 Christopher Schwartz (23, USA), and Dr. Yair Auron discuss genocide, human evil, and what happened in 1915 and 1948.
By Christopher Schwartz
Edited and published by Thinking-East
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Date published: 31/05/05
Section: Themes / Middle East
6,730 words
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Dr. Yair Auron is one of the world's leading experts of the Armenian
Genocide. While his specialty is the way the Armenian Genocide
and other similar atrocities are treated (or not treated) in Israeli
popular culture and education, he is also considered an authority on
the phenomenology and history of genocide, the "crime without a name"
as it was famously called by Polish scholar Raphael Lemkin.
Dr. Auron's research is engaged in an on-going effort to "examine a
subject that has been repressed and ignored in the Israeli historical
and collective memory, as well as in the collective memory of the
world."
In his research, Dr. Auron utilized never before published documents
and eyewitness accounts from the First World War. These now have been
published as part of his book, The Banality of Indifference: Zionism
and the Armenian Genocide. Dr. Auron says of his book, "[it
raises] theoretical and philosophical questions, particularly in the
introduction and final two chapters, which relate directly and
indirectly to the specific subject of our research: the debate over the
concept of genocide and the uniqueness of the Holocaust in comparison
to other instances of genocide, including the Armenian Genocide."
Dr. Auron is a senior lecturer at the Open University of Israel and the Kibbutzim College of Education.
Dr. Auron, a sabra (Jewish Israeli born and raised in h'eretz Yisrael),
identifies himself as a Zionist. However, his conception of
Jewish nationalism does not preclude Palestinian national aspirations
or their human rights (see the Interviewer's Note in the Endnotes
section.)
Christopher Schwartz is a half-Jewish American and Editor of
Thinking-East. As an undergraduate at La Salle University he
studied post-Holocaust Jewish theologies.
Some pieces of this interview have been compiled from e-mail
follow-ups, presentations and interviews with other journalists.
Such sections are marked by a Hebrew numeral corresponding to a special
citation in the Endnotes.
they've been killing children
and nobody seems to care
they've been laughing at my god
my god I wouldn't dare
-"Temptation" by Jon Crosby
Schwartz: How do you define "genocide"?
Auron: I myself use the
United Nations definition: the destruction, fully or partly, of a
religious, ethnic, racial or professional group.
I know that the definition of the UN has some faults.
Schwartz: It's interesting that they say "in part," that genocide can actually be partial, a pogrom but not necessarily a Final Solution.
Auron: Yes. But if the
intention is to kill the group-as-it-is, then it is a genocide.
Of course there is some question about definitions.
Schwartz: For instance,
Article II actually leaves out the question of quality and intention,
which was what Raphael Lemkin's famous April 1946 American Scholar
article, "Genocide," which introduced that term into parlance, was all
about. Lemkin wrote,
The [Second World War] has focused our attention on the phenomenon of
the destruction of whole populations-of national, racial and religious
groups-both biologically and culturally…
Would mass murder be an adequate name for such a phenomenon? We think
not, since it does not connote the motivation of the crime, especially
when the motivation is based upon racial, national or religious
considerations. An attempt to destroy a nation and obliterate its
cultural personality was hitherto called denationalization. This term
seems to be inadequate, since it does not connote biological
destruction.
Genocide can be carried out through acts against individuals, when the
ultimate intent is to annihilate the entire group composed of these
individuals… [The] criminal intent to kill or destroy all the members
of such a group shows premeditation and deliberation and a state of
systematic criminality…1
Auron: Indeed. But
this was the definition I finally decided to use because it is the most
universally accepted one. There are other definitions by
scholars, but [it's a pretty good definition overall], though it is
flawed. For instance, it leaves out political genocide or
"politicide."
Schwartz: You mean the removal or extermination of intellectuals and political dissidents, such as the Soviet gulags?
Auron: Exactly. But
I believe this is the UN definition is the best to use, otherwise we
will end up debating definitions and never move beyond there.
Schwartz: On a side note, is the term "ethnic cleansing" another way of saying genocide?
Auron: No. Not
every ethnic cleansing is a genocide, though acts of ethnic cleansing
do occur in genocides. 'Ethnic cleansing,' to the best of my
knowledge, is a new term that was begun to be used in the Balkans
during the Nineties.
1915
Schwartz: What was the history of the Armenian Holocaust? Why did it happen and how did it happen?
Auron: I myself do not use the
term "holocaust"; I use the term "genocide," "Armenian genocide"-it's a
question of definitions. But it is okay with me if you want to
use the term "holocaust," because it does not belong to the Jewish
experience alone. But we can answer the question, "Why it
happened?" [in several ways]. What do we mean? If we try to
answer why people are killing other people, we have to analyze the
human situation, the human psyche. But I know what you
mean. The question is why the Ottoman Empire decided to kill the
Armenian people at a certain time.
