03 11 2007 - Jews, Armenians : « Solidarity for the befallen »

IMPORTANT MESSAGE Jews, Armenians :
Dear Friend and Compatriot,
To support the efforts of the Armenian organizations and many activists of the United States of America, the Co-ordination Council of Armenian Organisations of France (CCAF) publishes on You Tube* the speech of the writer and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, author of "American Vertigo".

The philosopher puts into parallel the dramas suffered by the Jews and Armenian people. He recalls that « Denying the genocide. Denying it for twenty years, thirty years, fifty years or ninety years, it is for this very reason a cynical, horrible, sordid way to continue perpetrating the crime, reproducing it and perfecting it so that the crime becomes flawless. The Jews know it well and the Armenians knew it before them. For the crime to be perfect, it has to be traceless. And for it to be traceless, it has to be annihilated even from the memories of survivors and descendents. There must be a law against genocide-denial, because genocide-denial is, in a strict sense, the ultimate stage of genocide. » This historical speech for all Armenians around the world sheds a highly philosophical, moral and legal light against revisionist theories at a time when American congressmen have expressed their opinions on a Resolution on the Armenian Genocide, Res. 106, and while Turkish diplomacy is going through great lengths to prevent the adoption of the Resolution by influencing Jewish organizations and the State of Israel in particular. This document forcefully cries out "Solidarity for the befallen" and reminds citizens of the world that the moral values of democracy cannot cohabit with geographic strategies at the risk of seeing other crimes against humanity, such as the recent ones in Rwanda and Darfur, repeating themselves. To make adopt Res.H.106 by the House of Representatives, thank you to transmit urgently this link to the American media and Jewish organizations. Jean Eckian for CCAF Independent correspondent Former producer for CBS records France Originator of the Armenian Memorial www.inhomage.com/index.php?page historical_quotations with the support of Charles Aznavour*You Tube link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?vI9Pv89pykC0 Reproduction authorized for television: loading on this link (93Mo) http://www.armenews.com/videos/BHL_soutitre.zip PS: in attachment, a document with 126 signatures of eminent researchers specialists of the Shoah that recognized the Armenian Genocide. A document addressed to the French Parliament. Their position always is it even. Last News: According Jean-Claude Gaudin, Vice President of the French Senate and Mayor of the Marseilles's town:
" United States must resist the Turkish pressures and recognize the Armenian genocide of 1915. We, we did it ", he added, referring to the law voted in January 2001 by the French members of Parliament to recognize the Armenian genocide "in spite of the threats of Ankara's sanctions." Bernard-Henri Levy on You Tube Video Jews, Armenians : « Solidarity for the befallen » Armenians must deal with a type of revisionism, which is no longer sectarian, but is rather State-run. Facing them and against them is a large, powerful State that possesses all imaginable blackmailing means on its side. And it is true that, during these last couple of hours, while I was thinking about all of this and about the brief time I'd be spending with you, I was asking myself what would have happened to the survivors of the Holocaust. What would have happened to the Jews of my generation born in the aftermath of the Holocaust if they were faced with a structurally revisionist Germany.
A Germany denying the Crime. This is the situation of the Armenians. And this is what makes this situation particularly tragic. Also, the fact is that the truth is not enough. The truth, both in its bareness and its strength, is not almighty against bastards. It's that, in this story, faced with this form of insanity, faced with the views of those who are not here to express an opinion, but as I told you earlier, are here to state that the reality did not exist, faced with those who are here to say that your grand-parents or great grand-parents weren't actually killed. Or didn't really die in that way. Or claim that they have died this way due to obscure interests, for which you are responsible, you the Armenians and us the Jews.
Faced with this. Faced with this particular passion. Faced with this infinite cruelty.Faced with this brutal hatred that words can hardly describe, the truth is in fact powerless. It is something other than a lie. It is something different than a battle between what's true and what's false. It is a type of hatred, whose name we know so well. Anti-Semitic hatred on the one hand, and racist hatred on the other. A type of hatred that can only be stopped by Law. Let's put it in a different way. The Genocides. Both these> Genocides.The Genocide of the Jews and the Genocide of the Armenians.The attempt to exterminate without a trace these two nations.Among all the crimes invented by humanity, this crime still has another particularity. One of the things which characterizes and distinguishes a genocide is the following: it includes in its actual plan of action, at the very moment the criminal act is carried out, it already incorporates its own denial. The revisionist act is contemporary of the criminal act. That was the case for Hitlerians. It is known how Himmler, in June 1942, established a Special Commando :
Commando No. 10 05 to dig up corpses, to burn them and to scatter the ashes. It is known how the Nazis invented euphemisms. They spoke of transfers, evacuations, of displacements of populations in order to avoid calling them exterminations at all costs. The same applies to Armenians. A criminal act that has the following in particular, it is being denied while being carried out. Vice-versa. Denying the genocide. Denying it for twenty years, thirty years, fifty years or ninety years, it is for this very reason a cynical, horrible, sordid way to continue perpetrating the crime, reproducing it and perfecting it so that the crime becomes flawless. The Jews know it well and the Armenians knew it before them.
For the crime to be perfect, it has to be traceless. And for it to be traceless, it has to be annihilated even from the memories of survivors and descendents. This is how we can do away with the Jews. This is how we can do away with the Armenians. And this is the reason why revisionism can rightfully be qualified as the ultimate stage of genocide. And this is why it is so important that it be punishable by Law.
Paris, Palais de la Mutualite French version on
:http://www.dailymotion.com/JakiAladin/video/x37s8d
devoir-de-memoire-un-droit-moral-a_politics Extracts Some say, "it is not up to the Law to write History. That's absurd. Because history has already been written. That the Armenians were the victims of an attempt at genocide, in the strict sense of the word; namely, of a planned operation of systematic annihilation. It has been stated by Churchill and proclaimed by Jaures. Peguy, at the very moment he sided with Dreyfus, he talked about the commencement of this genocide as "the biggest massacre of the century." The Turks themselves admit it. Indeed, it is something which is not known enough - as early as 1918, Mustapha Kemal acknowledged the killings perpetrated by the government of the Young Turks; military courts were established, rendering hundreds of death sentences. And I am not talking about genocide historians or theoreticians, nor am I talking about the researchers of Yad Vashem, or about Yehuda Bauer, or Raoul Hilberg. I am not talking either about all those scholars for whom, with the exception of Bernard Lewis, the question of whether or not there was a genocide is undeniable and unquestionable. […]

