WASHINGTON (israelnationalnews.com) — A group of Jewish professors in the United States and Israel has called on the Jewish State to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Turks during and just after World War I.
According to the Firat news agency, four professors from Washington’s Georgetown University and Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan sent their request in a letter to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, after the clash between Israeli Naval commandos and Muslim terrorists on the Turkish-sponsored flotilla ship, the Mavi Marmara.
The petition included a call to grant autonomy for the millions of Kurds who currently live in Turkey.
The Armenian massacres also included mass deportations consisting of forced marches intended to kill the deportees. On April 24, 1915 the Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople, igniting what eventually became known as the Armenian Genocide.
The Ottoman military authorities subsequently proceeded to uproot Armenians from their homes and forced them to march without food or water for hundreds of miles to the desert of present-day Syria.
Some 1 to 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered between 1915 and 1923; subsequently those who fled formed the majority of Armenian diaspora communities.
