PEERING BEYOND PYRRHIC VICTORY: THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Two New Must See Documentaries, One by Andrew Goldberg,
the Other by Laurence Jourdan

Armenian News Network / Groong
April 12, 2006

By Bedros Afeyan


It has been a long struggle. Especially starting in 1915, and lasting
the length of WWI, Genocide was perpetrated, premeditated, systematic,
targeting Christian (non-Muslim) populations of the villages in
Anatolia, in the Ottoman heartland, displacing and wiping out the
Armenian (and Assyrian and any other unassimilatable) infidels (called
Gyavoors in Turkish).

Who organized it? The Ittihadists, members of the Committee of Union
and Progress, better known as the Young Turks. Which triumvirate ran
that infamous outfit? Talaat Pasha, minister of the interior of the
Ottoman Empire, Enver Pasha, its Minister of the Army and Jemal Pasha,
its minister of the Navy and Marines. A Million and a half Armenians
perished. The Anatolian planes were evacuated of their indigenous
Armenian population. This crime against humanity and civilization lay
dormant, away from public view, for decades after initial full
official admission, trials, and for its leaders, death sentences
handed out in absentia in 1919.

Were there any survivors? Yes, making it to the other side of the
Syrian and Mesopotamian deserts, the killing fields, the skull mounds,
the red rivers with floating human debris, rag tag caravans of
survivors settled in Syria and Lebanon. Some other survivors crawled
back up into Europe, Bulgaria, Greece, France, or the long voyage by
sea to America. Armenians dispersed, regrouped, overcame the
catastrophic whiplash, slowly realized that an unprecedented crime had
been committed against them as an entire nation. It was genocide since
they were targeted for being OTHER than Turks, OTHER than Muslims,
other than assimilatable, convertible, absolutely controllable, yet
ambitious, industrious and defenseless masses.


And so it went. How did the decision to go through with these horrors
get taken? Who was in on it? Who, if anyone, whispered this solution
into the ears of the Young Turks? How did this escalation take place
from intermittent violent massacres, ordered by Sultan Hamid, under
the guise of suppressing insurrections, such as those from 1894-1896,
and those of 1909, where over 250,000 Armenians died, to the full
scale plan of eradication of all Armenians from Ottoman territory?
Did they come up with this all by themselves? How did the
dehumanization campaigns against the Armenians intensify? The
scapegoating, the trumped up treasonous and disloyalty charges, the
vilification, who was in charge of these campaigns? Was there any blow
back? Who was setting up the standards and practices? What feedback
did they get from their Central-Powers partners? What were the
reactions of the Turkish officials from the provinces, the Villayets?
What was the response of the local leaders when directed to undertake
the mass deportations, killings, the looting, the ethnic cleansing?

We do not have complete answers to all these questions. We know more
than enough however about the mechanics of what happened. But more
satisfying psychological and sociological facts and analyses remain to
be uncovered. Ottoman archives, if left unadulterated and with free
access, may turn out to be a rich treasure trove describing how the
religious minority semi-self-rule system, known as the Millets
actually worked. How awkward was it? How painful for the second class
(non-Muslim) citizenry did it get (much before the genocidal turn of
events)? What barbarism and inhumane treatments were seen as
acceptable for centuries, again, before events took a turn for the
worse, with the hatching and execution of `the final solution?'

The two documentaries entitled: The Armenian Genocide' one by Andrew
Goldberg, Two Cats Productions, 58 minutes, USA, 2006, and the other
by Laurence Jourdan, Phares & Balises, 102 minutes, France, 2005,
break the long silence on this massive tragedy in front of the
American public and the whole world. Americans at the turn of the
twentieth century and later knew about the starving Armenians and that
the Near East Relief Society raised and distributed quite a bit of
money (a hundred million dollars by some estimates) for orphanages,
Protestant churches, schools and hospitals. Theodore Roosevelt, among
others, was vociferously outraged at the inhumanity against the
Armenians. But slowly, the world forgot or chose to forget and at the
Versailles treaty the whole world abandoned the remaining
Armenians. Goldberg's and Jourdan's thoughtful documentaries bring all
this back under the light. In the Bay Area, Goldberg's will be aired
on KQED at 10 PM on April the 18th, 2006.  Check your local listings
for the appropriate show time on PBS of this documentary on April 17
or later. KCET, the Flagship West Coast PBS station in LA, on the
other hand, having bought the exclusive US rights to Jourdan's
documentary, Le Genocide Armenien, will air it instead on that same
day.