This happened mainly in 1915. In my opinion they did it because
they wanted to realize their dreams of pan-Turkism or
pan-Ottomanism. The Ottoman Empire had been losing territories in
Europe, so the Turks thought that maybe the way they could enlarge
again could be toward the Caucasus, because there some of the people,
like the Azerians, are very close to the Turkish people. What was
problematic for them was the existence of the Armenian population
there, in the middle, on the way to the Caucasus.
Practically, the First World War was a good time for them to realize
their dreams. Not all but most genocides take place during war,
when the situation is not so clear, we don't know exactly what is
happening because there is belagon [chaos]. War provides many excuses,
also. So, this is the historical explanation, but this is not...
I try to emphasize to everyone that we have no reason, no explanation,
to commit genocide, because why people have the right to kill other
people? [They do not,] but they are doing it.
I think [in 1915] the issue was because they were Armenian. Today
people are trying to say it was a conflict between Christians and
Muslims. I think this was not the main reason. The main
reason was because of their ethnicity, their nationality, and the
leaders of the "Young Turks" [the Committee of Union and Progress,
which ruled the Ottoman Empire during 1913-1918] were against them...
Schwartz: By now,
everyone is very familiar with the techniques that were used in the
Jewish Holocaust: a whole system of ghettos, work camps, and finally
death camps. What were the actual techniques that were used in
the Armenian genocide?
Auron: The techniques
were, what we say, "more primitive." Not the gas chamber.
What they did was first to kill the leaders of the Armenian community
[such as] the politicians, the priests, the intellectuals, the
artists. And then they gathered the rest of the population and
began to send them into the Syrian Desert. This has been called
the Death March.
[Right before] they killed the youngsters. The younger Armenians
[young male adults] were in the army. They were in regular
units. But then they were collected into special units, for
labor. The [Turks] took their weapons. Many of them were
killed in the Turkish army, or by torture. Then, the youngsters
in the rest of the population, near the towns, were killed. And
then the elderly, children and women were marched, and many of them
died during that. Sometimes they were whipped. Many of them died
because of starvation, disease and lack of water.
Then those who survived the Death March were killed in Deir El-Zor
Desert of Syria, not far from the border of Iraq2. Deir El-Zor has
been called the "Souterrain Auschwitz." It means "inside the
earth." There were lots of big natural caves, and they were put
in there. They were bound together. The Turks fired [shot]
them. There were also many Armenians who were buried alive in
these caves. We could find the graves even today because most of
the caves have never been opened. We have evidence [for what
happened in the caves], eyewitness accounts from Israelis who were
young Jews in the Turkish army at the time.
But, also, we must remember that during the Death March many many
people were killed. For example, I know one source written by an
American consul (I don't remember which city he was in) who described
the story of one group, 17,000 people. After seventy days on the
move, there were 130 still alive. So all of them perished during
the march.
Schwartz: How many in total were lost in the Armenian Genocide?
Auron: We don't know exactly. This is a fact for many genocides:
we don't know the numbers, we can only estimate. It seems to have
been one million. There are some Armenian scholars who are saying
it is even more. There are also some who calculate for 1894 and 1896
when, under Sultan Abdulhamid II, 200,000 were killed. I think the
accepted number is to say one million.
Schwartz: Since Deir El-Zor took place in Syrian territory, what
has been the Syrian Government's reaction? It is my understanding
that the current Baathist regime is no friend of Turkey's.
Auron: At the time Syria wasn't independent; it was under the
control of the Turks. Now, there are Armenians living today in
Lebanon and Syria, in Haleb-quite a lot. I don't know the number.
Some of them left in the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties... Syria hasn't
officially recognized the genocide. They don't deny it, but they
don't recognize it. But I think the Armenians can live like
Armenians in Syria. There are Armenian schools and
churches. Some of them lived there before the genocide, and some
of them, like those living in Jerusalem [in the Armenian Quarter],
escaped during it.
Schwartz: The Turks would have had to march the Armenians through Kurdistan. What was the Kurdish reaction?
Auron: Kurds supported the acts of the Turks. Sometimes the
Turks used the Kurds to kill Armenians. There was some rivalry
between the Kurds and Armenians3.
Schwartz: The present state of Armenia is not the Armenian homeland, which was in Anatolia [Turkey] wasn't it?
 |
Above: The Ottoman provinces where the genocide occurred [map from ANI]. Below: The
would-be sovereign Kurdish nation-state. In fact, not all
Kurdish-claimed territories overlap with "classical Armenia." -- CS
|
Auron: No. The actual state of Armenia is only a very
little part of classical Armenia. It's said that almost 90% of
the homeland is under Turkish control.
Schwartz: And there are no more Armenians in Turkey now?
