Lobbies, genocide and fickle friends
From Ian Williams
Middle East International 18 March
Thou shalt not kill/ But need’st not strive/ Officiously to keep alive, the Victorian poet modernised the Sixth Commandment. The Israel lobby seems to have used his revised version in dealing with the ‘Armenian Genocide’ resolution in the House Foreign Relations Committee which passed 23-22 on 4 March, causing the recall of the Turkish ambassador to the US and jeopardising the recently concluded Turkey-Armenia accord. The affair said much about the power of lobbies in Washington, the cynicism of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the irrationality of some national phobias.
The Turkish lobby is growing in the US. Turkish-American organisations have increased in number and roped in the pan-Turkic commonwealth, bringing support from Uighur, Kazakh, Uzbek, Azeri and other groups. Turkey has also been able to summon discreet assistance from military/security lobbies because of its pivotal role in NATO. However, its most substantial weapon has always been the ability to call on AIPAC, whose concern for Israel has outweighed human rights considerations. That did not work this time.
The Armenians, on the other hand, can rely on their own well-heeled, well-established lobby based on their longstanding and successful community, and have often been able to seek help from the Greek lobby – rarely loath to tilt at Turkey – and, of course, from human rights groups.
One had hoped for a more sophisticated reaction from Erdoğan’s government, given the strenuous efforts it has made at rapprochement with the existing Armenian state. It was, after all, the Ottoman Empire, not the Turkish Republic, that undoubtedly carried out mass killings in the old Armenian heartland. Neither the Soviet Union nor the French Republic took the rap for crimes committed under their monarchies, and Ankara carefully expunged many of the Ottoman links in its reinvention of Turkishness. Indeed, reportedly, many of the killings were actually carried out by ‘Mountain Turks’, or Kurds.
The use of the term ‘genocide’ also tends to cloud issues. Mass murder is reprehensible, whether carried out in the name of ethnic, religious, class or any other nomenclature, and sterile arguments about whether the massacres of Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia – and Armenia – count as genocide reduce mass murder to small print for the sake of a convenient handle. It is never completely clear: any Balkan Muslim who lived in Belgrade was fairly safe, as similarly was any Armenian in Constantinople.
In any case, support for Turkey on the issue has long been an embarrassment to pro-Israel representatives. Israel has not stinted in its evocation of genocide, yet in the past, its supporters have lobbied for votes on Turkey’s behalf. This time, despite approaches from the Turks, they decided not to intervene and allowed a free vote.
It would be nice to think that AIPAC had acquired a conscience. However, this is almost certainly another case of hubris. There is little doubt that this was conceived as a warning to Ankara – on a par with humiliating the Turkish ambassador to Israel (MEI II/6 p 18). It is inept and clumsy, but then so is the Israeli government. It sends out such conflicting signals you can almost forgive the lobbyists.
To be fair, while some of the legislators might have wanted to ‘punish‘ Turkey for Erdoğan’s presumption, others welcomed an opportunity to vote with their consciences. They had been opposing the resolutions not because they thought Armenians had not been massacred, but because they had been told it was good for Israel. Yet it was always difficult to base support for Israel on genocide but disclaim Armenian invocations of it, not least since the Armenians, like most such ethnic lobbies, followed the AIPAC blueprint in campaigning.
Rep Tom Lantos and the Anti-Discrimination League (ADL) publicly wrestled with their consciences over the contradictions between combating genocide and helping Israel. Abe Foxman of the ADL told the Jewish weekly Forward: “No Armenian lives are under threat today or in danger. Israel is under threat and in danger, and a relationship between Israel and Turkey is vital and critical, so yeah, I have to weigh [that].”
In the end, however, Israel needs Turkey more than vice versa. Ankara should forget about the resolution, even if it remembers the fickleness of its expedient friends.
Some might see paranoia in invoking the Israel lobby in this context. For those who have not read AIPAC’s own boasts about its effectiveness, it is worth remembering its successful pressure 20 years ago on a dozen senators to ‘unsign’ Bob Dole’s Senate Resolution on the 75th anniversary of the Armenian massacres. That so riled him that he came out batting alongside Baker and Bush against the loan guarantees that Yitzhak Shamir wanted to build settlements.
The previous big battle of the lobbies, often forgotten, was Ronald Reagan’s victory over AIPAC in selling early-warning planes to the Saudis. He marshalled the military-industrial complex and the oil lobby against AIPAC.
If well-heeled lobbies can overcome public opinion on vital issues like healthcare, gun control or banking reform, we should not be surprised that the lobbies predominate on foreign-policy issues on which the electorate range from neutral to ignorant. It is small comfort that it is not only the Middle East – just think of the US’ Cuba policy, which flies in the face of its allies, the electorate and now even most of the Cuban-American exiles. It’s no way to run an empire.
