ISRAELI & JEWISH SOURCES THAT REFUTE THE AAG
	Ergun KIRLIKOVALI	ergun@turkla.com

IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS THAT REFUTE THE AAG: 17

Dear Readers,

Our “refutation series” continues with Jewish sources today.

Although Israel was established in 1948, that is, many years after the WWI when the Turkish-Armenian civil war took place, Israel’s views matter when it comes to the relentless genocide debate, or more correctly, the AFATH attempts to defame Turkey and get the AAG recognized.

Israel’s views matter because the term genocide was coined by a Polish-Jew, a lawyer, and a Holocaust survivor, by the name of Rafael Lemkin in 1943, to legally define the horrors of the WWII, when he lost most of the members of his family in Nazi concentration camps. This term was later adopted by the United Nations in 1948 and came into effect in 1951. This unique Jewish tragedy, the Holocaust, is one of the most widely and thoroughly studied subjects in history. The motives and modes of the Nazi perpetrators and stages, details, results, and impacts of their horrible crimes against humanity are all meticulously documented. Results of massive research on a year by year, location by location, country by country, victim by victim basis, can be viewed and the horrors of Holocaust can be re-lived by a visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, a federal institution founded by an act of the U.S. Congress. Most of the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust live in Israel and foreign heads of state visiting Israel pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust as the first order of business. Israel’s history and heritage is enmeshed with acts of persecution of Jews throughout history, which gives the Israelis a distinctive and important place in the realm of “victim-hood”. So, when Israel speaks about genocide, the world listens. I personally have the greatest respect for Israel’s views on genocide.

(Having said that, though, I must protest the existence of a bogus Hitler quote in the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, emblazoned on one of its walls, as a direct result of political pressure sweetened with monetary support by the Armenian lobby in the US. Please click on the document number 9 in the refutation series in the archives below, “The infamous Hitler quote : a forgery”, to read the account of a scholarly research tracing the origin of the Hitler quote which makes absolutely no reference to Armenians in any way, shape, or form. That may be reason, too, for its refusal by the US Prosecutor to enter into evidence in the Nuremberg trials. Why was the Hitler quote “embellished”, as the Historian Lowry who undertook this study put it, we will never know. But we have a pretty good idea: to boost the credibility of the Armenian claims by first associating it with Hitler and the Holocaust experience. You can also click on the document number 10 in the refutation series below: “Armenian Historian Says The Hitler Quote Is A Hoax”. Truth seekers must maintain the pressure on this museum to make it get rid of its Armenian-fabricated bogus concoctions. The dignified memory of the Holocaust does not need that ethocidal burden. This single fakery is perhaps the gravest insult to the silent memory of 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust… It makes you say “Not everything you see in the Holocaust Museum is true.”… What a shame ! )

Israeli leaders, government , Jewish scholars, researchers, and people have always supported the Turkish position, that it was a wartime tragedy, not genocide. Some readers may not know the fact that some of the most important works of scholarly research refuting the AAG, that this writer often uses in his letters and arguments, were carried out Jewish historians like Prof. Stanford Shaw of UCLA, Prof. Bernard Lewis of Princeton, and others. The former’s house was bombed by the Armenians and the latter was harassed and sued by the Armenians in France, for declaring that the AAG could not be supported by historical evidence and that it was a civil war tragedy lived in world war, but no genocide. So much for Armenian “tolerance”.

The Jewish scholars’ important research and revelations were so devastating to the AAG, that Prof. Shaw’s home in Los Angeles was bombed by some Armenian extremists in 1977 as a retaliation for what he wrote in his book. ( For details, please click on the document 11 in the refutation series in the archives below: “American Sources That Refute The AAG”.) Prof Shaw is also the scholar who mentored other prominent historians like Prof. Justin McCarthy of the Univ. Of Louisville, Kentucky, and Prof. Heath Lowry of Princeton Univ.

Albert Amateau (Please click on the document number 1 in the refutation series in the archives below) was an Ottoman-Jew who loved Turkey and defended his “Vatan” until the day he died at the age of 105 in 1995 and I personally witnessed his precious work between 1987-1995. I am proud to call myself his friend. I may even publish our private communications one day, which are now neatly piled in numbered boxes and stored in my garage awaiting my attention.

