The Banality of Indifference: Zionism & the Armenian Genocide. (Tracing an Evolution of Attitude.
The Banality of Indifference: Zionism & the Armenian Genocide, by Yair Auron. Translated from the Hebrew by Maggie Bar-Tura. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000, 405 pp.The Armenian genocide of 1915-1923 is perhaps one of the most understudied and least discussed events of the 20th century. While eminent scholars such as Taner Akcam, Vahakn N. Dadrian, and Richard Hovannisian have produced remarkable works of history, there is a general lack of knowledge in the society-at-large when it comes to the Armenian genocide. This is due to a variety of factors, including the current Turkish government's very denial of this horrific episode and the American government's reluctance to officially commemorate the genocide. Even the American mass media are reluctant to discuss the genocide in any depth, despite the fact that the New York Times covered the 1915 deportation and massacres of the Ottoman Armenian population in great detail.
Unfortunately, many American Jewish organizations likewise have been slow and extremely reluctant to commemorate the Armenian genocide, a centrally planned scheme developed by the Young Turks to pave the way for an ethnically pure Turkish Empire stretching from Istanbul to the western edge of the Caspian Sea. Due to the close diplomatic and political ties between Israel and Turkey, many 'mainstream Jewish human rights organizations would rather not discuss the Armenian genocide, lest this discussion strain relations with Israel's close ally in the Eastern Mediterranean. This is in stark contrast to the many prominent Jewish scholars of Holocaust and genocide studies such as Yehuda Bauer, Israel Charny, Sir Martin Gilbert, Deborah Lipstadt, and Elie Wiesel, who have all taken public stands in promoting knowledge of the Armenian genocide and combating the Turkish campaign of denial.
Given all these factors, it was with great interest that I read Yair Auron's excellent book on Zionism and the Armenian genocide. Auron, a senior lecturer at the Open University of Israel and the Kibbutzim College of Education, has dared to go where no Israeli scholar has gone before. He examines the attitudes of early Zionist leaders and respected members of the Yishuv community toward the massacres of the Ottoman Armenians, both during the massacres of 1895-96, the Adana pogrom of 1909, and the genocide of 1915-23. What he finds with regard to the Zionist pioneers is an amazing amount of general indifference, hence the title of his work. The official Israeli attitude has not been much better. Indeed, the Armenian genocide is somewhat of a mystery to many Israelis who are simply unaware of this very important moment in the history of the Near East.
Auron's work is not going to be an enjoyable experience for those who are unwilling to grapple with some of the least pleasant aspects of Zionist history. In the introduction, Auron makes the bold claim that, during the First World War, the "Zionist leaders leaned, for the most part, toward the Central powers that had either committed the atrocities against the Armenians or, at best, done nothing to prevent them. In retrospect, most of the leadership of the Zionist community of Palestine supported not only the losing side, but also the `bad' side -- the immolators and the murderers." Auron also questions the Jewish-Israeli tendency to "emphasize the exclusivity and uniqueness of the Holocaust and of Jewish suffering." While his work deals with a particular topic, Auron is dealing with universal questions regarding persecution and the Jewish interpretation of other peoples' suffering. We must ask how Jews, or perhaps more stringently, Israeli Jews relate to the tragedies of others. While not losing sight of the enormity of the Holocaust, are not Jews obligated, nonetheless, to examine the similarities, that which is comparable, or analogous? These are indeed very thought-provoking questions that need to be further addressed by both scholars and Jewish community leaders, both in Israel and in the Diaspora.
Despite common histories of Diaspora and persecution, many Zionist leaders were not overly concerned with the fate of the Armenians. Indeed, some prominent Zionist leaders went so far as to all but side with the Sultan during the mass pogroms against Armenians in late 19th-century Turkey. The author contends that Theodor Herzl himself exploited the Turkish persecution of the Armenians in the mid-1890s in order to promote his own agenda. "Herzl," writes Auron, "attempted to rouse public action to support the Sultan despite the worsening of the atrocities against the Armenians." Nevertheless, some prominent Zionist leaders, such as Aaron Aaronsohn and his sister Sarah, who was an eyewitness to the genocide that followed the earlier persecutions, were deeply troubled by what they saw and heard. Indeed, in 1916, Aaronsohn would write an essay, "Pro Armenia," in which he declared that the "wholesale massacre of the Jews ordered by the Roman General Titus is the only record in history that parallels the wholesale massacre of the Armenians.