This is a review of both documentaries. Goldberg's may be found at
http://www.twocatstv.com/armeniangenocide.php while the home page of
Jourdan's is http://www.phares-balises.fr/en/fiche_video.php?video=9.
This reviewer has the French (original) version of the second
documentary and thus cannot comment on the quality of the translation
in the dubbed (English or German) versions. In addition, it should be
mentioned that the Jourdan DVD comes with an extra 50 minute interview
with the eminent genocide historian Yves Ternon. This is itself a
remarkable set of mini lectures full of insights and explanations of
how and why the Armenian genocide was embarked upon and executed and
how the elaborate denialist and negationist schemes began and evolved
in Turkey. It is a must see addition to the impeccable visual
narrative that is Jourdan's documentary itself.

How good are these documentaries? Are they a set of disputed positions
on an obscure chapter of fleeting world history, or do they present
clear historical facts, recounted dispassionately and professionally?
These two documentaries fall in the latter category.  There are some
denialists and Turkish apologists who make numerous appearances in the
Goldberg one, that's true. But overall, the Armenian Genocide does
come through loud and clear in its horrors, screams and stenches. They
both treat the WHAT, HOW and WHY of the Armenian Genocide. But their
styles are quite different. While they both attempt to rely on as much
authentic period footage as they can, their success at doing so is
rather different.

Jourdan's documentary is poetic, evocative and deeply moving. It has
magnificent original footage. When none is to be found, it shows a
fountain pen reenacting the writing of messages in English, French or
German that local diplomats were sending home as alarming dispatches
or observations or pleas for rapid intervention. These exercises in
futile elegant recordings, over and over again, by pristine gold
nibbed pen and ink, transmit the feelings of desperation that any
witness to these systematic attempts at the annihilation of a
religious and ethnic group, the Armenians, must have felt. The quiet
elegance of the fading voices of a small number of 90 or 100 year old
genocide survivors speaking their tales is awesome. They give first
hand accounts of the horrors. The rest is made up of period footage,
some of it remarkable, such as a long line with German generals and
Enver Pasha trying to salute himself and stay with the line... The
same Enver is shown to have written a letter to the Bishop of Konia
thanking him for the valiant efforts of the Armenian soldiers at
Sarykamysh and this on February 26, 1915. A mere two months before the
beginning of the Genocide, where treason, insurrection and disloyalty
were invoked as the pretext! His exact words were: `... I write to
express my satisfaction and gratitude to the Armenian nation, known
forever by its perfect devotion to the imperial Ottoman government.'
Signed, Vice-Generalissimo of the Imperial Army, Enver Pasha...


Jourdan's documentary starts with a broad-strokes history of the
Armenians from antiquity to the end of the nineteenth century before
delving into the history of the Genocide itself, which is its main
theme.  Through maps and old touched up photographs, it shows what our
ancestors looked and dressed like in our villages, how they lived and
what their status was in Ottoman Turkey by the end of the 19th
century. The film footage of that era: shops, street merchants, and
city life in Constantinople are very informative. Then comes the story
of the attempted takeover of Ottoman finances, banking, the port
authority, and train lines by England, France and Germany, with fierce
competition between them. Germany won the Ottoman railway contracts
and the task of modernizing the Ottoman Army to bring it to the level
of the German Army of the day. Reforms are promised to the minorities
in the Ottoman empire. Even the Sultan's emissaries sign in the Berlin
Accord of 1878, a statement declaring that the rights of minorities
would be guaranteed by the Supreme Port. It of course was ignored by
the Sultan, realizing that he could with impunity do anything to crush
his minorities, who were agitating for independence, or at the very
least less oppressive treatment. Thus also began the small band of
Armenian freedom fighter squads, formed to protect the innocent
villagers and fight the oppressive regime for over taxation and a lack
of civil liberties. But then came the expulsion of the Turks from 85%
of their European territories through military defeat in the span of
1912-1913. They finally lost Bulgaria, Greece, Bosnia, Herzegovina,
and all hopes of ever returning there (except recently with a smile
and a hand shake if the European Union so wishes).