Showing posts with label Armenian Genocide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Armenian Genocide. Show all posts
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Thursday, October 18, 2007
You can't Pick and Chose Human Rights
In this week's Tribune
Heating up in Absurdistan
Last week the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee voted to condemn the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915, sparking a powder train of diplomatic consequences.
It is sometimes argued that since Armenians in Istanbul, were untouched it could not have been genocide. That is as dubiously relevant as survival rates of German Jews compared with Polish Jewish, or the relative immunity of Bosniaks in Belgrade as their compatriots were slaughtered back home.
However rationality flies out of the window on these massacres over eight decades ago. Irrefutably, the Ottoman government conducted massacres and ethnic cleansings of Armenians on a scale that certainly counts as genocide compared with other more recent killings so termed, from East Timor to Darfur.
Nonetheless, European legal moves to penalize people who question that there was an Armenian genocide, or indeed the Holocaust, are an abuse of freedom of expression and dangerous precedent., almost as dangerous as the Turkish practice of arresting writers who confirm that it happened.
Abhorrent though some of Leninist left iare when they become apologists for mass murder by Milosevic in Bosnia and Kosovo, I would never call for the arrest of Fidel Castro or Tariq Ali and his likeminded comrades for ignoring the continual ooze of charnel pits being exhumed across the Balkans.
History should never be left to Leninists or legislators, let alone the police. Indeed, almost as puzzling as the irrational left canonization of Milosevic, the murderous thug, election-fixer, black-marketeer and peculator of public property is the present Turkish defence or denial of the deeds of the Ottoman sultanate.
Ataturk’s revolution was, after all, against the legacy of the Sultans. Indeed, the pre-war Ottoman state was overtly multi-ethnic and, in one of those historical ironies, the most active persecutors of the Armenians were actually Kurds, whose very existence is now denied by Turkish nationalists, who are being barely restrained by the US from crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan to whack Turkish Kurd insurgents based there.
The full House of Representatives is unlikely to adopt the resolution, because both Bush and the Israel Lobby want to support Turkey, but that did not stop Ankara from recalling its Ambassador and threatening to withdraw its logistical cooperation with the Coalition forces in Iraq. That would not be bad thing in itself, but it would be rash to assume that that was the motive behind the resolution.
In fact, the Turkish government’s reaction rather calls into question the Turkish government’s understanding of democracy and freedom of speech in other countries, with disturbing implications for its own domestic application of democracy.
But then, US democracy all too often resembles government of the lobbies, for the lobbies, by the lobbies. The Armenian lobby is powerful in Washington, and carries in its train human rights activists, not least those who take the concept of “never again,” seriously.
Although the Greek Lobby is, predictably, weighing in behind the Armenians, the Turkish Lobby has a more redoubtable champion in the Israel Lobby, whose diehard section has a “never before or again” concept: that victimhood in genocide is not only a uniquely Jewish, but also a uniquely Israeli, property. Such people, for example, argued furiously in the early days of the US Holocaust Museum against recognizing the Roma genocide as equivalent to “their own.”
Israel’s only ally in the region is Turkey, and one of the things that Israel offers in return its lobbying power in Washington. As far back as 1990 AIPAC alienated Senator Bob Dole “lending” Turkey a dozen senators to withdraw the votes they had pledged for his resolution to commemorate the 75 Anniversary of the genocide.
The affair also highlights the current argument about the power of the Israel lobby and the dangers of assuming that it is the Jewish Lobby. Most American Jews are understandably deeply concerned about human rights and genocidal killings. Those, who, for example, recently had Archbishop Desmond Tutu disinvited from a Montana University because the hero of the anti-Apartheid struggle is deemed anti-Israel and therefore anti-Semitic, are operating on different standards - “another country, right or wrong.”
If Israel needs the strategic alliance with Turkey (and more precisely with the Turkish military) then for the Lobby, principles human rights, genocide, American self interest, can all go out the window as far as they are concerned.
So where does all this lead? Even though the Ottoman State killed millions of Armenians, the modern Turkish state should indeed apologise, not because it was responsible, but because it has foolishly tried to defend the indefensible for so many years.
But on a broader scale, it reinforces the essential point that would-be defenders of human rights should condemn the deed, and not try to cherry pick the perpetrators. We should condemn mass murder, or indeed small and medium sized murder, no matter what cause the perpetrators invoked in committing their crimes.