You will read striking letters from my other Jewish friends below: one Jewish-American, one Turkish-Jewish-American, and one Turkish-Jewish-Israeli, among others. After reading the enormous body of literature created by Jewish defenders of Turkish position, some of which are sampled below, you will come to realize that our Jewish friends did so much for us, Turks and Turkish-Americans, for which they were targeted and hated by some in the Armenian community. In future, if and when the occasion arises, I would like to summarize and evaluate the Armenian hatred for Jews for defending the Turks. That should make a pretty good reading.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to say this to all those who display various shades of anti-Semitic behavior in their conversations, writings, relations, and/or lives: Your attitude is based on your ignorance. If you knew just how the Israelis and the Jews of many nationalities have always defended us against the Armenian and Greek lobbies in the US, (and I can write volumes on their pro-Turkish works), then you would feel nothing but gratitude and respect toward the Jews, as I do; not hatred. If you insist on your anti-Semitic behavior even after you have read this document, then let me ask you this: What have YOU done, in your entire life, in defense of the Turkish position regarding the AAG? If your answer is a huge “nothing”, then that’s exactly how much respect I will have for you in future.

It is time, as the timeless, ageless Turkish saying goes, “we separated those who bring back the jug filled with water from those who break it on the way.”

Peace,

Ergun KIRLIKOVALI

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Legend:
AAG = The alleged Armenian genocide
AFATH = Armenian Falsifiers and Turk Haters
WWI = The First World War
WWII = The Second World War
Ethocide = Extermination of ethics via pre-meditated and malicious mass deception for political, economic, social, and/or moral benefits

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ISRAELI SOURCES REFUTING THE AAG

(Includes quotes from Jews living in USA, Turkey, and Israel)

"…An appropriate analogy with the Jewish Holocaust could be the systematic extermination of all the Moslem population in the Republic of Independent Armenia, which represented at least 30 to 40 % of the total population of this republic..."

The Jewish Times, June 21, 1990, Circulation: 470,000

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"...We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. It is a tragedy what the Armenians went through, but not a genocide."

Israeli Foreign Minister and 1994 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres Turkish Daily News, April 10, 2001, Ankara, Turkey

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"…This issue [of the Armenian Genocide] should be dealt with by historians and not politicians. We do not support the comparison of the Armenian tragedies to the Jewish Holocaust. Israel will not take a historical and political stance on the issue..."

The Israeli Consulate, Los Angeles, USA, April 15, 2001, confirming the Perez statement in response to inquiries from Armenian-American daily Asbarez to the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles, asking whether the Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres did actually say the AAG was meaningless and reject any similarities between the Holocaust and the AAG.

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"…Israel recognizes the tragedy of the Armenians, however, these events can not be compared with a genocide..."

Israeli Foreign Office, Official statement, February 19, 2002

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“…Werfel confessed to me his shame and remorse for having written that story, in which he had blamed the Ottomans as the aggressors and terrorists. Fifty thousand Armenians, residents of villages in and around Erzerum in Turkey, surreptitiously ascended a mountain called Mussa Dagh (dagh is Turkish for mountain) with arms, ammunition, victuals and water, sufficient to withstand a siege of many days. Before ascending that mountain, they had captured hundreds of Muslim Turks and Jews, their fellow citizens and neighbors, with whom they were supposedly on good terms. They murdered them all in cold blood, for no other reason than they were Muslims and Jews. Thereafter, every night armed Armenian bands came down from that mountain and attacked the rear of Ottoman and German armies fighting the Russian invaders. This was at the very beginning of the First World War, and part of the secret plans made by the Russians and assigned to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.

The Turks were mystified. The Armenian attackers would disappear. Try as they did, at first the Ottomans were unable to trace the disappearing Armenians, but finally they discovered that Mussa Dagh was the hiding place. The Ottomans found the mountain fortress unassailable. They laid siege and waited 40 days before the Armenian rear guard conceded defeat and laid down their arms. But the Ottoman forces found the mountain empty. The large army had disappeared down the other side of the mountain where they had found an exit to the Mediterranean. French and British men-of-war had been signaled and they picked up the main army, transporting the soldiers to Alexandria, Egypt, then under the control of the British. Less than 500, the rear guard who gave themselves up, were captured by the Ottomans.

