Proclaiming the Armenian Genocide

Will Not the Judge of All the Earth Not Do Justice?

Proclaiming the Armenian Genocide

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

October 26th, 2007



In tomorrow's Torah portion, when told by God that He was going to destroy
Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham argues with God about killing innocent people
along with the guilty. There was no doubt that the two cities embodied great
evil. The problem was in condemning to death both the bad and the good.
God's rational for telling Abraham is that Abraham will instruct his
descendents "la'asot tzedakah u'mishpat - to do righteousness and justice."
With great chutzpah Abraham does exactly that and says to God: "It is
forbidden to You to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the evil. It
is forbidden to You, Judge of all the earth, not to do justice!" From this
episode our tradition defines several cardinal beliefs: (1) God is a
universal God. (2) God demands justice. (3) There must be justice for all.
Abraham is not arguing for Hebrews, for Jews. He is arguing that justice
must be done even to the pagan, idolatrous cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Judaism proclaims a stance of universal justice.



This concept is the foundation for the concept of crimes against humanity. A
nation, Nazi Germany, can't proclaim that it is legal to kill Jews, gypsies,
homosexuals and illegal to save them, that being punishable by death. There
is one standard, one moral ground. The Nuremburg Trials following World War
II was the first true exercise of one nation or group of nations punishing
another nation for inverting the standard of universal justice. We correctly
use a very particular term to refer to heinous acts of that era- Shoah -
Holocaust, for, besides all other forms of murder, they particularly burnt
bodies of our people in the crematorium. That is what the Hebrew word Shoah
means, a complete burning. I think it a truism that we own the term Shoah,
Holocaust. It applies exclusively to this terrible episode in Jewish
history. I hope that no other people will ever have the experience of
European Jewry. May there be only one Shoah - one Holocaust and never
another in world history.



But we don't own the word genocide. Unfortunately that happened to other
peoples before World War II and continues to occur today, whether it is in
Darfur or elsewhere. While we have said "Never Again!" that is very far from
the truth. With great dismay but to tell the truth, there have been many
genocides in human history. It has been a perpetual struggle between peoples
for power and dominance over one another, to capture their land and its
riches. In doing so they never spared the innocents. The actual term
"genocide" was coined only in 1943 by a Jewish legal scholar from Poland,
Raphael Lemkin. In 1948 the United Nations adopted the modern definition,
listing "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national group." The U.N. Convention became law in 1951 when 20 members
signed it. The United States signed only in 1988, the last of the five
permanent members of the Security Council. But the history of genocide
reaches the earliest reaches of antiquity. The attempt of Pharaoh to destroy
us is but one example. Despite American TV shows, it is not revisionist
history to say that the massacres of American settlers to the Native
Americans are another. So were Kosovo and Rwanda. So is Darfur; maybe even
the fight between Shiite and Sunni. The lust for power and domination find a
ready handmaiden in genocide. No one is clean of this sin. The Crusaders
were bent on doing it to the Muslims and to us. Germany wanted to do it to
other groups as well, the Slavic peoples. Even the Bible commands the
extermination of Amalek and the seven Canaanite peoples, both of which,
however, never occurred. The sin of genocide is born by many.



Reaching back 90 years ago another tragic episode of genocide occurred. It
has haunting parallels to our experience in the Shoah, in that it was well
hidden, the world didn't believe the reports, and that one population was
nearly defenseless against the other. It is not the same because there was
no desire to exterminate the other people based on some theory of
superiority as the Nazis held towards us, nor did they create such extensive
machinery of death. There was a long history of struggle between the groups.
But nevertheless, huge numbers of innocent civilians died, decimating their
population. I refer to the Armenian Genocide of 1915 - 1917. It is center
stage because of the vote of a Committee in the House of Representatives and
its reference to Turkey and tremendously complicated political relationships
involving the U.S., Israel, the war in Iraq and the threat of Iran.
Ironically, we, Jews and Israel, are caught in the middle of a conflict we
didn't make, about a historical event that didn't involve us. Yet we wear
the moral mantle bestowed upon us by our tragic history.



What do we do?



Speak up or be silent?



Be Abraham's faithful children and demand the universal standard of justice?



Or allow political realities to dictate moral stances?



First let us be clear: we have no personal stake in the Armenian - Turkish
struggle. There are virtually no Jews in the region. We have had only a very
small participation in the past 2000 years of Armenian history and had no
involvement in the events of 1915 - 1917. In addition it is a religious
struggle between Moslems and Christians, which again, did not involve us.



Yet we are not separated from Israel, not by us nor by others. Jews and
Israel are inseparable. There are tremendous ties between Israel and Turkey,
military, economic and even possible water projects. It is probable that
Israel flew through Turkish air space to strike the target in Syria that no
one wants to discuss, even the Syrians. As Americans we have a stake in the
consequences of these actions because so much military materials transit
Turkey on the way to Iraq and Afghanistan. The political realities have dire
consequences and there is no easy answer.



Charles Krauthammer in his op-ed
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/18/AR200710180
1579.html> piece on October 19th argued passionately that this is the wrong
time and the wrong place to make this an issue. No one who did it is alive.
Today we can support Armenians by supporting of yet another museum in
Washington, D.C., the Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial. And the
consequences are too severe. He believes that there is too much at stake to
elevate this as a cause celebre`.



Deborah Lipstadt argued in a piece
<http://lipstadt.blogspot.com/2007/09/armenian-genocide-op-ed-by-deborah.htm
l> for the New York Jewish Week of September 21st, that denial is not an
option. Germany was not allowed to deny the Holocaust, the genocide of our
people and of others. She cogently presents the thought that denial of a
genocide that has been so thoroughly documented and presented by objective
scholars "seeks to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators."



The history of this area of the world is long and complicated. The current
politics of is even more so. And we do not have a crystal ball to reveal
what conflagration will erupt and who will need whom and how so either in
the near future or the more distant one.



My answer lies in the prophetic charge to be a Jew means to be an "Or
LaGoyim" - "A light to the nations." Coming from two different places the
late preeminent philosopher from within Conservative Judaism, Dr. Abraham
Heschel, and Eli Wiesel, the voice of the Holocaust, both describe the role
of the Jew to be a moral conscience to the world. It is not that we have
power to physically step in to situations and right the wrongs, with the
hubris that we absolutely know which is which. Yet Torah, Rabbinic wisdom,
and the historical record give us that voice. It is the same voice with
which Abraham spoke to God. It is the same voice by which, according to
tradition, Moses proclaimed the Ten Commandments. It is the voice of the
dead of the Shoah.



That voice condemns the genocide of the Armenian people by the Turks in the
years 1915-1917 and endorses the stand of ADL in supporting House Resolution
106. It is clear that the resolution does not call for any action. It just
sets straight the historical record. It rights a wrong to the memory of the
Armenian dead that should not by sullied by silence. I try to think what
would want from the world if the tables were turned and we were in their
place and they were in ours. We have spared not money nor time nor energy to
elevate to God and man that which was perpetrated upon us. We have
stimulated a literature, created the media and built countless museums. Each
life is equal before Abraham's God who is the God of all. Let the record of
these of God's children be set straight.



No matter how distant it may seem nor how improbable as we look at daily
events, yet I still pray: May the time come quickly when man's inhumanity to
man will end and we will live in peace. May there by no more Shoahs, no more
Rwandas, no more Kosovos, no more Darfurs. No more genocides. No more!




Amen.