The muslim refugees from the Balkans brought horror stories with them
as to how the infidels dominated them and made them suffer.  This
added fuel to Turkish nationalism. They wanted revenge, retribution,
the preservation of honor. In Constantinople (modern day Istambul), it
was feared by the American and German Ambassadors that new massacres
against the Armenians may well ensue in this atmosphere.  And well
they did. Jourdan's documentary even shows caravans of Armenian
refugees escaping the eruption of WWI as the Russian Armies entered
Anatolia. Their oxen-driven covered wagons show the desperation that
their faces can not conceal. And yet, under the pretext of war, the
Turkish authorities laid siege to the city of Van, for instance, in
April 1915. 24,000 Armenians were massacred in 4 days around that
ancient city. In the center of the city, a resistance movement was
assembled by the survivors of these massacres. And again here, Jourdan
has found still photos of these make shift Armenian fighters defending
their fortress city. At the end of 27 days of fighting, Van is
liberated by the Tsar's soldiers.

We are shown the devastation of the city and the aftermath of the
fighting. The footage is incredible.

In Constantinople, the self defense attempted at Van is seen as
insurrection. 600 intellectuals and community leaders are rounded up
and imprisoned. Most of them are deported or executed in the following
weeks. We are shown the photographs of many of these prominent
Armenian poets, clergy, doctors, teachers, architects and
businessmen. And then, we are shown period houses, their abandoned
houses. There follows the orders to begin what ended up being the
massacring of 1 to 1.5 million Armenians mostly in the 1915-1916
period. This plan became quickly known in the halls of the
chancelleries of Western powers. The German Consul General writes in
April 1915: Let us ignore these events since we have more important
interests in these delicate times of war... This letter is shown in
the Jourdan documentary. Now we see the footage of Enver following
like a little puppet, the supreme commander of the German Army and
right next to the Sultan, Mehmet the 5th, as he salutes a large line
of Turkish generals. The voice over explains how crucial the concerns
of the Germans were vis a vis the middle east as new battle fronts
with the French and English and how they just let things go unnoticed
as far as the Armenian genocide was concerned.

We are then shown another great document, which this time is a letter
typed in French. Exactly one month after the commencement of the
Armenian Genocide on April 24, 1915, France, England and Russia send a
joint letter to the Ottoman authorities where the term `crimes against
humanity and civilization' is first used. In it, they specify to the
Sultan (Mehmet the 5th) that he will be held personally responsible
for these crimes including all members of the Ottoman government and
all their agents in the field who are performing these massacres.

Jourdan tells us that the Imperial Ottoman Empire replied on June
4th. The official lying about these crimes began on that day. The
letter states what has been oft repeated since: a categorical denial
that ANY massacres of Armenians have occurred at all (never mind that
they have been eye witnessed by countless foreign diplomats,
photographers, journalists, soldiers, businessmen, charity workers,
missionaries and Arabs, to name but a few). Further stating that the
displacement of Armenians was for their own protection since there was
a war coming and it wasn't safe in the East... Again, lies that have
been repeated over and over again for 91 years... Jourdan shows us
footage of Mehmet the 5th reviewing his troupes as these words are
read in voice over. The letter then states that the Supreme port will
allow itself all ways and means of protecting its borders against all
invaders and that it is not accountable to any foreign government.

We are then told of a communiqué, sent 15 days following the above
declaration by Mehmet the 5th, by the Consular head of Germany in
Constantinople, on June 19th, telling his superiors that conversations
with Talaat Bey make it absolutely clear that the deportation of the
Armenians is not motivated by war time considerations but in order to
radically eliminate its problem Christian subjects, profiting by the
cover of war. Jourdan continues his gold fountain pen sequences by
this German letter itself. The pieces of the puzzle already fall in
place. No one need wonder what the Ottoman motivation was anymore. No
denying premeditation, no excusing as mere hotheadedness what actually
occurred. No one need wonder about why they have to lie about it
today, either. It starts then and there when Talaat Pasha is being
quoted in that German letter as having stated what he believed to be
the position of the Sultan Mehmet the 5th. Talaat had declares that
these actions against the Armenians can now be undertaken without the
undue burden that would follow if the diplomatic corps were to be
allowed to interfere more closely. He was confident the circumstances
of the war would not allow that. After this point, no foreign
government made any concrete attempts to interdict and so there was
nothing standing in the way of the rest of the deportations and
massacres that followed.

We now see Talaat pasha walking down the street with some cronies.  We
hear that he has just declared a provisional law of deportation.
While not mentioning Armenians specifically, it formalizes all that
has been taking place since the beginning of spring. And we are shown
this decree in full Ottoman Turkish glory written in the Arabic
alphabet. We are read a translation of this missive by Talaat. It
authorizes mass deportations by any of the armies of the Ottoman
empire of all peoples that they suspect of treason or espionage. Fine
cover indeed!

