Category Archives: Genocide

A Legacy of Pain and Hope

Posted on July 11, 2008 | 2 Comments

Day 2 in Rwanda:

Our first two destinations were two local community associations that are supported by WE-ACTx. Icyuzuzo is an association of Rwandan widows located in the Nyamirambo district. Icyuzuzo (Kinyarwanda for “compliment” or “complete”) serves 5000 clients in the surrounding districts, sponsoring clincs, vocational training, HIV prevention education, palliative care and capacity building projects.

Upon our arrival, the doctors/nurses in our group (above, with Mardge Cohen, third from the right, Executive Director Eugene Twagirimana, right) and President Constance Kubwimana , sixth from the right). separated off to help provide care in the clinics while the children worked sorting medications. The rest of us met with Eugene and Constance (with me below) to learn more about their work with Icyuzuzo.

Among other things, we were sobered to learn about the growing income disparity in Rwanda. While the country outwardly appears to be economically rebounding since the 1994 genocide (Kigali is a clean, well-run and orderly city, and new construction abounds) most of the new growth comes from foreign investors – and very little of it is tricking down to the local population. NGOs such as Icyuzuzo are for the most part the only safety net available to the Rwandan poor. As is the case throughout much of the developing world, these grassroots institutions are stretched beyond the limit.

Our next stop was a capacity-building center in the Ramera neighborhood, to an association that produces beautiful fabric crafts. In addition to learning about the various services provided by the center, we had the opportunity to demonstrate a new and potentially exciting income-generation project. Before leaving Evanston, we purchased and packed thirty EarthBoxes – a relatively new growing process developed by commercial farmers, designed to grow a large number of crops in a relatively small space. (It was quite an adventure getting huge quantities of soil, plastic boxes and organic fertilizer through security at O’Hare!)

We brought and demonstrated the EarthBoxes at the behest of WE-ACTx; our visit was attended by several representatives from other local organizations and at least one government official (that’s JRC member Rich Katz explaing the process below). This project has real potential for local capacity building, particularly for WE-ACTx clients who do not own land. However there are clearly many variables and much will depend on the Rwandan’s ability to find local soil and substrate to replicate the process on an ongoing basis.

During this visit I had an interesting conversation with the director of counseling for WE-ACTx, who asked me how Jews continue live with the legacy of of genocide. I shared with her what studies have taught the Jewish communtity about second/third generation children of survivors and I shared a bit about the challenges of living with the darker aspects of our history. We talked about the ways the Rwandan experience is both similar and markedly different than the Jewish one. Obviously the wounds here are very fresh; and unlike the Jews of Europe, the goverment is committed to bringing all aspects of Rwandan society back together in one extremely small country.

Whether this will succeed over the long term or not is an open question. One woman who joined our conversation expressed her doubts – saying that while the political reconciliation is important, much of the underlying pain and hatred continues to simmer under the surface. How many generations does it take for this kind of pain to dissipate in a community? The Jewish people have been learning this for some time – Rwanda is now struggling with the tragic question as well.

Our final visit was a heartbreaking tour of Kigali’s Public Hospital. More on this in my next post…

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Posted in Africa, Genocide, HIV/AIDS, Holocaust, Human Rights, International Health, JRC Africa Trip 2008, Poverty, Rwanda

Recovery and Commemoration

Posted on July 9, 2008 | 2 Comments

Our JRC delegation has just finished our first full day in Kigali and it has been a full one.

We spent the morning at the WE-ACTx clinic, one of three in the country. Among other things, we learned about the important work this NGO is doing in responding to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Rwanda. WE-ACTx is the model of a community based organization, working with 27 local orgs to help women and children with AIDS treatment, care and education. WE-ACTx was founded in 2004, ten years after the genocide, when Rwandan women suffering from AIDS learned that the ones who intentionally raped and infected them were receiving ARV treatment while waiting for trials at International Tribunals. The success of WE-ACTx is due in large part to the bravery of local communities determined to work together in the wake of this unspeakable tragedy.

We also visited the Rwandan national Genocide Memorial and Museum – an almost literally breathtaking experience for our group. Although many of us are veterans of Holocaust musuems, nothing could have prepared us for the power of this place.

Outside the museum is a memorial that is a literal mass grave – the resting place for 258,000 bodies. We gathered there, learned about the significance of thes site, then said Kaddish together. (That’s JRC member Tina Escobar above, leaving a stone on the memorial). I was also interviewed on Rwandan TV, where I had the opportunity to explain why, as Jews, it was so important to us to pay homage at this particular site.