Auron: No. In Eastern Turkey there are practically
none. There are some in Ismir and Istanbul. But in East
Turkey, the Turks settled the Kurds.
Schwartz: So they expanded Kurdistan?
Auron: They took the Kurds and put them in the Armenian
villages-and afterwards, they began to kill the Kurds. They
destroyed the villages in 1915 and then destroyed them again in the
Eighties.
Schwartz: So, let me get this straight: the Kurdish insurgents in East Turkey are operating in what was once Armenia?
Auron: What the Turks did was destroy any memorials of the
Armenians. They destroyed the monasteries and statues-all of
it-and changed the names of the cities, as if there had never been any
Armenians there.
[The interviewer is speechless.]
Auron: Yes, it is... disturbing...
Schwartz: This was less than a hundred years ago.
Auron: Yes. Ninety years.
Schwartz: Is there anything else you would like to say about this before we move on?
Auron: In my opinion it is clear that what happened was genocide,
by any definition. We can debate the number of casualties and the
validity of some sources, but no doubt about it, it was genocide.
We have so much evidence, eyewitness accounts, written by German and
American and Danish diplomats-sometimes by Turks themselves-that do not
give any possibility to say it wasn't genocide. You can't kill
one million people just "by the way."
"The banality of indifference"
Schwartz: What was the contemporary Jewish reaction, here in Israel and throughout the world?
Auron: During the genocide you have to remember the little Jewish
presence here. On the eve of the war, there were some 85,000 Jews
out of a population of 700,000 in the area of Palestine west of the
Jordan River. Half of the Jews were part of the "Old Yishuv," which was
religious, and half were part of the "New Yishuv," which was Zionist
immigrants who had arrived at the end of the Nineteenth Century and the
beginning of the Twentieth. ?
The entire Yishuv knew about the fate of the Armenians, and feared a
similar fate for themselves. There is evidence that suggests they knew
what was happening to the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Mordecai
Ben-Hillel Hacohen, a Jewish journalist in the Yishuv, reported on the
chain of events affecting the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire as early
as 1916. (SEE NOTE A)
The Zionist position during the war was neutrality, because Jews were
fighting on all sides of the war. Jews were soldiers and
civilians in France and Germany, struggling against each other.
Neutrality was also their behavior toward the Ottomans, who ruled
Palestine at the time. But practically, most of the Jews knew but
were indifferent-the Armenian genocide did not excite. This is
not a justification for me, but they felt they had to be concerned
about their day-to-day life and their own effort to survive.
However, there were exceptions, some Jewish individuals and groups that
supported the Armenians. For instance, in 1918, Shmuel Talkowsky,
the secretary of Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader who became the
first president of the State of Israel, wrote with the approval of
Weizmann, an important article entitled, "The Armenian Question from a
Zionist Point of View." He wrote:
We Zionists look upon the fate of the Armenian people with a deep and
sincere sympathy; we do so as men as Jews and as Zionists. As men our
motto is Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto, I am human being.
Whatever affects another human being affects me. As Jews our
exile from our ancestral home and our centuries of suffering in all
parts of the globe have made us, I would fain say specialists in
martyrdom; our humanitarian degree, so much so that the sufferings of
other people-even alien to us in blood and remote from us in
distance-cannot but strike the deeper chords of our soul and weave
between us and our fellow-sufferers that deep bond of sympathy which
one might call solidarity of sorrow. And Among all those who
suffer around us, is there a people whose record of martyrdom is more
akin to ours than that of the Armenians? As Zionists we have a
peculiar question of principle. Zionism being in its essence nothing
else than the Jewish expression of the demand for national justice, it
is natural and logical for us to be deeply interested in the struggle
for emancipation of any other living nation. … In our opinion, a free
and happy Armenian, and free and happy Arabia, and a free and happy
Jewish Palestine, are the three pillars on which will rest the future
peace ad welfare of the Middle East. (SEE NOTE B)
The most important of these was the Nili spy group. It was a tiny
collection of New Yishuv members who were pro-British. Some of
them were officers in the Turkish officers. They saw what was
happening and recorded it-the source of some of our eyewitness
accounts. They wrote a memorandum to the British intelligence
service about it.
Their leader was Aaron Aaronhnson. He was a high official in the
local Ottoman administration. He was aware of reports by US
Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, as well as a compilation of reports by
James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee, regarding the fate of the Armenians.
(SEE NOTE C) Aaronhnson himself wrote an important report about
what was happening. He did not use the term "genocide" because
the term did not exist yet, but he tried to described what was told to
him. Very important people in the German Foreign Office and
British intelligence read this report and were influenced by it.
