Today marks the 102nd anniversary of an unfathomable crime against humanity. The precursor to The Holocaust, the Armenian genocide involved the systematic deportation and elimination of over 1.5 million Armenian Christians living within the Ottoman Empire. The Federalist has published a useful explanation of what this series of atrocities entailed, as well an answer to the question of why the current Turkish state refuses to acknowledge its responsibility for this heinous crime. The New York Times has a fascinating article about a Turkish historian who’s uncovered documents which directly refute the concerted campaign of denial waged by his country’s government.

For more good reading material, I would recommend previous posts on this very important subject.

Although the Turkish riots in Rotterdam-and despite media portrayals of poor, victimized Muslims, that’s precisely what they were-were intended to help Recep Tayyip Erdoğan consolidate power within Turkey, they have had a corollary effect. Namely, serving as the best single advertisement for Geert Wilders becoming the next Prime Minister of The Netherlands. Can there be a greater indictment of the decades-long failed experiment in multiculturalism and Islamic immigration than what just occurred in Holland, which was witnessed by the entire world?

The fatuousness disguised as intellectualism peddled by frauds like Ian Buruma has turned a beacon of religious and political freedom into a place where ordinary Dutch men and women are menaced by violent Islamic mobs. Where a state-bankrolled “watchdog” says its permissible to send gay people death threats if you happen to be a Muslim. Where parliamentarians such as Geert Wilders himself are censured because they express disapproval of certain ethnic and religious groups. The notion that liberal, Enlightenment values can be reconciled with a retrograde, 7th century Arabian ideology is preposterous, and the only people who still believe in this fantasy are endangering the future of Europe.

Europeans did not resist Ottoman aggression for centuries merely to invite their enemies into their countries and submit to their whims. What happened in Rotterdam yesterday was not an aberration. It was a foretaste of what is to come.

Turkey’s historic brutality towards ethnic and religious minorities, particularly what was once a thriving, prosperous Armenian Christian community, is well known throughout the West. The notion that rational individuals with a basic historic awareness would be persuaded to accept Turkish revisionism and holocaust denial is absurd.  However, that hasn’t stopped the Turkish government from spending millions of dollars in an effort to cajole, coerce or bribe governments throughout the world, including our own, to ignore its complicity in one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century. Acclaimed scholars of the Middle East have repeated the lies spouted by fascistic Turkish demagogues as it relates to this subject, and we now have the Wall Street Journal running a full-page advertisement espousing the views of the men who orchestrated the virtual annihilation of the Armenian people.

That is why the Rally For Justice, to be held outside the Turkish Consulate in Los Angeles this Sunday, is necessary. It’s an opportunity to remind the the world that the descendants of those who survived the Armenian Golgotha have not forgotten the persecution of their ancestors, and will not remain silent while Turkey attempts to airbrush its crimes out of history, even as its current government commits monstrous new ones upon another demonized minority. I would urge all of this website’s followers who live in Southern California to attend, and those who cannot to spread the word. In the face of unspeakable lies, remaining silent is not an option.

This year marks the centennial of the Turkish campaign to wipe out the Armenian people and depopulate the Ottoman Empire of its Christian subjects. Last month was the official commemoration of this holocaust, known as Armenian Genocide Memorial Day. Our good friends at the Silent Majority No More have provided us with an illuminating photo-essay documenting the solemn acknowledgement of this genocide by the Armenian community living in New York City. In addition to explaining the historical background behind the most horrific instance of  Muslim brutality towards the Ottoman Empire’s economic engine, that essay also explores the continued Turkish denial of state crimes committed in defense of Islamic and national prejudices. 

For those who would like to learn more about this extremely important subject-and I would urge all of my readers to learn as much about the Armenian genocide as possible-there are many fantastic books on this subject. Including the brilliant work by Armenian-American scholar Peter Balakian, The Burning Tigris, which not only chronicles the Hamidian massacres and the much more comprehensive 1915 genocide, but also explores the extraordinary efforts of ordinary Americans who tried to turn the world’s gaze to the indescribable suffering of the Armenian people at the hands of the CUP and Turkish leadership.

Another worthwhile account of this horrific series of events was written by a survivor himself, Grigoris Balakian, a bishop of the Armenian Apostolic Church and relative of Peter Balakian. Armenian Golgotha is his testament to the persecution his people endured at the hands of the last great Islamic State. It also serves as a reminder that the people who would underestimate the threat posed by Islamic jihad, or who would warp their society’s ideals in order to appease  it, do not have a fundamental grasp of history.