Auron's work is divided into ten chapters along with a prologue and an introduction. In many ways, each of the chapters can stand apart and still be of considerable value to scholars as well as the general reader. The most interesting chapter for many would perhaps be the one in which Auron focuses on the impact that Franz Werfel's The Forty Days of Musa Dagh had on Jewish consciousness in the 1930s and 1940s. Werfel, a Czech-born Jew, wrote his opus of resistance to the Turkish policy of extermination after having visiting with Armenian survivors in Syria. Auron demonstrates with a great deal of skill and analysis that the legendary acts of Armenian resistance to Turkish oppression fictionalized by Werfel served as an inspiration to Polish-Jewish partisans during the dark days of the Shoah. Among the many examples Auron gives the reader is the case of Samuel Gringaus, a leading figure from the Kovno ghetto, who said that a "book such as Franz Werfel's The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was passed from hand to hand." Another interesting example cited by Auron is that of Mordechai Tenebaum, commander of the Bialystock Jewish underground. In a letter to a colleague, Tenebaum wrote: "Musa Dagh is the rage with us. If you read it, you will remember it for the rest of your life. Written by Franz Werfel."
Auron ends his work with a chapter on the Israeli attitude toward the Armenian genocide. This merits considerable attention. The author claims, quite accurately, that "the State of Israel has consistently refrained from acknowledging the genocide of the Armenian People. Government representatives do not participate in the memorial assemblies held every year on April 24 to commemorate the Armenian genocide." This has come to pass due to a variety of factors, the most important being the fear of losing the moral capital associated with the Holocaust and the geopolitical arrangement between Israel and Turkey. In response to the public demands that references to the Armenian genocide be deleted from a documentary on Jerusalem's Armenian community, Amos Elon wrote a series of articles in Ha'aretz that attacked official Israel's use of the Holocaust for political purposes and its insensitivity to the pain of others. "All of the great people of conscience, the very image of sorrow, who give speeches at every opportunity and travel abroad to remind the world that they are forbidden to forget, have followed the Armenian affair as though it had taken place on another planet. They are not shocked, they do not open their mouths."
While it is somewhat understandable that Israelis, living as they do under siege, would not take a particular interest in an 80-year old genocide, the same cannot be said for some Jewish organizations in the United States and Canada who continue to drag their feet when it comes to the Armenian genocide. Fortunately, despite years of relative indifference to the Armenian genocide, many Jewish leaders and scholars, as individuals, have now taken a strong interest in learning about and commemorating the Armenian genocide. University campuses all over the country bear witness to a growing solidarity between Armenian and Jewish students. At the same time that Holocaust centers at America's most prestigious academies now regularly sponsor lectures on the Armenian genocide, more rabbis appear willing to speak at Armenian genocide commemoration events and to work with their Armenian counterparts. Indeed, even American Jewry's favorite son, Senator Joseph Lieberman, has shifted from an attitude of relative indifference to concern for the Armenian people's suffering, so much so that he made an explicit comparison between the Armenian and Jewish historical experiences of genocide at an Armenian genocide commemoration this very year.
Yair Auron has written an engaging, well-researched, and thought-provoking work that examines the attitudes of Zionists and Israelis to both the Armenian people and the Armenian genocide. His project engages the deepest ethical traditions of Judaism. It is perhaps one of the best works on the Armenian genocide to be written in the past few years and is worth serious consideration by Israelis and American Jews alike.
JONATHAN ERIC LEWIS is a Research Affiliate at the Remarque Institute, New York University.
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| Author: | Lewis, Jonathan Eric |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Midstream |
| Date: | Sep 1, 2001 |
| Words: | 1497 |
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