Aaronhnson devoted a significant chapter to "The Forty Days of Musa
Dagh: Symbol and Parable," about a novel by Franz Werfel. The novel
tells the story of the annihilation of the Armenian people and one of
the most heroic chapters in its history by telling the story of the
inhabitants of the Armenian villages at the foot of Musa Dagh [Mount
Moses] in the Cilicia district during the war. The novel
influenced many young Jewish people who grew up in Palestine and Europe
in the Thirties. They lauded Werfel's book and sometimes
emphasized the author's Jewishness, claiming that "only a Jew could
have written this work." (SEE NOTE D)
For many Jewish youth in Europe, Musa Dagh became a symbol, a model,
and an example, especially during the dark days of the Second World
War. The Jewish underground fighters in Europe at the start of
the Fortiess widely read the book. In several gripping
discussions and diaries which were preserved, we find evidence of the
book's great influence and as an example to be followed. Among
the activists of the Jewish youth movements Werfel's book was highly
regarded. In those days, they read Musa Dagh. The book passed from hand
to hand. (SEE NOTE E)
During the war, there was a danger of a German conquest of Eretz Israel
[Mandatory Palestine] in the Second World War. [In response] the
limited Jewish defense forces organized their defense against a
possible invasion in a plan called by many names, such as, "The Matzada
Plan," the "Carmel Plan," the "Musa Dagh Plan." (SEE NOTE F)
In the Thirties and the Forties, Werfel's book broke away from what was
defined as the narrow scope of literature. Today, I am sorry to say,
the younger generation in Israel has heard nothing of Musa Dagh and
most of them do not know, to our regret, anything about the genocide of
the Armenian people. (SEE NOTE G)
Schwartz: What has been the Jewish reaction to the genocide since?
Auron: The attitude of the State of Israel has not participated
in the memorial gathering of the Armenians. I should note that
before the Six Day War the Armenian population here was very limited:
some in Jaffa, Haifa, Jerusalem and the Galilee, that's about it.
The Armenians tended not to publicly speak about the genocide anywhere
they were, but that changed in 1965. That year there was a big
demonstration in Bucharest [the capital of Romania].4 Since
the war in 1967, every year the Armenians commemorate the war in
Jerusalem. However, the Israeli Government, Left or Right, has
avoided any official participation in the ceremonies. Only two
times in the history of the state have individual ministers
participated in the memorial gatherings, to say to the Armenians, "We
are with you, in your suffering and remembrance."
The genocide has been avoided in the curriculum of Israel high
schools-as it is in many other countries. You see, the Armenian
Genocide is the Forgotten Genocide. Turkey has been successful in
its policy of denial. In the Seventies and Eighties, the issue of
Israel's attitude became more crucial because of its alliance with
Turkey. Turkey asked for Jewish and Israeli support to in its
effort to strike down an attempt by the Armenians to get a United
Nations resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. Several
times the Armenians have tried this, to get an official day in the
calendar of many countries. [Often their attempts coincided with
elections in Israel], and every time the candidates for the Israeli
presidency would win their votes by promising to fight for the
recognition of the genocide-and always, whoever became president failed
in his promise.
Usually the organizations and institutions of the worldwide Jewish
community, influenced as they are by Israel, have supported
Turkey. Another reason is that many Jews feel we have not to deal
with the Armenian Genocide because it can de-emphasize the uniqueness
of the Jewish Holocaust: if you know about other genocides, this will
damage the memory of the Holocaust. Because of the impact of the
Holocaust on Israeli society, Israelis are very resistant to anything
that might diminish the gravity of what has happened to other peoples,
such as the Gypsies, the Armenians, and so on.
Schwartz: How widespread do you think it is among Israelis to
ignore other genocides? It seems to me that Israelis have been
very interested by the crisis in Darfur.
Auron: Listen, most Israelis, like most of the Americans, the Germans,
the French, and so on, unfortunately don't know about the Armenian
Genocide.
Schwartz: Would they want to know?
Auron: I think the young Israelis like young people anywhere
would, but they just don't know. I just recently spoke to a group
of high school students. Of course they knew nothing, but
when I began to speak, they asked many many questions. They are
shocked by themselves: "How could it be that I do not know about this?
I am a young intellectual, I am interested in issues of the world, and
here I don't know anything about this genocide." Then they ask:
"Why is this denied? Why by Turkey?-alright, Turkey's reasons are
understandable. But why by democracies like the United
States? Why by Israel?"
Most Israelis don't worry about it, even students, unfortunately.
However when they begin to learn, they always become interested.
Then some criticize Israel, but others say, "Listen, what do you expect
of us? We have interests with Turkey."
For me it is a moral issue. Those who say "we have interests with
Turkey" are correct [in a sense], but I don't think that because of
those interests you have the right to manipulate the memory of another
genocide. So, I don't know, I would not say that most Israelis
don't recognize the Armenian Genocide; the State of Israel doesn't
recognize it. These are not the same.
