Book Review: Israel’s Failed Response to the Armenian Genocide

“Bringing in these three leaders in their various ethnic groups is a very symbolic, meaningful and wise decision, each of them being a distinguished representative both of their identity groups and of the quest for human decency,” Auron writes.

The book is based primarily on declassified cables and telegrams from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs which showed that Turkey pressured Israel to remove the subject of the Armenian Genocide from the conference. The story that Wiesel and the other opponents got was that the Turkish government will harm Jews there as well as those in Syria and Iran. Except, that did not happen.

“It was Israel that set out on the cruel juggernaut effort to cancel the conference based on entirely fabricated stories of Turkish threats to Jewish lives. At first the threats were defined as aimed at Jews in Turkey and this was what appeared in early New York Times stories, but then the ministry clarified — though at first as top secret until this too became international news — that the most serious threat was that Turkey might stop giving safe passage to Jewish refuges escaping from Iran and Syria through Turkey and therefore their lives were at risk.”

One character who gets a thorough going over in the book is the late Elie Wiesel, a legendary scholar and defender of human rights, who just happened to do everything possible to shut down this conference. Wiesel originally had agreed to serve as the official president of the conference. Not only did he resign, but he used every weapon in his arsenal to try to stop the conference from going forward if the Armenians’ participation continued. Those actions included canceling a grant from his foundation for the conference that he had promised.

While Charny made clear in his interview that he does not blame Wiesel and understands the pressures he was receiving from the Israeli government, the readers can draw their own conclusions when seeing Wiesel was so readily able to not only back out of this seminal conference, but do everything in his power to try to cancel it altogether.

In the book he details his lingering devotion to Wiesel as a man and scholar, as well as someone who endured unspeakable tragedy, though he makes sure to detail his shortcomings.

“Is the Holocaust unique? Of course it is — very much so. But so are other cases of genocide unique in other ways, each in its own story of development and executing and aftermath. But there is also a basic and horrendous commonality: In all genocides, people are being cruelly tortured and murdered en masse. For me, this commonality is the largest fact and no intellectualization whatsoever — what I have called ‘definitionalism’ or an endless obsessive controversy about the proper definition of genocide — can be allowed to obscure these masses of dead bodies or fail to give them a meaningful category name,” he writes.

The book treats the issue like a detective story.

“What is now being revealed for the first time is that previously classified documents of the IMFA make it entirely clear that the alleged threats to detain or to possibly return the escaping Jews from Iran and Syria to their countries of origin were fabricated — made up — no less than by the Israeli government and attributed to the Turks,” he writes.

It seems the primary difference between Charny and several fellow Israeli scholars is how they see the Holocaust in the global context of other genocides.

Charny walks a tight line between spelling out the ugly sins of Wiesel while pointing out that on the whole, his legacy should survive intact.

“Without taking away from Wiesel being a hugely heroic symbol of Holocaust agony and survival, as well as his going on to be a courageous promoter of the meaning of the Holocaust as calling for the life safety of all peoples everywhere, we report here the extensive damages Wiesel’s actions did to the conference and our own hurt, frustration and anger, but we still offer a thoughtful and not entirely unsympathetic analysis of his motivations in doing so and of his basic greatness,” Charny writes.

A tight rope walk indeed.

As for Yad Vashem, “They were clearly uncomfortable but they were also adamant and put their finger directly on the key issue for them. It was not Turkey’s demands to get rid of the Armenian Genocide subject. It was the uniqueness of the Holocaust and the fact that some of their own staff gave them hell for ever agreeing to host our Opening, for we were, after all, quite unkosher, notwithstanding their ‘respect for the conference.’”

Regarding his own treatment, Charny lists the personal hurts he endured, not only in terms of friendships affected and being put in a moral quandary, as well as even developing cancer, but also how his own livelihood was affected by being denied tenure at Tel Aviv University as a result of the conference.

He does note, however, “I still feel I was privileged to live out such a basic challenge between self-interest and critical ethical values. I am also happy to add that I sued Tel Aviv University and won a substantial out of court settlement, let along that there soon came five years when I was simultaneously drawing my Tel Aviv pension while serving as a professor and head of an innovative department that I had been invited to establish at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It was a ‘Turkish delight.’”

The book often offers not so much a narrative but offers essays in addition to documentation of all that was included — or expected to be included — at the conference, including speakers, sections, as well as communication from the participants afterwards.

Charny writes that the policy of Genocide non-recognition does not help Jews or Israelis.

“However, the story of Israel’s failures to recognize the Armenian genocide, which in plain English constitute denials of the authenticity of the genocide, go back a long way before this specific conference, to man y instances when there were no concerns about Jewish lives begin lots that were invoked to justify the denials. Israel’s informal policy of non-recognition of the Armenian Genocide through all the years continues to this day, though most Israeli people and the culture as a whole very much recognize and honor the Armenian Genocide.”

Only time will tell if the Israeli government will change its position.