"Our relations with Turkey are strong and good. We have been working hard to improve the already excellent relations."

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Oct 29, 2009 at 18:27

Gerald Lafon wrote :

> Why would Israel support the squashing of anything related to the Armenian genocide in light of how it feels when the holocaust is denied?<

Good question. And yet the fact is that the Israeli political leadership did exactly that. It had a very selective memory and saw no analogies between the Armenian holocaust and the Jewish holocaust. It prefered its short-term political objectives to abstract morality hindering its political agenda. So they found a comfortable formula to hide their backstage dealings with the Turks : "the topic should be discussed among historians, not politicians". I am curious how they would react if some Nazis suggested the same in relation to what happened to the Jews between 1939-1945 ?

Now, it's reassuring that this self-defeating and shameful attitude was not shared or approved of blindly by all Israeli officials. Some diplomats protested and called a spade a spade. Yet, they were reprimanded and the whole issue was hushed up. So in 2000 e.g.

" Turkey summoned Israeli Charge d'Affaires Moshe Kamhi last Tuesday and demanded clarification of Israeli Education Minister Yossi Sarid's statement that accounts of this alleged incident should be included into Israel's high-school curriculum...
One day after Sarid's statement, Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin claimed that the event was a genocide and nothing else."

But in due course

"It was reported that Israel had told the Turkish Foreign Ministry that the two ministers' statements were their personal opinions, not government policy on the issue."

After all at that remote time of high official optimism the Israeli leadership spread the message that " Our relations with Turkey are strong and good. We have been working hard to improve the already excellent relations. We have an agenda to go ahead and strengthen bilateral relations".

http://english.people.com.cn/english/200005/04/eng20000504_40179.html

> Politics make for strange bedfellows. <

How true and how sad in the context of the two holocausts!

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