The musuem itself is unique largely for the freshness of the wounds it seeks to commemorate. Looking at the exhibits it was difficult to fathom the pain of this society, still struggling to recover from a pain so recently inflicted. Rwanda is also somewhat unprecedented in its determination to rebuild a national community in which perpetrator and victim live side by side. I cannot begin to understand how such a thing could be possible – but I believe at the heart of this determination is a sacred lesson for the entire world.

To be continued…

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Posted in Africa, Genocide, HIV/AIDS, Human Rights, International Health, JRC Africa Trip 2008, Rwanda

JRC in Africa

Posted on July 6, 2008 | 1 Comment

Tomorrow I’ll be traveling, along with 25 other JRC members, on our congregation’s second service trip to Africa. I am immensely proud of JRC for organizing this effort, which reflects our deep and growing commitment to global service work in general and to addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic in particular.

From July 7- 15 we will be in Rwanda hosted by WE-ACTx, an important Kigali-based NGO that seeks to increase women’s and children’s access to HIV testing, care, treatment, education and care at the grassroots level. In particular, WE-ACTx has done inspirational work in helping survivors of genocidal rape and violence, focusing its efforts on empowering HIV-postive women and girls to take charge of their lives and become leaders in the fight against AIDS.

Our trip was inspired in large part through our congregation’s relationship with Dr. Mardge Cohen (above), a woman’s care specialist who worked for many years at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago and is one of the primary founders of WE-ACTx. Mardge is a longtime friend of JRC and was pivotal in helping us make the connection to Rwandan efforts to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic. We have learned a great deal from Mardge over the years and are thrilled that we will now have the opportunity to bear witness to her work. (Here’s a great, extensive Chicago Tribune article about Mardge and her efforts in Rwanda).

In addition to volunteering at the clinic in a variety of capacities, we will observe the work being done in Rwanda to heal from the very deep wounds of the 1994 genocide and learn about the ways in which Rwandan society continues to work to overcome tribal differences to create a viable future for their people.

From July 15-23, we will be in Uganda, visiting old friends we made from JRC’s last service trip in 2005. Our home base will be the town of Mbale and we will be volunteering once again with the Federation for the Development of Needy Communities – an NGO devoted to the sustainable development of communities in and around the rural area of Natandome. We will also visit the Mirembe Kowamera Jewish/Muslim/Christian Fair Trade Coffee Co-op with which JRC has partnered for many years. (We are hoping to be able to participate ourselves in the upcoming coffee harvest). Our itinerary will also include a Shabbat visit to the Abayudayah Ugandan Jewish community, with whom we also had the pleasure of visiting three years ago.

Among the many things that will make this trip so special is the significant participation of JRC’s young people (including my son Jonah). I am especially happy that they will have dedicated time to spend with young Rwandans (focusing, inevitably enough, on computer skills). All in all, it promises to be a memorable and powerful July. I plan to blog about our experiences as they occur so please plan to drop in and visit regularly over the next few weeks…

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Posted in Africa, Fair Trade, Genocide, Global Activism, HIV/AIDS, Human Rights, International Health, JRC Africa Trip 2008, Poverty, Rwanda, Uganda, Women's Issues

On Tutsis, Jews and Palestinians

Posted on June 18, 2008 | 10 Comments

I’m currently reading “A Thousand Hills” by historian Stephen Kinzer – a recently published bio of Rwandan president Paul Kagame. It’s an incredibly absorbing read, offering a history of the country and region as well as a portrait of a remarkable African leader who is spearheading Rwanda’s post-genocide rebirth against all odds.

Early on, Kinzer offers this fascinating insight about the Tutsis who were exiled from Rwanda by Belgian-backed Hutus in the late 1950s:

These Tutsi exiles, scattered across Africa, Europe, North America, and even Australia, may be the only group that has been regularly compared to both Jews and Palestinians. Like Jews, they prized education and seemed to succeed wherever they landed, despite the odds against them. Like Palestinians, they were condemned to eternal exile by a regime that hated and feared them. (p. 35)

I’d love to find more on this point, which I have never encountered before.

In the meantime, I highly recommend “Hills,” as well as Kinzer’s two previous books, “Overthrow” and “All the Shah’s Men” (which has recently been reprinted with a very timely new introduction).