We now see a 101 year old survivor being interviewed in Canada in
2004. He depicts the actual mechanics of the deportation. How they
kept tabs on who is leaving, the thumb prints they collected of the
departing Armenians which was supposed to have been proof that they
were leaving voluntarily! The Turks drove the chariots. The Armenians
were encouraged to leave theirs behind. The Turks drove them until
Malatia just dropped them there and hurried away. The survivor is
asked. Did the Turks know why they were taking you there? He smiles,
he raises his hands in the air and says, a 100% sure. They were
delivering us for slaughter and they knew it.

The American consul at Harput, a rather isolated corner of the Empire,
does everything he can to help the Armenian victims and to intervene
with the authorities to stop them. A golden nib appears and reenacts
the writing of the following letter to the US Ambassador.  `All
Armenians are being evicted of the 6 provinces that make up
Armenia. That is over 60,000 in this province and another million in
the other 6 provinces. All must be expelled, seems to be the order!
This is an endeavor never before witnessed in all of history.'

Under the aegis of Talaat Pasha, the Minister of the Interior, a
secret and special organization within the Committee for Union and
Progress organizes the deportations.  We see Talaat seated in an
official meeting place with Enver and two other leaders as we hear
these words. The center of operations was in Erzeroom in the heart of
Oriental Anatolia. Northern convoys were directed towards the central
transit point of Malatia. Eastern and South Eastern convoys were sent
to Ras Ul-Ain. Armenians from Western Anatolia went through the
transit points of Konia and Bozanti, All of these convoys were then
regrouped and directed towards Aleppo in Syria and from there to Deir-
Zor, in the forbidding Syrian and Mesopotamian desert. These death
march paths are shown on a relief map of Anatolia, the Armenian
highlands.

Photographs then show us these deportation orders and victims as they
set en route. This is an amazing way to suddenly feel oneself there,
among them, lost, questioning, wondering where it all might end. And
yet, you can see hope in their plump healthy faces. But then the
narrative and pictures show the convoys isolated, thinning out, and
the voice over tells us that more often than not, the men were
separated and massacred in situ without bothering to take them on long
death marches where they could have revolted and tried resisting that
which was about to happen to their women and children. Escorted by
soldiers and Turkish police forces, women, children and the elderly in
the thousands were taken on forced marches which were to last 100s of
kilometers.

There are other letters shown. Pleas from US consular officers
depicting these marches, the victims, their destiny being death,
despite the assurances to the contrary. These letters describe in
vivid detail the condition of the (surviving) Armenians and what they
were reduced to by just July of 1915, after two months of forced
marches.

We now return to the 101 year old survivor and the rest of his
personal testimonial past Malatia. His father and 500 other men are
outed when the women are forced to remove their headgear. As it turns
out, their large group had 500 male imposters in it. They were taken
away and shot there. He will find them in the tall grass beyond their
encampment the next morning when he is told to go graze the donkeys.
A river of blood was flowing, the boy, now 101, remembers. He runs to
his mother and tells her, I think dad is there, dad is there among the
corpses too, I can not find him! And they move on.

Jourdan's documentary shows us images of these women, on the road,
will little children in make shift shawls carried on their backs.
Head gear, strained looks, surprised, now desperate. The children are
shown half naked, crying, huddled, unwell.  We are told that the
deportations were organized in two stages from May till July 1915,
Eastern Anatolia (historical Armenia) was targeted for deportations
and systematic massacres. Then in the fall and winter and into 1916,
Western Armenia was subjected to the same fate except their proximity
to railway lines allowed a faster method of getting them to the same
deserts. Stuffing them into suffocating wagons of cargo trains, they
were transported to their deaths.

The next scene is that of naval warfare from WWI with the voice over
stating again that a war taking place on 3 continents guaranteed that
no other power would interfere in the internal affairs of the Ottoman
empire. The disastrous campaign of the Entente forces at the
Dardanelles, the long protracted trench warfare, none of this detracts
them from having healthy ambitions in carving up the Ottoman empire
once it is defeated. This is why they met secretly and decided on how
they would do it, who would get what territory into their sphere of
influence, in the so called Sykes Picot agreement. The Armenian
highlands were far from their immediate concern.  Deportations
continued.

