Bennett's Visit: Why???

Well, the right wing Israelis are busy trying to serve two masters themselves, and screwing themselves over in the long term, complicating the issues.



To advocate a fantasy of five hundred years of harmony, the most influential Jewish leaders within Turkey - chief rabbis David Asseo and Ishak Haleva, the editors in chief of the Jewish weekly Salom and lay leaders such as industrialist Jak Kamhi andformer Jewish community president Bensiyon Pinto - opposed recognition of the Armenian genocide.


They were joined by supporters in Israel (including presidents Shimon Peres and Moshe Katzav, as well as the Foreign Ministry, and the Union of Turkish Immigrants in Israel) and almost every major American Jewish organisation, including the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, and the most influential Jewish historians of the Ottoman Empire, Bernard Lewis and Stanford Shaw.


They also denied the existence of Turkish anti-Semitism. In their view, genocide is an if/then proposition: if one accepts that Turks and Jews have lived in peace and brotherhood for five hundred years, then one trusts that Turks could not possibly have perpetrated a genocide against the Armenians.


 

Forum List

Back
Top