Realpoliticking
Auron: In the same week we celebrated the liberation of
Auschwitz, everyone [in Germany and Israel] was saying, "Never again,
we have learned the lesson," so on and so on. On the very day of
the celebration, I received an e-mail from a scholar which contained
the high school curriculum for one of the German federal states.
The curriculum contained half of a sentence about the Armenian
Genocide - half of a sentence! And then there came Turkish
pressure, and the German state decided to remove that
half-sentence. So, what is the meaning of "we have learned the
lesson"?
Schwartz: Once again there's that political connection.
Germany sold weapons to the Ottoman Empire up until the First World
War, and Germany and Turkey were allies during the
conflict5. It is my understanding that there was sympathy
for Nazism in Turkey during the Second World War. Seems to me
that today, Germany is the European state that's just a little more
enthusiastic about Turkey's joining the European Union.
Auron: In Germany, that state-I believe it was Brandenburg-was the
only state of all the country to have even a mention of the Armenian
Genocide in its high school curriculum.
Schwartz: I do remember in the United States reading in my high
school history textbook about the Armenian Genocide. Our
textbooks did call it a genocide, and even described it as "similar" to
the Jewish Holocaust.
Auron: Which state did you live in?
Schwartz: New York, which happens to be heavily dominated by Jews.
Auron: Listen, to the best of my knowledge, there are some
American states where the study of the Armenian Genocide is obligatory.
I think California has that. Some American states have it
mandatory to study other genocides [other than the Jewish Holocaust.] I
know this is true because I was once asked to write a letter about this
subject. It's due to [Armenians' activism], but in some states
they failed.
Schwartz: I suppose the United States could hide behind the
principle of academic integrity. If Turkey complained, the
federal Government could reply, "Well, we don't interfere in the
states' educational policies. We don't control what they decide
to print in their textbooks."
Auron: But the United States does not officially recognize the Armenian Genocide.
We can't really compare Israel and the United States. Yet, at
least every year the American president or the vice-president make a
statement regarding history of the Armenian tragedy, and there is, what
they call an "official discussion" about the word geno, as in
genocide.
I have the text of a speech by [former president Bill] Clinton: he
identified with the suffering of the Armenian people, their casualties,
their horrible deaths-he said everything but he never used the word
genocide. Every year, every president, this is the same.
But at least there is some sort of official declaration, which we have
not here [in Israel.]
Schwartz: Would you describe the State of Israel's on-going
attitude toward the Armenian Genocide as denial, ambivalence,
purposeful silence...? How would you describe it?
Auron: I would say it was a policy of denial in the Sixties and
Seventies. Then, when the issue was raised, Israel avoided any
recognition of the genocide, and avoided participating in any memorial
ceremonies. I call it passive denial: we don't deny the genocide,
but we don't identify what happened as a "genocide," as a state we do
not identify with the memory of what happened.
Then in the Nineties there were some ministers who, as members of the
Government, recognized the genocide individually. They used the
word genocide. In particular Minister of Education Yossi Sarid,
[at an April 24, 2000 memorial gathering of the Armenian community in
Jerusalem,] made a very important declaration that the genocide would
be studied in high schools. But then he left the Government-not
because of this, for other reasons-so nothing has been done.
Since then, the behavior of Israel has gotten worse. For
instance, Shimon Peres, the former foreign minister, before an official
visit to Turkey, said that what happened was not a genocide. This
was active denial. Until then, we did not say it was a genocide
but we did not say it was not a genocide. But then we said it was
not a genocide-it was a tragedy, but not a genocide.
Schwartz: Did not Peres at some point describe it as a "massacre"?
Auron: Yes, he did.
Schwartz: Was this before his visit?
Auron: I don't know. Before this visit he hadn't said it
was not a genocide, but then during this visit he then said it,
[explaining later,] "I did not use the term genocide." This was
repeated by the Israeli ambassador to Armenia. It became a big
scandal.
Today, it is very difficult to obtain Israel's official opinion of the
genocide. I asked some journalists to find out for me, because
the Government must give journalists an answer. The results were
very amazing, the difference between Israeli journalists and foreign
journalists: the Government doesn't give them exactly the same
answer. Also, the Government often doesn't want to provide an
official written text. Sometimes the officials want to read the
text, but not give a printed copy of it.
I got a copy of what the Government sent to the Armenian foreign
minister. [In that communiqué] Israel tried to avoid the issue as
something clear-cut.
1948
Schwartz: Let's move onto the next question: was what happened
here, in 1948-what the Palestinians call the an-Nakba [Catastrophe]-was
this a genocide?
Auron: No.
Schwartz: Why not?
Auron: Unfortunately there were some massacres. I don't
know if we have discovered all of them, but there were massacres.