A 96 year old survivor now describes how she and her mother were part
of thousands who were massacred atop this hill with butcher knives.
She keeps describing how the blood was flowing non stop as a river,
for hours. Then she loses track of where her mother is. She is struck
down, her mother is struck down. Everyone is struck down. She dies, I
didn't, she says. I don't know why... Why was I spared? So I got up
and marched on...

On Dec. 30, 1915, we get another missive from the Harput Consul to the
US ambassador in Constantinople. Calling it a slaughter house is not
an exaggeration, he says, based on what I have seen, what I have heard
and witnessed. It is clear that all those who left Harput except for a
small number at the beginning of July, have been massacred even before
getting out of the Harput province limits proper. We are now shown
killing fields and the dead in winter as others stand around and
stare. More dead in the desert, naked children next to their mothers,
all dead, covered with insects.

Unable to get their governments to do anything about it, certain
members of neutral countries try and do something locally. For
instance, in Trabizond, the Consular offices were open to all Armenian
children to find refuge. We see footage of these little children
waving or sitting by American flags. During all this, the US
Ambassador was informing Washington continuously without holding
back. He states that it appears as if this is a systematic plan to
crush the Armenian people. We see this letter and can read it
ourselves!

We move on to the 4200 Moussa Dagh Armenians and their rescue by the
Allies to be sent by boat to Port Said, Egypt. We are shown more
refugees and more caravans until a 91 year old survivor speaks in
2000. He is talking about how they managed to find drinking water
throughout the marches, how Arabs sold it to them and how many
Armenian virgins threw themselves off the boats they were being
transported on so as to avoid being raped. They drowned instead.

All officials, we are told, who did not carry out the deportation and
massacre orders were replaced. Despite that, some Kurds and Arabs did
come to the aid of the caravans, such as in Derzin. The central CUP
authorities started working on covering their tracks. Missionaries
were not allowed to accompany the convoys. Photography was strictly
forbidden. Even foreign correspondence began to get censured (and we
are shown such a period letter with blacked out sections at the end).

Germany stays silent as all this unfolds. One had to wait till October
1915, when the German Ambassador died, before Germany tried to
distance itself from this massive crime, fearing complicity charges
together with its war partner, the Ottoman Empire. So the
newAmbassador does intervene on behalf of the Armenians. But a year
later he declares in July of 1916: `The Ottomans have decided to deal
with the Armenian question by liquidating the Armenian race. Nothing
we have said, or the Americans or the Entente powers, or the Apostolic
church or anyone else has said has been able to make a difference.`

We are told that tens of thousands of children and young girls were
kidnapped and sold as human slaves and forced to convert to Islam
during their deportations. We are shown their pictures.

Then there is Aleppo. Here the caravans converged. Epidemic stricken
dying Armenians are talked about and shown. These are pictures we know
of starving, thirsty Armenians whose rib cages show, whose hair is all
shorn for lice, and whose stomachs are bloated.

By the end of 1916, 2/3 of the Armenians in Anatolia were
annihilated. On Oct. 30, 1918, Turkey signs the armistice. All CUP
members were then imprisoned or escaped. By March 3, 1919, the heads
of CUP were condemned to death after lengthy trials in absentia. CUP
leaders were found to be totally responsible for these acts against
humanity.

The Sevres treaty or that of Versailles, did not allow a new Armenia
to be formed. 1923 brings us the Lausanne treaty which actually buries
the Armenian question. 600,000 Armenians survived the genocide of the
young Turks. One and a half million Armenians were brutally killed. We
see images of our orphans everywhere from that era. The narrator tells
of how we were dispersed and our diasporas flooded with refugees.

We are reminded that no words existed at the beginning of the century
to combine the effects of massacres and deportations on the scale
perpetrated by the Turks. Raphael Lempkin in 1944 did so by coining
the term genocide and admitting that his studies of the Armenian case
inspired him to do so. This word entered international law in 1948 via
the genocide convention.

Jourdan's documentary ends with Arnold Toynbee's account of the
Armenian genocide first written in 1916. It ends with the words,
Despite All the Witnesses, A Nation Was Just Exterminated. Jean Louis
Valero's original score takes us to the credits and if you are not
moved by this masterpiece, nothing I say will make it easier for you
to do what you can to go out there and get your own copy and study
this rich, nuanced, extremely well researched and non-slick
masterpiece named Le Genocide Armenien.