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Posted in Africa, Genocide, Judaism, Palestine, Rwanda, Uganda

You Shall Not Hate Your Kinfolk…

Posted on May 2, 2008 | Leave a comment

You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your kin but incur no guilt on their account. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Eternal. — Leviticus 19:17-18

As I read these famous verses from this week’s Torah portion Parashat Kedoshim, I am still overcome by the incredible testimony of a Rwandan genocide survivor who spoke at JRC last night as part of our Yom Hashoah commemoration. Immaculee Mukantaganira, who now lives in South Bend, IN, lost more than 60 members of her family during the 1994 genocide: her husband, two of her children, her parents, as well as sisters, brothers, cousins, other relatives and close friends. Her words to us were alternately heartbreaking, courageous, and often beyond comprehension.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of her presentation was her description of how Rwandan society is attempting to heal from this impossibly tragic episode in their recent history. Unlike the Jewish community following the Holocaust, Rwanda is a society in which victim and perpetrator continue to live side by side – where Tutsi and Hutu continue to strive to live as neighbors. Could we even hope to imagine that the Tutsis would ever be able to reach a place where they “do not hate their kinfolk in their hearts?”

To this end, the Rwandan political establishment has outlawed Hutu/Tutsi tribal loyalties in order to promote one universal Rwandan identity. And for the past few years, “Gacaca courts” have been attempting help the country achieve a semblance of justice and reconciliation. The mixed success of these efforts demonstrates how Rwanda is, in so many ways, a nation struggling to understand the true meaning of the verses above.

For her part, Immaculee provided us with one example of a woman who is doing what she can to move past unimaginable pain and hatred to a place of healing and forgiveness. I encourage you to read this article in the South Bend Tribune to learn more about her story.

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Posted in Africa, Genocide, Holocaust, Human Rights, Judaism, Religion, Rwanda, Torah Commentary, Yom Hashoah

Dream – and Act – for Darfur

Posted on April 3, 2008 | Leave a comment

 

I wrote about Mia Farrow and ”Dream for Darfur” almost a year ago – and since that time DFD has geared up big time to use the Beijing Summer Olympics to focus world attention on the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

Here’s DFD’s own description of their mission:

The 2008 Olympics are fast approaching.  Between now and August there is precious little time to use the leverage of the Beijing Games to press China to bring security to Darfur.

China holds unrivaled influence with the genocidal regime in Sudan.  China must immediately use that influence to persuade the Sudanese government to allow a full and robust civilian protection force into Darfur. 

If China does not act, in its role as Olympic host and world leader, Beijing will go down in history as the host of the “Genocide Olympics”: China will be sponsoring the Olympic Games at home and the genocide in Darfur – in which it is complicit – abroad.

DFD has a formidable laundry list of actions they’ve organized including an alternative torch relay and the promotion of a pledge for folks to engage in a mass “turn-off” of commercials by the Olympic sponsors when the games are televised (during which DFD will be offer alternative programming including Farrow’s interviews with Darfurian refugees). Olympic sponsors, by the way, include such big guns as Adidas, Anheuser-Busch, Atos Origin, BHP Billiton, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, Lenovo, Manulife, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Panasonic, Samsung, Staples, Swatch, UPS, Visa and Volkswagen. (A full list of Olympic sponsors can be found here.)

Click above for a great video about their efforts. Last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine also featured an excellent piece on DFD – click here to read.

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Posted in Africa, Current Events, Darfur, Genocide, Global Activism, Human Rights

Unholy War

Posted on July 13, 2007 | 4 Comments

crusades1.jpgAs the book of Numbers comes to a close this week, we read an account of an Israelite military campaign that can only be described as holy war:

Moses spoke to the militia saying, “Let troops be picked out from among you for a campaign, and let them fall upon Midian to wreak the Eternal’s vengeance on Midian. You shall dispatch on the campaign a thousand from every one of the tribes of Israel.”

…They took the field against Midian, as the Eternal had commanded Moses, and slew every male. Along with other victims, they slew the kings of Midian, Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian. They also put Balaam, son of Beor to the sword.

The Israelites took the women captive and other dependants of the Midianites captive, and seized as booty all their beasts, all their herds, and all their wealth. And they destroyed by fire all the towns in which they were settled, and their encampments. (Numbers 31:3-10)

What on earth do we make of a text such as this? Some commentators say that this account is not about war per se as much as it is a polemic against idolatry. Others point to the obviously dubious historicity of this particular text. Still others suggest that God’s commandments to destroy ancient nations such as Midian have long been rendered null and void since these nations no longer exist.