Yet, in telling the story to Werfel to write, the (Armenian) Bishop (in Vienna, Austria) had claimed 50,000 victims captured and put to death, an invented story , just as the story of 1.5 million massacred in 1915. If 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives during that war, they died as soldiers, fighting a war of their own choosing, against the Ottoman Empire which had treated them decently and benignly. They were the duped victims of the Russians, of the Allies, and of their own Armenian leaders…”

Albert Amateau, Notarized Statement, ( on Franz Werfel’s confesions & Armenian treason), FTAA, New York, 1992

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“… As an American Jew who did live thru The Way (born 1938), I have a personal concern with the Holocaust. I also lived in Turkey for five years and learned and saw how well the Turks have treated the Jews.

I found your article very strange. The tack taken was that the Turks are guilty, the Turks are known to have done it, why don't they 'fess up, it will make them feel better…The Turkish position is not that they don't want anyone to discuss it or know about the controversy. They claim that the Armenians turned to help invading Russians against their host country and that the now hostile Armenians were relocated as part of war operations. While this caused suffering and death to Armenians, it was no greater than the suffering borne by Turks and Kurds in that area.

What enrages Turks is quite the opposite of what you portray. Instead of suppressing history, the Turks have tried, over and over, to bring out the history and the studies, but to no avail. The Armenians came to the United States earlier and in far greater numbers than the Turks. They have their own enclaves in Fresno and elsewhere, which the Turks lack. The Armenians are better situated politically to shout their cause in legislatures, while the Turks are left to murmur. The Turks have abundant historical records, arguments and diplomatic reports on their side. The Armenians have over 70 recent murders of Turks around the world (and most likely more being planned) to prove their historical case.

Where is the academic forum for a dispassionate hearing on the history, with the documents and findings posted on the web for all to see? I would have thought that an institute with a name like Holocaust Studies would be a perfect place. Yet you seem to be more influenced by the harsh complaints of an Armenian friend (my guess) than by any impulse to find the truth.

You have done your Institute and academia a disservice by your rush to decree a result, which should rather have been the outcome of a long investigation, if the investigation did indeed arrive at that result…”

Paul Palmer, PhD. (Yale, Chemistry), February 09, 2001, from a letter sent to Steven Feinstein, an AFATH sympathizing genocide scholar

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“… Turks at no time in their history have committed a Genocide. Even the first Prime Minister of Armenia said it himself. Please do not allow dishonoring and defaming of our true ally Turkey, just because some people are speaking lies and half truths. Please stand firm with and for our real friends…

…(Here is) the Manifesto of Hovhannes Katchaznouni, the first PM of the Independent Armenian Republic, published by the Armenian Information Service Suite 7D, 471 Park Ave., New York 22 - 1955 :

‘… The war with us was inevitable... We had not done all that was necessary for us to have done to evade war. We ought to have used peaceful language with the Turks...We had no information about the real strength of the Turks and relied on ours. This was the fundamental error. We were not afraid of war because we thought we could win... Our army was well fed and well armed and [clothed] but it did not fight. The troops were constantly retreating and deserting their positions ; they threw away their arms and dispersed in the villages. ...In spite of the fact that the Armenians had better material and better support, their armies lost. ..... the advancing Turks fought only against the regular soldiers ; they did not carry the battle to the civilian sector. ....the Turkish soldiers were well-disciplined and that there had not been any massacres…’

Rachel Krespin, Fairfield, CT,
In her letter to President Bush, sent April 23, 2002

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“…My maternal family is from Edirne and that my mother at the age of four moved to live in Samsun in 1920 (at the footsteps of great Ataturk)…I am the grand-daughter of Nesim Bey from Bursa, (who) fought Turkey’s War of Independence, during the Greek occupation of his city. (Nesim Bey) was so instrumental in the resistance, that the Greek had declared him “wanted” with a significant sum of “drahmi”s for his head. It was my grandmother Rahil (my namesake), who (hiding in her attic) single-handedly sew all the Turkish flags that would adorn every roof-top in Bursa, on the day of liberation, November 11, 1921.

