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  Henry Morgenthau III: Chip Off the Old Blockhead  
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 The Armenian mouthpiece newspaper of The Boston Globe, sister publication of the Armenian-friendly New York Times, had published an article by Henry Morgenthau III, grandson of Ambassador Morgenthau.

 

 
"Acknowledging the Murder of a Nation"


By Henry Morgenthau III, 11/1/2003


THE STATE-SPONSORED murder of the Armenian people is often called the "forgotten genocide." Hitler, when contemplating the consequences of his final solution for the Jews, argued, "Who, after all, remembers the extermination of the Armenians?"

Indeed, for about three-quarters of a century the Armenian genocide has been on the one hand largely forgotten while it has been vehemently denied by its Turkish perpetrators. Even the US government has failed to acknowledge it.

Henry Morgenthau III

The grandkid. served as a prosecutor

Neglect of the historical truths was not always the case. Peter Balakian's new book, "The Burning Tigris;The Armenian Genocide and the American Response," recalls the outcries of idealistic men and women during the last decades of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th that made the plight of the Armenians headline news and fueled an outpouring of charitable donations.

In the 1890s, Abdul-Hamid II, known as "the bloody Sultan," horrified Europe with the massacre of some 200,000 Armenians. While British Prime Minister William Gladstone made the issue his personal cause, news spread to like-minded people in America.

Balakian's book offers a vivid account of a great assembly on Nov. 26, 1894, at Boston's Faneuil Hall. Orators included people who had made their names as abolitionists and advocates for women's suffrage. There was an impassioned address by Julia Ward Howe, author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Words were followed by action when the United Friends of Armenia became a conduit for raising funds and consciousness.

Those aware of the Armenian holocaust generally focus on the subsequent events that began in 1915 under the rule of the Young Turks and resulted in the extermination of more than a million men, women, and children. These events, following a kind of Armenian Kristallnacht in Constantinople, as Istanbul was then called, on April 24, virtually wiped out the entire Armenian elite — intellectual, political, and financial. My grandfather, Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador to Turkey at the time, acted personally to try to stem the tide.

In Balakian's words, "Ambassador Morgenthau went beyond the duty of his job as he became the crucial nexus between the killing fields and the American community and press back home. A man of high moral conscience, Ambassador Morgenthau was most likely the first high ranking diplomat to confront boldly the leaders of the Ottoman government."

 


He strenuously reported his concerns back to the State Department in Washington, where he was met not so much with opposition as with a numbing lack of interest.

Henry Morgenthau

Like grandpappy, like
grandson

To get Morgenthau off his back, Secretary Robert Lansing encouraged him to seek aid from private sources. He did. The result was the establishment of the Armenian Atrocities Committee, later redesignated as the Armenian Syrian Relief Committee and finally the great Near East Relief Organization chartered by Congress in 1919, which raised millions of dollars to the battle cry "remember the starving Armenians."

There followed a long dark night for the Armenians as a people, seemingly deprived of both their past and their future. Survivors dispersed abroad, while the United States retreated into isolationism, and remnants of an Armenian nation disappeared behind the Iron Curtain.

Now, hopefully, the light of remembrance is being rekindled for a struggling independent Armenian republic that attracts the support of prosperous and politically well-connected Americans from the diaspora. And, most important, Armenian voices resonate with pain and poignancy as they recount their own heritage.

Turkish acknowledgment of these historic truths is long overdue. In the past the Turks went to great lengths to discredit Morgenthau and his writings. Is it too much to expect that they will soon accept responsibility for events that so clearly fit the definition of genocide?

The Turks would do well to follow the example of modern-day Germany, which has found healing in repenting for the Nazi Holocaust with restitution, monuments of remembrance, and partnership with Israelis.

And the time is overdue for the US government to stop being intimidated by our Turkish allies and officially recognize that there was a genocide.

Privately, among the younger generation of Turks, many would agree.


Henry Morgenthau III is the author of "Mostly Morgenthaus, A Family History" and an extended epilogue to the annotated edition of "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story," republished recently.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

A Response by a Turkish-American:



To the Boston Globe Editor:

That Henry Morgenthau III would think his progenitor, Henry Morgenthau the First, was a great guy, is understandable. After all, Alessandra Mussolini, Italian MP and granddaughter of Il Duce, thinks that her grandfather Benito was a great man as well.

The fact is, in 1915, the first Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, was desperately trying to draw the U.S. into WWI. An ardent Zionist, Morgenthau was hoping that a defeat and breakup of the Ottoman Empire would lead to the creation of a Jewish state. Furthermore, Morgenthau was none too happy about Theodore Herzl being kicked out of the palace some two decades earlier for daring to offer money to the Ottoman sovereign for the "purchase" of an Israel.

Historical revisionism by fanatical, hatemongering Armenians and their lackeys aside, the fact remains that in 1915, the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire rose in a massive, armed uprising with the aim of creating an ethnically pure Armenian state in Ottoman provinces where the Armenians constituted no more than 18% of the population. In this massive treason occurring during wartime when the Ottoman state was besieged on all fronts, the Armenian traitors massacred hundreds of thousands of Turks, Kurds, Muslims, Jews and anyone and everyone who happened to be non-Armenian. In the eastern city of Van alone, the treacherous Armenian traitors murdered sixty thousand civilians, eventually handing over the city to an invading Russian army. Even the hardened Russian soldiers were sickened at the sight of the atrocities committed by Armenians — so much so that the Russian commander at the scene informed his superiors that he would resign unless he was given permission to pull the murderous Armenians to the back of the lines.