Though these kinds of explanations might be of exegetical interest, alas, they do not ultimately address the core moral problem of this text: namely, God’s commandment that Israel exterminate another people. At the end of the day, there can be no whitewashing of this fact, no re-rendering of the text that will somehow erase the profoundly troubling truth that such attitudes are part of our inherited spiritual tradition.

What do we make of a texts such as these? One thing we cannot do is wish them away. If we are to take our Torah tradition seriously, we must be willing to face it head on and to admit that there are certain voices in Torah that we might sometimes find morally difficult, troubling, or, yes, even repugnant. If we consider ourselves to be serious Jews, we owe it to ourselves and to our tradition to honestly own the all of Torah.

If we are able to do this, we will invariably find that the Torah truly is a mosaic of very different and often contradictory voices. (Serious students of Torah cannot fail to notice, for instance, that a very different portrayal of Midian is offered in the book of Exodus, where Moses finds refuge in Midian, marries a Midianite woman and seeks serious counsel from his father-in-law Jethro, the Midanite High Priest).

This phenomenon, of course, is not unique to Judaism. Ultimately, this is the central choice facing any religious individual: which are the voices in my tradition that I proudly affirm, and which are the voices that I disavow in no uncertain terms? Will I be ready to say without hesitation that there is nothing holy about fomenting fear and hatred of another people – and that there is no place for such ideas in my religious tradition?

In the end, there can be no equivocating on this point. In a world beset by growing violence in the name of God, the stakes of this choice are much too high.

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Posted in Fear, Genocide, Interfaith, Judaism, Religion, Spirituality, Terrorism, Torah Commentary

Inherent Dignity

Posted on June 19, 2007 | 1 Comment

image002.jpgAnother anniversary I can’t let slip by unnoticed: on this day fifty-nine years ago, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted its Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I know, I know: it’s a controversial document, it’s non-binding, the UN has left unfulfilled its promise on human rights, blah, blah, blah…

I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care what they say: I believe the Universal Declaration still remains the central moral conscience of the world community and one of the truly sacred documents of our day. In particular, its reference to the “inherent dignity…of all members of the the human family” is a powerful reminder that human rights ultimately begin at home. In the words of one of its drafters, the great Eleanor Roosevelt:

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.

In honor of the day, I encourage you to click above, read the Declaration, then send on the link to your friends.

May we realize its vision speedily and in our day.

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Posted in Children's Rights, Civil Rights, Current Events, Genocide, Human Rights, Poverty

The Genocide Olympics

Posted on May 14, 2007 | 4 Comments

darfur-banner-800.jpg

Mia Farrow’s incredible Wall Street Journal editorial last March – regarding Sudan, China and the 2008 Beijing Olympics – has given powerful new momentum to the Darfur activist movement. In the words of one NY Times writer, Farrow’s efforts “could accomplish what years of diplomacy could not.”

In the meantime, there’s been a great deal of worthwhile responses to her challenge throughout the blogosphere and in the print media. Among the best is this recent piece from Sports Illustrated by my all-time favorite sportswriter, Rick Reilly. This kind of advocacy from such a major publication is HUGE, quite frankly.

I have a feeling we’ll be reading much more about the “Genocide Olympics…”

Mia’s Olympic Mettle

Rick Reilly

Sports Illustrated, May 14, 2007

The first hero of the 2008 Beijing Olympics stands 5’4″ and weighs 108 pounds, including purse. She’s 62, runs the 100 meter dash in about a day and has 14 kids. She speaks in a weak voice, yet her words are shaking the world.

She’s Mia Farrow. Remember? Rosemary’s Baby? UNICEF goodwill ambassador?

On TV and in newspapers, Farrow has been pressuring China to face up to its role in the genocide being carried out by Arab militia groups in the Darfur region of Sudan, where an estimated 400,000 non-Arab Africans have been slaughtered and another two million have been made refugees. “These are the Genocide Olympics,” says Farrow, who has made two trips to Darfur and three to camps in neighboring countries. “China is funding the first genocide of the third millennium.”