We must remember. 

Update: New photos, and full video coverage, at  The Silent Majority.
 

Today I decided to return to my old stomping grounds at Brooklyn College in order to witness a lecture delivered by acclaimed polemicist, writer, political and human rights activist, and former leader of the new left, David Horowitz. Invited to speak by student leader Yosef Sobel, and sponsored by Professor  Langbert-both of whom can be seen below-Mr. Horowitz delivered an impassioned, but unerringly rational, defense of freedom of speech, pluralism, and diversity, all values under attack in the Middle East and on American campuses-the primary theme of the evening. 

He began by noting the extreme impediments he-and the people who attended his lecture-had to overcome in order to simply be in attendance. A particularly sarcastic Muslim student interrupted his introductory remarks-something that would recur approximately a dozen times during his hour long speech-to ask him why such security measures were necessary. His cogent response that these steps were “what checkpoints are about, making people feel safer,” brought a thunderous round of applause from the audience. I can attest to the thoroughness of the examination each person had to undergo before being admitted to the event. If only the federal government were as efficacious and watchful as the people providing security for David Horowitz, we wouldn’t even have to worry about potential domestic terror attacks. 

Mr. Horowitz noted the planned-but ultimately abandoned-attempt by the International Socialist Organization to thwart his speech, making the point that college campuses have now become “the political base of the fascist left in this country,” and asserting that they were imperiling the foundation of our freedoms, which is the “ability to disagree in a civil manner.” This fact was reinforced by the spectacle of repeated disruptions to his speech by Muslim students, possibly members of  a campus chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot known as the Muslim Students Association. The man seen below, who refused to condemn Hamas when confronted by Horowitz during the concluding part of his post-speech Q&A, is a perfect illustration of the intolerance pro-Israel, pro-American students face on a daily basis. 

He was assisted in his failed effort at sabotaging Brooklyn College’s guest speaker by several female Muslims seated at the back of the audience. 

Despite the adversarial nature of this segment of the audience, David Horowitz was able to continue with his presentation, the second part of which gave those willing to listen a brief history lesson in the contemporary Middle East, which he correctly pointed out was a colonial creation resulting from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, a fact that most pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli radicals refuse to admit, even as they deny the historic ties of Jews to the Holy Land. 

Refuting the libelous accusation that Israel, a land where Arab-Muslims enjoy more rights and freedoms than anywhere else on the planet, is somehow an “apartheid state,” he proclaimed that the opposite is the case, and that “the whole Arab Middle East is apartheid,” bolstering his assertion by recounting the eviction of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip by Hamas, which destroyed their agricultural equipment-equipment that was responsible for providing Gaza with 10 percent of its Gross National Product. 

He linked the two strands of his argument together by describing the enormous obstacles he encountered when attempting to place an ad exploring the true nature of the Islamic Middle East in the UC Daily Bruin-the official campus newspaper of UCLA-whose editors labeled the proposed ad defamatory. He then questioned the Daily Bruin representative as to how delineating the actual stance of Hezbollah, Hamas, and  Palestinian and Egyptian clerics was beyond the pale, while the regular vituperation directed against Israel and Jews was halal. Of course, he never received a satisfactory answer to his question. However, you can visit the Palestinian Wall of Lies and judge for yourself the validity of the accusations routinely lodged by  “Israeli apartheid” campaigners during their week of denunciation and vitriol. 

One of the chief laments of David Horowitz throughout his speech was the lack of support he receives from mainstream, institutionalized Judaism within the United States. He cited as a glaring example of this problem campus Hillels, which should be a defensive bulwark against pro-Islamic, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda, yet routinely refuse to engage in the war that’s being waged against them by radical leftists and organizations such as the Muslim Students Association. He also broadened his attack to include the “interfaith” organizations that attempt to reach out to radical Muslim organizations, notwithstanding their checkered history. 

The overall impression I had of the event, despite the repeated disruptions by anti-Horowitz, anti-Israel and anti-American agitators planted liberally throughout the auditorium, and a very pessimistic message delivered by the keynote speaker, was one of perseverance. David Horowitz reiterated the necessity of fighting for your beliefs, in spite of the long odds and remote chance of success, and standing up for classical liberalism and the ideals upon which our nation’s founding fathers established this country. I went away from the evening undeterred and hopeful that there remained a cadre of young students willing to engage in intellectual combat in order to see what they believe is right prevails, both on their own college campus and within the country as a whole.