Israel and Armenian Genocide
Regarding Gorenberg’s great article, it was written on such a high moral track that it was uplifting to me personally as it would be to any offspring of survivors of the Armenian massacres of 1915-1921 by the Ottoman Turks.
Turkish interference in the affairs of sovereign nations such as Israel is not a new phenomenon, however. Open Turkish involvement in the internal affairs of our country has long surpassed even intolerable levels.
My husband, former Rep. George E. Danielson, fought the Turkish lobby in Washington all through the 1970s and early ‘80s as the Turks successfully importuned the Nixon and succeeding administrations to join in its bankrupt denial of the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turks. Here’s just one example of Turkish interference: When Rep. Danielson was granted prior approval for a contingent of the U.S. Marine Corps band to participate in ground-breaking ceremonies of the Armenian Martyrs Monument in Montebello, Calif., the Turkish embassy got wind of it and successfully persuaded the Nixon Administration to cancel the Marine Corps appearance. Reason given by the Administration: “The band needed to practice.”
So, if “keeping good ties with Turkey is a shameful excuse for Israel’s lobbying against a memorial--an American one, at that--to the Turks’ massacre of 1 million Armenians,” then the Bush Administration’s lobbying against that same memorial for the same reason is not only no less shameful but morally corrupt and indefensible on any grounds, because it relegates the lives and revered memories of 1 1/2 million Armenian martyrs to mere pawns.
And maybe Times readers are not aware that Turkey is also butting in on our internal affairs by lobbying hard for the omission of the Armenian genocide in the Holocaust memorial being built in Washington, D.C., even though the original Monument Commission committed itself to include it.
Who listens, then, when the Bush Administration sounds off on lives lost at Tian An Men Square in China? Selective morality is immorality!
CANDY DANIELSON, Monterey Park
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