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, China buys about two thirds of Sudan’s oil. The Sudanese government then uses the majority of its oil profits to buy weapons and aircraft, most of them made by China. The arms are turned over to a proxy militia, the Janjaweed, which burns, dismembers, rapes and kills Darfur’s villagers and destroys their land. China maintains that it doesn’t interfere with the internal politics of other nations, and using that policy it has blocked U.N. efforts to send a peacekeeping force into Darfur by insisting that Sudan first invite the troops in.

Farrow has also tried to get at China by taking on Steven Spielberg. The King Kong of directors is one of the Beijing Games’ “artistic advisers,” helping to orchestrate the opening and closing ceremonies. But how can a man who decried one holocaust in his finest film Schindler’s List be in bed with a country that is helping to bankroll another?

Spielberg could “go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games,” Farrow wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece in late March, referring to the German woman whose film about the 1936 Berlin Olympics is viewed as Nazi propaganda.

Spielberg’s face must’ve fallen like E.T.’s when he read that. He immediately wrote a letter to China’s president, Hu Jintao, asking him to intercede in Darfur. China sent a high-ranking official to Khartoum to try to persuade the Sudanese government to allow in the 20,000 peacekeeping troops who stand ready to enter Darfur under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1706. That envoy returned to pronounce the situation “improving.”

“That visit meant nothing,” says Eric Reeves, a Smith College professor who is a leading Darfur activist. “He toured the camps with the most food and the most control. This was airbrushed genocide.”

Spielberg declined to comment to SI, but his spokesman, Marvin Levy, said, “This is a step-by-step process. We think there was some movement. We’ll see.”

“At what cost?” asks Farrow. “Ten thousand a month are dying, minimum.” Forget Private Ryan, Mr. Spielberg. Save Darfur!

Before the world arrives, Beijing has instituted a campaign to get residents to stop spitting and rushing into buses and trains without waiting for people to get off. But if the Chinese have to clean up for company, why shouldn’t their government?

The last thing anybody wants, including Farrow, is an Olympic boycott. It would make China a sympathetic victim, and innocent athletes would suffer. But China’s feet must be held to the fire, even if that fire is an Olympic torch. And activists are lighting the flame any way they can by:

Organizing an alternative torch relay, which will go from Darfur to Hong Kong, linking the bloodshed to its biggest banker (www.dreamfordarfur.org).

Insisting Olympic sponsors (go to www.miafarrow.org for a list) lean on China to pressure Sudan to let the peacekeepers in.

Writing protest letters to the Chinese government, such as the one just signed by 12 Cleveland Cavaliers.

Convincing athletes, if nothing changes by 2008, to compete in Beijing wearing Dream for Darfur’s Chinese-character tattoo (translation: China, please) on the inside of their wrists, a reminder of the way Germany’s holocaust victims were tattooed.

“I wish I could take China’s president to Darfur, take Mr. Spielberg there, every Olympic official,” Farrow says. “Because once you’ve seen it, you can’t turn away.”

Do you remember Tiananmen Square, 1989? The guy who stood all alone, in front of a column of tanks? Today, that lone figure is tiny Mia Farrow.

Who will line up behind her?

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Posted in Africa, Current Events, Darfur, Genocide, Global Activism, Human Rights, Politics

Collective Guilt, Collective Atonement

Posted on April 27, 2007 | 3 Comments

060420_armenian_hmed_12phmedium.jpg“This shall be to you a law for all time: to make expiation for the Israelites for all their sins once a year.” — Leviticus 16:34

The concept of collective guilt is central to this week’s Torah portion, Acharei Mot-Kedoshim. The parasha powerfully teaches that communities, just like individuals, are able to bear guilt. And just as with individuals, this guilt cannot be allowed to remain in the collective soul – it must be faced honestly by the nation if it is to be successfully expiated.

The issue of collective guilt was on the front pages this past Tuesday as the world observed Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. Those who attended the official observance here in the US might have noticed that there was a careful avoidance of the use of the word “genocide.” As a recent Chicago Tribune article explained:

US officials have avoided the word because Turkey, a key ally, strongly opposes the characterization to describe the early 20th Century deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks.

In the past, members of the House and Senate have proposed resolutions calling on the president to utter the phrase “Armenian genocide,” but the efforts have run aground in the face of political concerns voiced by both Democratic and Republican administrations.

A JTA article noted that the Jewish community has become increasingly “caught in the middle” of this high profile controversy:

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a Jewish congressman with a substantial Armenian constituency, has tried multiple times to pass such a resolution. This time he has garnered nearly 200 co-sponsors for his non-binding resolution, and believes he has the backing of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), speaker of the House of Representatives. Pelosi has met with U.S. Armenian leaders.