However, I do not believe that the leaders of the young Israeli state
wanted to exterminate or transfer the Palestinians, the Arab population
of [Mandatory] Palestine. Unfortunately there were some
massacres, and while massacres are part of genocides, massacres
themselves are not a genocide. We must differentiate between
massacres-which must be condemned, of course-and genocides.
Schwartz: But more occurred than only massacres. There was
transfer. To quote Israeli "New Historian" Benny Morris,
"Transfer was in the air." It may not have been an official
policy, but it was certainly an option that some commanders on the
ground chose to use.
Auron: Okay, maybe there were attempts to make a transfer, or
maybe in certain areas which became the State of Israel there was even
a policy of ethnic cleansing (a term that didn't exist then, but
nonetheless was of that type.) However, it was not a genocide.
Schwartz: But isn't "ethnic cleansing" a genocide?
Auron: No. Ethnic cleansing is the effort to take a
population from where they are to another place, without the intention
to kill them. Of course, doing so is against civil rights and
human rights, but ethnic cleansing is not a genocide.
This is not my topic of study, but I think we might be able to
characterize certain actions that took place in areas of Palestine in
1948 as ethnic cleansing. However, there was not a policy of
ethnic cleansing for all of the Arab population of Palestine and that
what happened was not a genocide.
Also, we have to remember that these actions took place during a war
that was very very difficult for the young Jewish state. Israel
was born during a war, because the war had begun even before the
creation of the state. It was a very very difficult war for
Israel, a war that took the life of several thousand young Israelis-one
percent of the whole population.
This is not to say I can justify massacres. Massacres are
massacres, and we haven't the right to kill people. We haven't
the right, point. Armies fight armies, and haven't the right to kill
civilians, point. We know that unfortunately in some places
Palestinian civilians were killed by Jewish forces, and also, we have
to say, there were Jewish civilians who were killed by Arab
forces.
Schwartz: I'm going to leap: do you consider what happened in the
United States, between the pioneers and the natives, as a genocide?
Auron: I think what happened had the characteristics of a genocide.
Schwartz: I asked this because in the United States we had
massacres. We had transfers, the most famous being the "Trail of
Tears," when we took five native nations in Georgia and told them to
march to Oklahoma-
Auron: Yes...
Schwartz: -and we didn't care what happened to them, whether they
died or lived. Very often, or perhaps almost always, these kinds
of actions by Americans weren't official policy. This was
especially so during the colonial period [before American
independence], when massacres, enslavement and transfers were often
committed primarily by white villagers and frontiersmen.
Sometimes, yes, by colonial authorities, but never all the colonies in
a coordinated effort like that which happened in the 19th
Century. And even when Andrew Jackson ordered the removal of the
Georgian nations, not even the entire federal Government was united:
the Supreme Court had ruled against Jackson, he just went ahead and did
what he wanted anyway.
Auron: Listen, I am not completely familiar with what happened in
the United States then. But to the best of my knowledge,
practically what the white population wanted was to take land
controlled by the natives and to take the natives' place in the land,
altogether. I think that the great great majority of the native
population disappeared, either directly (killed) or indirectly (due to
disease and other things). This is not my topic of study, but I
think what was done in North and South America, to use modern terms,
was a genocide.
Schwartz: I agree that what happened in the United States was a
genocide, but not in the same way as that which was done by the
Spanish. In the case of South America's natives, I feel that was
a classic example of genocide, because that was a real state policy:
Spain was going to wipe them our or breed them out; one way or another,
they would be gone. The United States, however, seems to me,
while no less insidious, a lot more... sloppy. And that's how
what happened here [in Israel] appears to me: there may not have been
any grand conspiracy to annihilate the Palestinians, but it
happened.
I know that Lemkin, in his article, argued that you have to include
intention when you talk about genocide. To quote Benny Morris
again, he said that, "Transfer was in the air, and the departure of the
Arabs was deeply desired on the local and national levels." So,
I'm just wondering, what do you think constitutes a genocide? Is
it qualitative, quantitative? I know that the numbers involved in
the United States' case were much larger than what happened here.
Auron: No, listen, I don't like the comparison because I am not
familiar enough with what happened in America. It's not the
quantity of victims that defines a genocide. I think that when we
speak about genocides and massacres and pogroms, these are not clear
cut terms, and we have to be careful when we use definitions. I
am against definitionists, those who try to avoid the real issue by
focusing on the definition. For me, it is a moral issue, all my
work about genocide, and especially education...
These terms you can say are academic's terms, but they are really
objective terms that help us when we try to analyze a situation.
These terms are not the reality; they try to clarify things. So,
massacres are massacres, and innocent people were killed, and we must
say it and we must regret it. We committed some massacres of
Palestinians, but also Palestinians committed massacres of the Jewish
population in Palestine.