But sadly, we will continue to see condemnations of our chosen enemy’s violations, and defence, or at best silence about “our side.” Pro-Israelis will be as blind to Palestinian suffering as Republicans were to Central American massacres. “Anti-imperialists” will defend Mugabe or Castro, while fervently condemning the PATRIOT Act. Human rights should be a principle in themselves, not an expedient weapon with which to beat our enemies.
Heating up in Absurdistan
Last week the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee voted to condemn the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915, sparking a powder train of diplomatic consequences.
It is sometimes argued that since Armenians in Istanbul, were untouched it could not have been genocide. That is as dubiously relevant as survival rates of German Jews compared with Polish Jewish, or the relative immunity of Bosniaks in Belgrade as their compatriots were slaughtered back home.
However rationality flies out of the window on these massacres over eight decades ago. Irrefutably, the Ottoman government conducted massacres and ethnic cleansings of Armenians on a scale that certainly counts as genocide compared with other more recent killings so termed, from East Timor to Darfur.
Nonetheless, European legal moves to penalize people who question that there was an Armenian genocide, or indeed the Holocaust, are an abuse of freedom of expression and dangerous precedent., almost as dangerous as the Turkish practice of arresting writers who confirm that it happened.
Abhorrent though some of Leninist left iare when they become apologists for mass murder by Milosevic in Bosnia and Kosovo, I would never call for the arrest of Fidel Castro or Tariq Ali and his likeminded comrades for ignoring the continual ooze of charnel pits being exhumed across the Balkans.
History should never be left to Leninists or legislators, let alone the police. Indeed, almost as puzzling as the irrational left canonization of Milosevic, the murderous thug, election-fixer, black-marketeer and peculator of public property is the present Turkish defence or denial of the deeds of the Ottoman sultanate.
Ataturk’s revolution was, after all, against the legacy of the Sultans. Indeed, the pre-war Ottoman state was overtly multi-ethnic and, in one of those historical ironies, the most active persecutors of the Armenians were actually Kurds, whose very existence is now denied by Turkish nationalists, who are being barely restrained by the US from crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan to whack Turkish Kurd insurgents based there.
The full House of Representatives is unlikely to adopt the resolution, because both Bush and the Israel Lobby want to support Turkey, but that did not stop Ankara from recalling its Ambassador and threatening to withdraw its logistical cooperation with the Coalition forces in Iraq. That would not be bad thing in itself, but it would be rash to assume that that was the motive behind the resolution.
In fact, the Turkish government’s reaction rather calls into question the Turkish government’s understanding of democracy and freedom of speech in other countries, with disturbing implications for its own domestic application of democracy.
But then, US democracy all too often resembles government of the lobbies, for the lobbies, by the lobbies. The Armenian lobby is powerful in Washington, and carries in its train human rights activists, not least those who take the concept of “never again,” seriously.
Although the Greek Lobby is, predictably, weighing in behind the Armenians, the Turkish Lobby has a more redoubtable champion in the Israel Lobby, whose diehard section has a “never before or again” concept: that victimhood in genocide is not only a uniquely Jewish, but also a uniquely Israeli, property. Such people, for example, argued furiously in the early days of the US Holocaust Museum against recognizing the Roma genocide as equivalent to “their own.”
Israel’s only ally in the region is Turkey, and one of the things that Israel offers in return its lobbying power in Washington. As far back as 1990 AIPAC alienated Senator Bob Dole “lending” Turkey a dozen senators to withdraw the votes they had pledged for his resolution to commemorate the 75 Anniversary of the genocide.
The affair also highlights the current argument about the power of the Israel lobby and the dangers of assuming that it is the Jewish Lobby. Most American Jews are understandably deeply concerned about human rights and genocidal killings. Those, who, for example, recently had Archbishop Desmond Tutu disinvited from a Montana University because the hero of the anti-Apartheid struggle is deemed anti-Israel and therefore anti-Semitic, are operating on different standards - “another country, right or wrong.”
If Israel needs the strategic alliance with Turkey (and more precisely with the Turkish military) then for the Lobby, principles human rights, genocide, American self interest, can all go out the window as far as they are concerned.
So where does all this lead? Even though the Ottoman State killed millions of Armenians, the modern Turkish state should indeed apologise, not because it was responsible, but because it has foolishly tried to defend the indefensible for so many years.
But on a broader scale, it reinforces the essential point that would-be defenders of human rights should condemn the deed, and not try to cherry pick the perpetrators. We should condemn mass murder, or indeed small and medium sized murder, no matter what cause the perpetrators invoked in committing their crimes.