The lobbying has had some effect. Four groups – B’nai B’rith International, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs – are set to convey a letter from Turkish Jews who oppose the resolution to U.S. congressional leaders.

The ADL and JINSA have added their own statements opposing the bill.

“I don’t think congressional action will help reconcile the issue,” said ADL National Director Abraham Foxman. “The resolution takes a position; it comes to a judgment.

“The Turks and Armenians need to revisit their past. The Jewish community shouldn’t be the arbiter of that history, nor should the U.S. Congress.”

It is surprising and, quite frankly, shocking that a prominent American Jewish leader (and Holocaust survivor) such as Foxman would counsel that Jews and Americans should not mix in on this issue. Jews should not hold countries accountable for committing genocide? If not us, who?

Here is the historical record: between 1915 and 1918, the Ottoman Turkish government subjected the Armenian people to widespread deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre, and starvation. The Armenian population was forcibly removed from Armenia and Anatolia to Syria, where the vast majority was sent into the desert to die of thirst and hunger. In addition, significant numbers of Armenians – including many women and children – were methodically massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire.

In 1915 (thirty-three years before the UN Genocide Convention was adopted) Turkey’s treatment of Armenians was condemned by the international community as a crime against humanity. Indeed, the very word “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a human rights lawyer and activist (and Holocaust survivor) who viewed these Turkish atrocities as a clear precedent to the Nazi genocide.

Even in the face of compelling historical evidence and comprehensive eyewitness testimony, Turkey has resolutely refused to recognize its collective guilt. Using arguments that have the same alarming resonance as Holocaust denial, Turkey has claimed that the number of Armenians killed is vastly exaggerated, that those targeted were enemies of the state, and that most died from disease and starvation during their “relocations.”

Why are many American politicians and Jewish leaders hesitant to hold Turkey accountable? The answer has nothing to do with history and everything to do with politics. Turkey is, of course, a crucial NATO ally and offers the US open access to their Incirlik air base, an important transit point for nearly three-quarters of all military cargo headed for Iraq. Turkey is also a critical Western transit-point for Western oil interests. US companies have a significant stake in the continuing construction of an oil pipeline running from Azerbaijan to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. (Indeed, Turkey is not above politically retaliating against those countries that raise the Armenian genocide issue. In 2000, the House of Representatives withdrew a resolution on the Armenian Genocide after Turkey threatened to close its airbases to US planes on fly-over missions in Iraq.)

Notwithstanding Abe Foxman’s politically motivated remarks, Jews and Americans have a critically important voice to add in “arbiting” the resolution of this issue. Though Turkey may be a political ally of Israel, there is a deeper, countervailing value that is demanded of the Jewish people here. As Jews, we have experienced the collective trauma of genocide first-hand, and as such we have an added responsibility to shine the brightest light possible on all those who would perpetrate similar crimes against humanity. We, of all people, cannot ignore the Hitler’s tragically prophetic statement: “Who now remembers the Armenians?”

As Americans and citizens of what some people choose to call the “world’s only superpower,” we have a unique responsibility as well. Samantha Powers’ important book “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide” has documented a our nation’s shameful inaction when confronted with the moral challenge of genocide. In the first chapter, she chronicles America’s nonresponse to growing reports of Turkish atrocities. Powers poignantly presents the pleas of Henry Morgenthau Sr., then the US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, as he helplessly witnessed the plight of the Armenian people (“It is difficult for me to restrain myself from doing something to stop this attempt to exterminate a race…”) Powers then goes on to demonstrate America’s repeated choice of political “strategic” expediency over moral leadership:

America’s nonresponse to the Turkish horrors established patterns that would repeated. Time and time again the US government would be reluctant to cast aside its neutrality and formally denounce a fellow state for its atrocities. Time and time again though US officials would learn that huge numbers of civilians were being slaughtered, the impact of this knowledge would be blunted by their uncertainty about the facts and their rationalizations that a firmer US stand would make no difference.

It’s time for us to break the pattern of nonresponse. Click here for more information about how you can urge your senators and representatives to call for swift passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolution (SR 106, HR 106) and take concrete steps to stop the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

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Posted in Current Events, Darfur, Genocide, Holocaust, Human Rights, Judaism, Religion, Spirituality, Torah Commentary