Schwartz: The 1936 Arab Revolt?
Auron: Yes, and also 1948. It was a very very difficult war
for the Jewish population. So, I think in some areas, like
probably by the sea, some high officers in the military wanted to
evacuate the Arab population. But it is not a policy of genocide,
and it was not a policy of transfer. It was committed against
some villages-unfortunately.
Schwartz: Was it believed that those villages couldn't be trusted, that they might assist the Arab armies?
Auron: Probably in some places this was the case. Also in
some places the Arab villages fought the Jewish settlements situated
near them. And then, by one way or another, the Jewish colonists
or kibbutzniks succeeded to overcome them. Sometimes official
Arab military units came out of Arab villages. But this is not to
justify if we killed any Arab civilians after their villages were taken
by us. That would be a crime, no doubt about it.
Unfortunately, such incidents occur in almost every war.
Schwartz: You mean like a Dresden?
Auron: This is a very extreme example. You know, in one
day, in February of 1945, more than 100,000 civilians were killed in
Dresden by bombing. Why were they killed? Civilians.
But we don't say a genocide happened there. It wasn't a genocide
because the British and Americans didn't kill all the Germans in
Germany, even though they dropped bombs on civilians purposefully.
Schwartz: But what about Israel's history with the Palestinian people since 1948?
Auron: Since 1948 we have committed many crimes against the
Palestinians but not a genocide. What happened in Jenin [the
IDF's invasion of the Jenin refugee camp in 2002] was not a genocide,
no. Maybe-and it's not clear, even this-it was a massacre.
No doubt civilians were killed there, but it was not a genocide, that
was not the reality. And I have tried to say to Palestinian
friends that when they use the term genocide, I cannot stay with
them. I try as much as I can to identify with their agony and
their suffering, but when they use the term genocide, I must say to
them, "I can go no longer with you."
Schwartz: The annihilation of memory seems to play a role in
genocide. We have all throughout this country former Palestinian
villages that have been, so to speak, Judeanized. In fact, there
is one village in the north where Jewish Israelis live in the original
houses, with Qur`anic inscriptions above their doorways. With
that in mind, including the transfers (whatever the reasons for their
happening), and the massacres, is what happened still not tantamount to
genocide?
Auron: Listen, every victorious country tries to avoid the memory
of the population that lived before. I think that unfortunately
we did not mention enough about what happened. Many Israelis did
not know anything for many years that where we live now there were
Palestinian villages. This was a mistake. We must speak
about it and learn about it. There are organizations [such as
Neve Shalom and Zukhrot] that are trying to change this situation, to
speak about it-and I think we have to do it.
However, all these evils-and they are really evils-don't make what
happened a genocide. I don't know how many acts of massacre took
place in 1948; some sure, but I don't know if we know all of
them. However, without justifying what happened, we cannot forget
the circumstance, which was a struggle for survival after the Holocaust.
Schwartz: But did not the Germans and the Turks claim that their
survival was at stake if they did not annihilate the Jews and Armenians?
Auron: No, no. Sure, you can use for nothing the word
"survive," but a "Greater Germany" stretched over all of Europe was not
really a war of survival. Remember, the United Nations gave the
Jews and Arabs a plan to divide Palestine. The Jews accepted it,
but the Palestinian Arabs rejected it and they began to fight against
the Jewish settlers in 1947, before the State of Israel was
created. Then in 1948 the Arab states joined the war. This
was really a war of survival. I say we committed evil and they
committed evil against us, but it was not a genocide.
Shoah
Schwartz: The word "holocaust" used to be a religious term
meaning "sacrifice." For instance, in the King James translation
of the Bible, Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son is called the
Holocaust of Isaac. Do you know how the term "Holocaust" came to
be used in English to refer to what happened in Europe during the
Second World War. Also, what is the sense of the Hebrew word
"Shoah," the term Jews use?
Auron: "Shoah" means "huge catastrophe" and it is in the
Torah. Sometimes the word "shoah" was translated into
"holocaust," even though that was incorrect. I don't like the
term holocaust. When you say holocaust, you are really saying,
given up to God. But God does not exist. I'm sorry to say
it. If God existed, he would not let genocide be committed.
When you use the term holocaust and speak about metaphysical realities,
you are missing the terrible truth: genocides are committed by human
beings against other human beings because of who they are. This
is what we must not let happen again, but we let it happen again and
again.
Interviewer's comment
I believe that what happened in 1948 was attempted genocide-by both
Jews and Arabs. The Arabs, motivated by the memory of imperial
servitude and a will to be free, aimed to "drive the Jews into the sea"
and/or "send them back where they came from," irregardless of the
amount of Jewish life lost in the process. This was an attempt to
exterminate an entire population and essentially erase or cleanse the
Middle East of what was perceived to be a foreign infection.
