Haim Oron: it's impossible to accept any disregarding from Armenian Genocide

February 9, 2010 - 11:39 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net -
The discussion about the Armenian Genocide and the need to recognize it should have taken place in the Knesset a long time ago, said Haim Oron, Knesset member and the head of Meretz party.

“I think that as sons of the Jewish People that knew the Holocaust and constantly fighting against those who deny the Holocaust, it's impossible to accept any disregarding from the Armenian Genocide. I hope that one day this recognition will be possible because we have moral and educational duty to this subject especially in this time when Israel keep stressing the need to preserve the memory of the Holocaust,” Mr. Oron told PanARMENIAN.Net

As to war with Iran, he said it is possible. “I think that nuclear armed Iran is a world wide problem that should be solved in international framework,” Mr. Oron said.

Haim Oron was born in Tel-Aviv in 1940. He served as secretary of the Hashomer Hatzair movement from 1968-1971, and as later secretary of the movement's leadership. He was a founding member of the Peace Now movement. From 1994-1995 he was treasurer of the Histadrut (New General Federation of Labor). Haim Oron has been a Member of Knesset since 1988. In 2009, he introduced a draft resolution on recognition of the Armenian Genocide but the motion failed to gain the essential number of co-sponsors.

The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres and deportations, involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.

Present-day Turkey denies the fact of the Armenian Genocide, justifying the atrocities as “deportation to secure Armenians”. Only a few Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and scholar Taner Akcam, speak openly about the necessity to recognize this crime against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide was recognized by Uruguay, Russia, France, Lithuania, Italy, 45 U.S. states, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Argentina, Belgium, Austria, Wales, Switzerland, Canada, Poland, Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia, the Vatican, Luxembourg, Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, Paraguay, Sweden, Venezuela, Slovakia, Syria, Vatican, as well as the European Parliament and the World Council of Churches.

The Holocaust

The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.

The slaughter was systematically conducted in virtually all areas of Nazi-occupied territory in what are now 35 separate European countries. It was at its worst in Central and Eastern Europe, which had more than seven million Jews in 1939. About five million Jews were killed there, including three million in occupied Poland and over one million in the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands also died in the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Yugoslavia and Greece. The Wannsee Protocol makes clear that the Nazis also intended to carry out their "final solution of the Jewish question" in England and Ireland.