The junior Morgenthau's repetition of the fake Hitler quote, " Who, after all, remembers the extermination of the Armenians?" brings to mind the question asked of Sen. Joe McCarthy: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" The fact is, the Hitler quote is as bogus as the Protocols of the Elders Of Zion. Dr. Robert John, a political analyst and historian of Armenian descent, many decades ago, pronounced the Hitler quote as fake and said it should not be used by Armenians. It is shameful of Morgenthau III and his benefactors to continue to perpetuate this odious canard.

Aggressors who happen to lose in the end will always attempt to rewrite history. Their offspring, having been raised with hate propaganda, will tend to be fanatical and delusional in their concerted effort at revisionism. And having deep pockets, they will have no problem acquiring hacks and lackeys to further this disgraceful attempt at rewriting history.

But facts do not change — no matter how slick the con job: In 1915, the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire attempted a bloody land-grab with savage methods of murder, rape, pillage and plunder. In the end, they lost — justice prevailed. Ever since then, these people have been trying to hoodwink the world into believing that a genocide of Armenians occurred. Nothing is beyond the pale as far as these slick operators are concerned. They repeat phony Hitler quotes. Shamelessly, they try to ride the coattails of the very real holocaust of European Jewry by their hijacking of catchphrases, e.g., "Holocaust denier/genocide denier."

At long last, have these people no sense of decency? The Armenian "genocide" is the first and biggest hoax of the twentieth century, far eclipsing the hoax of Clifford Irving's faked autobiography of Howard Hughes. We have witnessed disgraceful lies like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Armenian Lie is on a par. I'll go one further than the interlocutor of Joe McCarthy: Is there no limit to the depravity of some hatemongering Armenian fanatics and their lackeys?

Ilyas Botas

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE PURPOSE OF TALL ARMENIAN TALE (TAT)
...Is to expose the mythological “Armenian genocide,” from the years 1915-16. A wartime tragedy involving the losses of so many has been turned into a politicized story of “exclusive victimhood,” and because of the prevailing prejudice against Turks, along with Turkish indifference, those in the world, particularly in the West, have been quick to accept these terribly defamatory claims involving the worst crime against humanity. Few stop to investigate below the surface that those regarded as the innocent victims, the Armenians, while seeking to establish an independent state, have been the ones to commit systematic ethnic cleansing against those who did not fit into their racial/religious ideal: Muslims, Jews, and even fellow Armenians who had converted to Islam. Criminals as Dro, Antranik, Keri, Armen Garo and Soghoman Tehlirian (the assassin of Talat Pasha, one of the three Young Turk leaders, along with Enver and Jemal) contributed toward the deaths (via massacres, atrocities, and forced deportation) of countless innocents, numbering over half a million. What determines genocide is not the number of casualties or the cruelty of the persecutions, but the intent to destroy a group, the members of which  are guilty of nothing beyond being members of that group. The Armenians suffered their fate of resettlement not for their ethnicity, having co-existed and prospered in the Ottoman Empire for centuries, but because they rebelled against their dying Ottoman nation during WWI (World War I); a rebellion that even their leaders of the period, such as Boghos Nubar and Hovhannes Katchaznouni, have admitted. Yet the hypocritical world rarely bothers to look beneath the surface, not only because of anti-Turkish prejudice, but because of Armenian wealth and intimidation tactics. As a result, these libelous lies, sometimes belonging in the category of “genocide studies,” have become part of the school curricula of many regions. Armenian scholars such as Vahakn Dadrian, Peter Balakian, Richard Hovannisian, Dennis Papazian and Levon Marashlian have been known to dishonestly present only one side of their story, as long as their genocide becomes affirmed. They have enlisted the help of "genocide scholars," such as Roger Smith, Robert Melson, Samantha Power, and Israel Charny… and particularly  those of Turkish extraction, such as Taner Akcam and Fatma Muge Gocek, who justify their alliance with those who actively work to harm the interests of their native country, with the claim that such efforts will help make Turkey more" democratic." On the other side of this coin are genuine scholars who consider all the relevant data, as true scholars have a duty to do, such as Justin McCarthy, Bernard Lewis, Heath Lowry, Erich Feigl and Guenter Lewy. The unscrupulous genocide industry, not having the facts on its side, makes a practice of attacking the messenger instead of the message, vilifying these professors as “deniers” and "agents of the Turkish government." The truth means so little to the pro-genocide believers, some even resort to the forgeries of the Naim-Andonian telegrams or sources  based on false evidence, as Franz Werfel’s The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Naturally, there is no end to the hearsay "evidence" of the prejudiced pro-Christian people from the period, including missionaries and Near East Relief representatives, Arnold Toynbee, Lord Bryce, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and so many others. When the rare Westerner opted to look at the issues objectively, such as Admirals Mark Bristol and Colby Chester, they were quick to be branded as “Turcophiles” by the propagandists. The sad thing is, even those who don’t consider themselves as bigots are quick to accept the deceptive claims of Armenian propaganda, because deep down people feel the Turks are natural killers and during times when Turks were victims, they do not rate as equal and deserving human beings. This is the main reason why the myth of this genocide has become the common wisdom.