… We organized campaigns, made donations, wrote letters, in our effort to defend and elevate the good name of Turks and Turkey. We always stood together against many challenges, like slanders and “genocide libels”, and against all those who made a profession of Turkey-bashing…We tirelessly disseminated information about the Turks and Turkey and how this great nation welcomed my ancestors escaping the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. How Sultan Beyazid II opened the doors of the vast Ottoman Empire to provide a safe haven for us, the Sephardic Jews.(who joined the other Jews of Anatolia, who had been there thousand years and had welcomed the Seljuk Turks there). That kind of history makes good friends.

When our brethren in Europe’s Christendom suffered, lived in ghettos and were persecuted, we lived considerably better, among the Moslem Turks. We flourished, brought “printing” to the empire, contributed to thought and literature and served our country with loyalty and honor. The relations throughout our common history were mostly fruitful, mutually beneficial and friendly. These friendly ties, knotted over and over for centuries, found expression also in the recognition of the State of Israel soon after her birth, by the then young Republic of Turkey and in the continued bilateral relations and cooperation between the two countries.

Turkey has also been a dependable ally of America, for decades. Turks have fought heroically, side by side with Americans in Korea, have stood firm defending the borders of the NATO alliance, of which Turkey is a member, during the long Cold War years and continued to contribute their share more recently, in Bosnia and Afghanistan.

Rachel Krespin, ACJTR, speech delivered at the 25th Convention of ATAA in Washington DC 11 December 2004 (ACJTR: The American Council on Jewish-Turkish Relations, a non-profit organization dedicated to the defense and protection of the historic friendship between the Turkish, Jewish and American peoples. Website: www.acjtr.org )

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”…ISRAEL AGAIN RESPONDS TO ARMENIAN DIPLOMATIC NOTE ON GENOCIDE. In a 19 February (2002) response to Armenia's diplomatic note of 15 February, the Israeli Foreign Ministry again rejected any comparison between the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the Holocaust, according to Mediamax and Arminfo, as cited by Groong. ‘Israel recognizes the tragedy of the Armenians and the massacre of the Armenian people, but at the same time believes that this should not be described as genocide,’ the Israeli statement said. Armenia had protested an earlier statement made in Yerevan on 8 February by Rivka Kohen, Israel's ambassador to both Armenia and Georgia. Kohen characterized the 1915 killings as ‘merely atragedy’ that cannot be compared to the Holocaust …”

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, February 19, 2002. (RFE/RL is a private, international communications service to Eastern and Southeastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus, Central and Southwestern Asia, funded by the U.S. government, currently listing in its website 22 languages of broadcast. This article is from the Armenian language section.)

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“… I would like to relate, especially to the Armenian friends, this incident that I heard. I am a Jew, of Istanbul origin, and have lived in Israel for the last 35 years. My wife’s father is a Caucasus-Jew who died before I could get to know him. As far as I can remember, they had escaped from the Caucasus when he was a young boy and resettled in Adana (an agricultural and trade hub, as well as a port city in the South of Turkey). About 10 years ago, at a family wedding, I met an old gentleman who knew about my deceased father-in-law and mentioned some incidents about his childhood, his family, and the turmoil of those days, that were quite interesting to us. According to what he told me, During WWI, the Russians invaded the Caucasus, and with the help of local Armenians, they have chased Turks and Jews, killed whoever they could catch, and then pillaged and plundered Turkish and Jewish villages. He was about 10 years old and my father-in-law was only 3 and he said there is no way he could forget that exodus, that fleeing. Turks and Jews brought with them to Anatolia whatever they could pack with them. Jewish families first went to Van (a city by the lake Van in Eastern Anatolia). While some Jewish families settled there, others continued their travel to settle in Adana and other places, and still others went as far as Palestine.