But sadly, we will continue to see condemnations of our chosen enemy’s violations, and defence, or at best silence about “our side.” Pro-Israelis will be as blind to Palestinian suffering as Republicans were to Central American massacres. “Anti-imperialists” will defend Mugabe or Castro, while fervently condemning the PATRIOT Act. Human rights should be a principle in themselves, not an expedient weapon with which to beat our enemies.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Genocide or Mass Murder?
My latest Comment is Free in the Guardian just up is on the increasing distractions of genocide from the core principle. Mass Murder Wrong, whatever you call it!
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Holocaust History and the Law
History: the legalised version
click for the Guardian Comment is Free link - and the remarkably sane comments..
Legislating against scepticism is a slippery slope.
February 26, 2007
"What is truth" is not a question for politicians - they are the worst equipped to recognise it. Armenian genocides, the Holocaust, do not need politicians to sort out what happened. Politicians just need to make sure it does not happen again.
In 1897, the Indiana legislature passed a remarkably incoherent bill establishing that pi was equal to 3.2 or 4 or even 3.23. But not 3.142, etc, ad infinitum. It was stalled in the state senate, after being referred, in what one hopes was a sense of merriment, to the Committee on Temperance.
We should be lucky they were not Biblical literalists of the kind who keep trying to usher Darwin out of the schools and smuggle creationism in the front door. The Book of Kings clearly mandates that pi is three. If the creationists were only to travel in aircraft and cars designed on that basis, there would be an interesting demonstration of Darwin in action. It would do wonders for the gene pool.
As Mark Twain once said: "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself ..." Twain, who was never an American parochialist, couldn't have intended to refer simply to American legislators.
Despite the Patriot Act, the US is (temporarily) ahead because of First Amendment fundamentalisms, even if honoured in the breach more than the observance, as sundry Palestinians who have espoused unpopular causes can testify. Without such protections, Twain's idiots are going through Aye lobbies across Europe to put small print in the history books.
Almost as bad as legislative poking around in test tubes are lawmakers making history. For example, there were indeed massacres of Armenians at the end of the Ottoman era, and from what I have seen of the evidence, there is strong evidence that Istanbul officially condoned and probably conducted the operations. But I think the idea that France should make scepticism about it illegal is every bit as inane as Turkey making it illegal to say that it happened.
Of course it happened, and the cleverest thing the Turks could do is to say, "Hey, it happened under the Sultans. But we aren't responsible. We've had a revolution, we got rid of the Sultan, dissolved his harem, and we're really sorry for anything the corrupt old polygamist and his crowd got up to." It may not be entirely true of course: the military that removed the Sultan were involved in those operations, but it would show willing.
Contemporary politics rarely provides a good platform from which to solidify retrospection. Indeed, the Armenian genocide became tangentially involved with the Jewish Holocaust in 1990 when Senate Leader Bob Dole moved a resolution to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Armenian genocide.
Originally Dole had a clear majority in support but then the Israel lobby "lent" a dozen or so senators to the Turkish lobby, to cement Israel's alliance with Ankara. When they withdrew their votes, without making Galileo-like disclaimers, like "they are still dead", it made Bob Dole a strong opponent of loan guarantees to build Israeli settlements, and still has repercussions as various presidential candidates adjust their positions.
As governor of Texas, George Bush took McCain to task for not supporting, but is now, as president, fighting shy of supporting similar measures for fear of Turkish displeasure. He does not have many friends left internationally, after all.
And this time around, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has espoused the cause, which, apart from ethical qualms, is why the Turks are having difficulty enlisting pro-Israeli groups to fight their fight. Indeed, the wonder is that they ever succeeded.
Almost as contentious across Europe is the actual Jewish (and Roma and gay) Holocaust. There should be no exceptions to legislating history. The writers, like David Irving, who have been imprisoned for "Holocaust" denial, are not nice people. But to imprison them for expressing views on a historical matter is on a par with rounding up the Flat Earth Society and sending them down. It is not just bad history: it is bad politics. Imprisoning and persecuting them makes them martyrs and attracts a whole world of wackos to think that if governments want to silence them, then there must be something behind it. And it provides cover for not doing anything about contemporary and future mass murders.
One could understand feeling that action is necessary for someone who says: "The Holocaust did happen - and a shame it did not finish the job," or similar noxious sentiments that could incite. But for someone who denies it, surely care in the community is the better road? We do not send everyone who thinks they are Napoleon to St Helena, do we?
How do we approach the legislator who wants to penalise scepticism about the Gulags under Stalin, or the famines under both him and Mao? Will the French pass a resolution apologising for their behaviour in Algeria and making apologetics for it illegal?
How about legislation penalising glorification of mass bombings of civilians during the second world war? It is a slippery slope. The Tonkin Gulf incident or George Bush's Vietnam war record could be voted into veracity, along with Iraqi WMDs and Saddam Hussein's part in 9/11.