Goldberg's documentary is very different in tone and construction. It
is much shorter to begin with and it has no Armenian survivor footage
at all. Instead, it has Turkish and Kurdish citizens of modern day
Turkey who recount what their fathers said about these events. Why
this should be any more believable or precious, I leave to the
audience to decide. The other unique feature of Goldberg's video is
that it spends most of its time assembling snippets from historians
and sociologists, Armenian, Turkish, and other, on the question of the
genocide. His is commentary driven. While the visual element is
strong, he is fascinated with what scholars in the field have to say
rather than pinning down the nitty gritty facts concerning the
genocide itself. A final drastic difference is that almost immediately
after the Goldberg documentary starts, the plight of present day
Armenians or enlightened Turks, their angst, and their disorientation
begins to take center stage. As if this is a movie made FOR Armenians
or enlightened Turks, meant to appease them. To say here is your
genocide story. You got what you asked for. Now go home and let us
decide what happens in Armenia or for Armenians.  It states that the
Genocide Recognition issue is the central one and that this film will
help address it. I am of the opinion that reparations are far more
important and will do much needed good to suffering Armenians
everywhere than any civil discourse by the leaders of the Turkish
republic alone under the guise of mere recognition would ever muster.

The nice twist in this documentary is to have Turkish historians (a
handful) who themselves say they want to know what happened and take
it upon themselves to get to the bottom of it and allow us all to move
on. We must harness their will of course. But telling their story
before the Armenian Genocide's internal story has been told may be
misleading to the general American audience. The Armenian Genocide in
Goldberg's documentary is declared to be one of the greatest untold
stories of the 20th Century. Well, these 58 minutes barely scratch the
surface, so the challenge is still on to tell the true story of the
genocide. Hopefully, you will agree that these two videos complement
each other in just that way. Goldberg's video addresses today's
Armenians. It even starts by giving the current demographics of
Armenians around the planet. It is less about what happened in 1915
than about how this is playing out today in our milieu. It is a very
different work, indeed. There are very breezy accounts of the events
that led up to the genocide. And even the genocide itself is depicted
superficially and unconvincingly. If you want the step by step
historical account as opposed to comments and sociological tangents,
see the Jourdan video. If you care more about the impact on current
Armenians and Turks thinking on the matter, see the Goldberg one. You
will still not know what happened. You will know it was bad. It should
be recognized, and that is that. No reparations are mentioned, no
further quests of redressing the wrongs of a ninety year old travesty
are pursued. Just recognition. Just symbolism.

No, that is not what we want. There has to be reestablishment of civil
discourse between the Armenian and Turkish people. This will happen
when Ottoman Turkey is not dressed up as a purely glorious past with
strictly positive cultural values. No, a spade must finally be called
a spade. The Jourdan and Goldberg documentaries will probably play
crucial roles in getting us there.

April 24 comes around every year and Armenians, while celebrating
their survival in muted tones, actually dread it. The words "alleged
genocide" are visited upon them from the official media (now slowly
changing), accusations of exaggeration and hysteria are attempted,
categorical lies and fabrications are presented like sweet Turkish
delights to a distracted world who has its sights set on other
immediate goals such as trade, security and East-West tensions.

Armenians see April 24 go by every year, without a definitive
resolution of their long sought quest: full recognition, apologies,
reparations and civility restored. These would be welcome additions to
the denialist and negationist stances that we have faced for all these
years. Now Turkey wants a triumphant return into Europe's Bosom. It
wants to be the lynch pin of negotiations between the Muslim world and
the West. Turkey wants modernity and secularism while being weighed
down by fanaticism and ultranationalism. How will they move forward
while still denying their collective past? There is no such
possibility. By opening its dark pages of history and airing the
errors of its ways, there is a chance that a rebirth of civil society
and liberal values can take hold in that vast and fertile land
benefiting its future generations. The Armenian genocide is just one
aspect of this story. Their relations with Arabs during the Ottoman
era, as well as the Balkan countries, their treatment of the Kurds, an
ongoing major problem they can not shake off, all add up to reinforce
the need for a vast overhaul of the myth of their past that they have
to undertake. Truth will liberate them. These shades of dark grey they
constantly pour on every attempt to bring it alive just darkens their
souls and they deserve better. Jourdan and Goldberg can help them see
the light and follow the path of openness and self examination without
blind and misplaced pride driving them further into the claws of
deceit and moral defeat forever.

--
Dr. Bedros Afeyan is a theoretical physicist who works and lives in
the Bay area with his wife, Marine. He writes in Armenian and in
English and also paints and sculpts. Samples of his work can be found
on the web by clicking on his personal web pages at:
http://208.177.152.139/