
We call this Turkish claim particularly rich because it has the historical sequence exactly backwards. Because there was a Holocaust — indisputable — therefore there were Nuremberg trials. Nuremberg did not establish the Holocaust, it merely established the specific crimes of the worst perpetrators of the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a given before the trials began (likewise, for the subsequent Nazi trials).
Because there was an Armenian genocide, therefore there should have been trials of the perpetrators, but there weren’t because no international law existed to govern them. More to the point, the Ottoman attempt to try a few perpetrators of the Armenian genocide was undermined by the Turkish national movement. Turkey complains that no international court existed to establish the Armenian genocide, but its first leaders did their best to prevent such a court, or a similar one, from coming into being.
It all comes down to one word: truth. The Armenian genocide happened. That is a truth.
Unprecedented and praiseworthy though Biden’s acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide is, it is apparently easier for him to acknowledge that truth — 106 years old — than it is to acknowledge another truth. In acknowledging the 106-year-old truth, Biden said: “And we remember so that we remain ever vigilant against the corrosive influence of hate in all its forms.”
The Islamic Republic of Iran hates Israel. That is a truth.
Iran denounces the very existence of Israel repeatedly. That is a truth.
Iran seeks to acquire a nuclear weapon and a ballistic missile capable of carrying it in order to destroy Israel. That is a truth.
Iran requires vigilance. That is a truth.
Iran’s influence around the world — particularly in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza — is corrosive. That is a truth.
Countless people in those countries have died due to the corrosive hatred by Iran. That is a truth.
Biden states that he wants to return to the 2015 nuclear deal that he helped negotiate with Iran. That is a truth. The 2015 deal only delayed, but did not prohibit, Iran’s efforts to produce a nuclear weapon. That is a truth.
Iran demands that the US lift its sanctions on Iran even before talking about reestablishing the 2015 nuclear deal. That is a truth.
Hitler openly, extensively and utterly expressed his hatred of Jews before the Nazi Holocaust. That is a truth. The Ottoman rulers less openly but equally clearly expressed their utter hatred of the Armenians. That is a truth.
Iran openly, extensively and utterly expresses its hatred of Jewish Israelis, of the “Zionist entity,” of “Little Satan.” That is a truth.
Will President Biden acknowledge that truth?
The truth of today?
Biden pledged to “recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring.”
The time to recommit ourselves — genuinely, effectively, truthfully, unambiguously — is now, not 106 years from now.
Current genocides of the Rohingya on the border of Myanmar and the Uighurs in China have so far benefitted from little if any effective action by the US. That is a truth.
It would be morally shameful and tactically more dangerous than necessary if the only real action against Iran’s genocidal intentions came from Israel.
We hope President Biden’s watershed recognition of the Armenian genocide will lead him to real action against Iran’s nuclear designs, not to a sterile agreement with a messianic regime that, whatever the agreement’s clauses, will be impossible to monitor and enforce.
Say what you want about Trump’s cancellation of the 2015 nuclear deal, Trump’s punishing sanctions on Iran retarded its weapons program. Trump did something significant. If Biden has a better idea how to act against Iran, let him implement it. But an “agreement?” Dictators do not keep agreements.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