The Jews, motivated more by terror (the ghost of Adolf Hitler) and a
zeal to survive, responded in kind, perceiving the Arab presence in
their ancestral territories also as a foreign infection, not to be
trusted and best to be removed (cleansed). However, since this
was not a sentiment shared by all the Jews' leaders and
decision-makers, a great many Arabs were included in the newborn State
of Israel-thus inspiring David Ben-Gurion's prophetic remark that
Israel must rid itself of its Arab territories lest it "become an
apartheid state." [One might find reading Let me create a paradise, God said to himself by Hirsh Goodman very interesting.]
Debates still rage as to whether apartheid, military occupation and
colonization (what Israel has done to Palestinians), and terrorism and
perpetual war (what the Arabs have done to Israel), individually or
collectively constitute genocide. I, for one, am doubtful.
These things may be steps in
a genocide, but as the models of pre-Mandella South Africa and Jim Crow
United States demonstrated, they can also be states of existence
sufficiently evil... and useful...
in and of themselves. Genocide is rarely useful; it is more the
volcanic spewing of dark things within the human soul, concentrated
upon fellow human beings. Just look at Turkey: as Dr. Auron tried
to point out, exterminating the Armenians only led the Turks to try to
exterminate the Kurds-so much for the usefulness of genocide.
I, for one, believe that ethnic cleansing is genocide. Call it
careless genocide, or genocide that doesn't give a damn what happens to
the victims, but the psychology is that of extermination: the severe
dehumanization of a group to the point where they are too much a
nuisance to tolerate and must be removed from one's presence. Say
what you will about apartheid and occupation, even terrorism, but those
things are still interested in manipulating and controlling a
population, often for long periods of time. Those who engage in
ethnic cleansing aren't the least bit interested in manipulation and
control; they want to be rid of a "problem," usually within themselves
but projected onto another group-and they certainly haven't the
generations-long patience required of a successful segregationist or
master terrorist.
Much of what Dr. Auron and I discussed dealt with the problem of
definitions, but also naming. Why was it so important for Lemkin
to develop a unique term for genocide? Why is it that Armenians
feel the need to have that term used to describe what happened to them
in 1915? Why is it that Jews and Palestinians-and outsiders, such
as myself-insist on describing what happened in 1948 as a
genocide?
For Dr. Auron, an historian and a Jewish Israeli man, calling an event
in history by its real name is not only a matter of scientific
accuracy, but a matter of right and wrong. Dr. Auron's
professional career has been shaped by his morality: he has bucked the
academic establishment of his homeland to proclaim the truth about
1915.
So, why then his reluctance regarding 1948? Because Dr. Auron is
a man. What's more, he is a Jewish man. It is not
appropriate, not even accurate, to compare Nazi Germany to modern
Israel. Nazism was a dark phenomenon rarely seen in this world,
of an organizational and obsessive intensity that almost no other
genocide equals it (I can only think of a few others: what the Spanish
did to natives in southern America, and what some African nations have
done in the last twenty years, such as the conflicts in the
Sudan.) However, what Jews did to their Arab neighbors in 1948
was a genocide, just of an American-type, and so their actions echoed,
if faintly, what was done to them in the 1930s and 40s.
But men are paradoxical, and not always in terrible ways. While
Dr. Auron may not describe 1948 as a genocide, he has striven to make
amends with Palestinians: a few years ago, he and his family moved to
Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam, the "Oasis of Peace," the Middle East's
first and only Jewish-Arab cooperative village.
So, what does it matter if individuals or nations can "accurately"
characterize history. When our actions confess the sins of the
past, attempt to heal bleeding wounds of the present, and create a new
and better future, what does naming matter?
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Written by Martin van Duin on 2006-11-01 16:55:47
is it possible to send me the e-mal address of dr. Auron ?
emxem@tiscali.nl
| genocide
Written by patriotr on 2006-03-20 16:24:46
let me teach you some history, After the declaration of independence what did Armenia do? Armenia is a 3 million small country and their 1st act was to attack Azerbaijan and kill innocent people. Just do a search on google and you will see what genocide is! Before talking about genocide just take a look at Armenian genocide against Azerbaijan Turks just happened 25 years ago. you don't need documents or else, cameras existed by the time. By the way if you have a heart disease pls do not look at the pictures, because Armenians tortured their victims before they died .(babies , women included)
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Written by patriotr on 2006-03-20 16:18:58
I guess Mr Auron is a world leading liar! and it is obvious he doesn't know how to count. 1 million Armenians never existed in Anatolia, and he goes on " Turks used Kurds to kill Armenians" , but he misses a point, Kurds and Armenians killed Turks, why don't you comment on it as well Mr Liar?. FYI Mr Scwartz, Kurdistan never existed, you have to learn more before asking questions.
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