Others say, "Careful not to mix everything up, the risk should not> be taken of trivializing the Holocaust." My response to that is crystal clear. It is true that it is not the same, in the number of those killed, in the degree of irrationality attained by the assassins, and in the very specific type of relationship involved in the technique of inventing a gas chamber, it is true, in fact, that all these elements give the Holocaust an irreducible singularity. But, I must add two remarks to this obvious fact. Firstly, it is perhaps not the "same," but they are alike to say the least. And the first who knew this, the first to take action, was a certain Adolf Hitler, needless to say, who was so affected by the Armenian genocide and reflected upon it, and if I may dare say, was inspired by it. This Armenian genocide, this first genocide, was « the » – first one - in every sense of the word : an exemplary genocide and almost seminal; a trial run genocide, a genocide laboratory, considered as such by the Nazis. […] In short, to those who would be tempted to play the game of war between memories, I want to reply by pleading for the fraternity of the victims of genocides. That is the position of Jan Patocka, the philosopher of the "solidarity of the shaken". That was the position of the pioneers of Israel, who had, all of them, the intimate understanding of a common destiny with the cast away Armenians.
The fight against genocide-denial may not be divided. To give the opportunity to one would amount to opening a breach for the other. Finally, some say – and this is supposed to be the definitive argument - : « why not leave the truth to defend itself ? Isn't it strong enough to impose itself and reveal the lies of the denialists ? Precisely, no ! Because this anti-armenian denialism has a particularity which cannot be found, for instance, in the denialism against the Jews: it is a State denialism. It is a deniailism which is supported by the resources, the diplomacy, the blackmailing capacity, of a big State. Imagine for a moment what would have been the situation of the survivors of the Shoah, if the germain State had been, after the war, a denalist State ! Imagine their surplus of distress if they have had, against them, a non-repentant Germany, threatening its partners of retaliatory measures if they qualify as genocide the tragedy of mean, women and children having been triaged on the roadway of Auschwitz ! That is the situation you are in, fellow Armenians; and there is an adversity here which has no equivalent, and I am not sure that the truth, in its beautiful nudity, has enough strength to oppose it.
One final word. You remember Himmler forming, in June 1942, a special commando, the commando 10-05, whose mission was to unearth the corpses and to burn them. You do know the euphemisms used to avoid saying "mass murder" et thus to erase, even in speech, the mark of what was being done. Well, that law which is the one of the Shoah, that theorem which I call the theorem of Claude Lanzmann et according to which the perfect crime is a crime without a trace, and the suppression of the trace is an integral part of the crime itself, that evident reality of a denialism which is not the continuation but a consubstantial moment of the genocide, all this is true for all genocides, including therefore, unfortunately, the genocide of the Armenian people. We think that people are expressing an opinion: they are perpetuating the crime. They present themselves as free-thinkers, disciples of doubt and suspicion: they are bringing the work of death to completion.
There must be a law against genocide-denial, because genocide-denial is, in a strict sense, the ultimate stage of genocide. Bernard-Henri Levy (Le Monde, 02.02.2007). Translation Haytoug Chamlian

Jean ECKIAN