No, it may be irritating when idiots indulge in history, but it is disastrous when congressmen and their overseas colleagues indulge.
click for the Guardian Comment is Free link - and the remarkably sane comments..
Legislating against scepticism is a slippery slope.
February 26, 2007
"What is truth" is not a question for politicians - they are the worst equipped to recognise it. Armenian genocides, the Holocaust, do not need politicians to sort out what happened. Politicians just need to make sure it does not happen again.
In 1897, the Indiana legislature passed a remarkably incoherent bill establishing that pi was equal to 3.2 or 4 or even 3.23. But not 3.142, etc, ad infinitum. It was stalled in the state senate, after being referred, in what one hopes was a sense of merriment, to the Committee on Temperance.
We should be lucky they were not Biblical literalists of the kind who keep trying to usher Darwin out of the schools and smuggle creationism in the front door. The Book of Kings clearly mandates that pi is three. If the creationists were only to travel in aircraft and cars designed on that basis, there would be an interesting demonstration of Darwin in action. It would do wonders for the gene pool.
As Mark Twain once said: "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself ..." Twain, who was never an American parochialist, couldn't have intended to refer simply to American legislators.
Despite the Patriot Act, the US is (temporarily) ahead because of First Amendment fundamentalisms, even if honoured in the breach more than the observance, as sundry Palestinians who have espoused unpopular causes can testify. Without such protections, Twain's idiots are going through Aye lobbies across Europe to put small print in the history books.
Almost as bad as legislative poking around in test tubes are lawmakers making history. For example, there were indeed massacres of Armenians at the end of the Ottoman era, and from what I have seen of the evidence, there is strong evidence that Istanbul officially condoned and probably conducted the operations. But I think the idea that France should make scepticism about it illegal is every bit as inane as Turkey making it illegal to say that it happened.
Of course it happened, and the cleverest thing the Turks could do is to say, "Hey, it happened under the Sultans. But we aren't responsible. We've had a revolution, we got rid of the Sultan, dissolved his harem, and we're really sorry for anything the corrupt old polygamist and his crowd got up to." It may not be entirely true of course: the military that removed the Sultan were involved in those operations, but it would show willing.
Contemporary politics rarely provides a good platform from which to solidify retrospection. Indeed, the Armenian genocide became tangentially involved with the Jewish Holocaust in 1990 when Senate Leader Bob Dole moved a resolution to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Armenian genocide.
Originally Dole had a clear majority in support but then the Israel lobby "lent" a dozen or so senators to the Turkish lobby, to cement Israel's alliance with Ankara. When they withdrew their votes, without making Galileo-like disclaimers, like "they are still dead", it made Bob Dole a strong opponent of loan guarantees to build Israeli settlements, and still has repercussions as various presidential candidates adjust their positions.
As governor of Texas, George Bush took McCain to task for not supporting, but is now, as president, fighting shy of supporting similar measures for fear of Turkish displeasure. He does not have many friends left internationally, after all.
And this time around, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has espoused the cause, which, apart from ethical qualms, is why the Turks are having difficulty enlisting pro-Israeli groups to fight their fight. Indeed, the wonder is that they ever succeeded.
Almost as contentious across Europe is the actual Jewish (and Roma and gay) Holocaust. There should be no exceptions to legislating history. The writers, like David Irving, who have been imprisoned for "Holocaust" denial, are not nice people. But to imprison them for expressing views on a historical matter is on a par with rounding up the Flat Earth Society and sending them down. It is not just bad history: it is bad politics. Imprisoning and persecuting them makes them martyrs and attracts a whole world of wackos to think that if governments want to silence them, then there must be something behind it. And it provides cover for not doing anything about contemporary and future mass murders.
One could understand feeling that action is necessary for someone who says: "The Holocaust did happen - and a shame it did not finish the job," or similar noxious sentiments that could incite. But for someone who denies it, surely care in the community is the better road? We do not send everyone who thinks they are Napoleon to St Helena, do we?
How do we approach the legislator who wants to penalise scepticism about the Gulags under Stalin, or the famines under both him and Mao? Will the French pass a resolution apologising for their behaviour in Algeria and making apologetics for it illegal?
How about legislation penalising glorification of mass bombings of civilians during the second world war? It is a slippery slope. The Tonkin Gulf incident or George Bush's Vietnam war record could be voted into veracity, along with Iraqi WMDs and Saddam Hussein's part in 9/11.
No, it may be irritating when idiots indulge in history, but it is disastrous when congressmen and their overseas colleagues indulge.
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