What I am trying to my Armenian friends is this: everything has a prior history. If the Armenian attack and kill Turks, Turks, in their quest to avenge those Armenian atrocities, may have caused massacres in their counter attacks and chases. Aren’t these ‘eye for an eye’ feuds conventional and normal under the conditions of those days? In contrast, what the Germans did to 6 million Jews can not be explained by such feuds, chases, or civil wars; there was absolutely no reason for the Holocaust. I never quite understood how the Armenians want to be included in the same category as the Jews of Holocaust. Let’s leave those old issues and the old world behind. Let’s look at the present. Let’s talk about what we can do to create a beautiful, happy new world… We should learn from those old stories and history; we should talk about the truth and agree on it; and let’s together build a more secure world to hand over to our children…Nobody benefits from feuds, hatred, and animosity; one can only gain tears that way; let’s worry about tomorrow, brothers, tomorrow! “

Momo Asafrana, Tel Avıv, written in a private chat group, December 3, 2004

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“…I see no problem in your quoting my story in your book. Those who create all this fuss around the Armenian issue do not want to understand one thing: instead of teaching love and brotherhood to their kids, they are teaching grudge and hatred (like the Palestinians do). What do they want to achieve with this attitude? Enough of this animosity already…The age old Armenian issue no longer interests me. My children’s future is more important…”

Momo Asafrana, December 09, 2004, responding to writer’s request for permission to publish his story above.

Momo Asafrana, Tel Avıv, written in a private chat group, December 3, 2004 *******************

“…We have first hand information and evidence of Armenian atrocities against our people (Jews). Members of our family witnessed the murder of 148 members of our family near Erzurum, Turkey, by Armenian neighbors, bent on destroying anything and anybody remotely Jewish and/or Muslim... Armenians were in league with Hitler in the last war, on his premise to grant themselves government if, in return, the Armenians would help exterminate Jews. Armenians were also hearty proponents of the anti-Semitic acts in league with the Russian Communists.

Elihu Ben Levi, Vacaville, California. San Francisco Chronicle, December 11, 1983

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"…Saying that the massacre of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was the same as what happened to Jews in Nazi Germany is a downright falsehood. What happened to the Armenians was the result of a massive Armenian armed rebellion against the Turks, which began even before war broke out, and continued on a larger scale. Great numbers of Armenians, including members of the armed forces, deserted, crossed the frontier and joined the Russian forces invading Turkey. Armenian rebels actually seized the city of Van and held it for a while intending to hand it over to the invaders. There was guerilla warfare all over Anatolia. There is clear evidence of a decision by the Turkish Government, to deport the Armenian population from the sensitive areas. Which meant naturally the whole of Anatolia. Not including the Arab provinces which were then still part of the Ottoman Empire. There is no evidence of a decision to massacre. On the contrary, there is considerable evidence of attempt to prevent it…"

Bernard Lewis, on the American TV C-SPAN 2, 25 March, 2002

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"… Armenians again flooded the czarist armies, and the czar returned to St. Petersburg confident that the day finally had come for him to reach Istanbul. Hostilities were opened by Russians, who pushed across the border on November 1, 1914, though the Ottomans stopped them and pushed them back a few days later. A subsequent Russian counter offensive in January caused the Ottoman army to scatter.and the way was prepared for a new Russian push into eastern Anatolia, to be accompanied by an open Armenian revolt against the sultan...

Armenian leaders in Russia now openly declared their support of the enemy and there seemed no other alternative. It would be impossible to determine which of the Armenians would remain loyal and which would follow the appeals of their leaders. As soon as the spring came, then, in mid-May 1915 orders were issued to evacuate the entire Armenian population from the provinces of Van, Bitlis, and Erzurum, to get them away from all areas where they might undermine the Ottoman campaigns against Russia or against the British in Egypt, with arrangements made to settle them in towns and camps in the Mosul area of Northern Iraq. In addition, Armenians residing in the countryside (but not in the cities) of the Cilician districts as well as those of north Syria were to be sent to central Syria for the same reason. Specific instructions were issued for the army to protect the Armenians against nomadic attacks and to provide them with sufficient food and other supplies to meet their needs during the march and after they were settled. Warnings were sent to the Ottoman military commanders to make certain that neither the Kurds nor any other Muslims used the situation to gain vengeance for the long years of Armenian terrorism. The Armenians were to be protected and cared for until they returned to their homes after the war…"

Prof. Of History at UCLA, History Of The Ottoman Empire And modern Turkey, Cambridge University Press, 1977, Vol. II, p 315.

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