Bruce Fein

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President Joe Biden Bought and Sold by the Armenian National Committee of America

Today, on April 24, 2023, President Joe Biden issued a statement about World War I, Ottoman Armenians, and Ottoman Turks which bears the same relationship to truth as the Anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion or the fraudulent Donation of Constantine.

Mr. Biden’s statement was bought and paid for by the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). It heroizes terrorist organizations like the Justice Commandoes of the Armenian Genocide and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia. It lionizes convicted terrorist Harry Sassounian who assassinated Turkish Consul General Kemal Arikan in 1982 in Lost Angeles. ANCA incited the assassination by inculcating in the teenager implacable hatred of Turks for an alleged but unproven Armenian genocide.

But in politics, truth is helpless when assaulted by lavish campaign contributions and votes. As Mark Hanna famously said, “There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.”

Taking a page from Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, Mr. Biden’s statement repeated a big lie, i.e., that Ottoman Turks perpetrated a genocide of Armenians during World War I. Goebbels instructed, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

No court of law has ever affirmed an Armenian genocide. It has been disputed by the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations, renowned scholars such as Bernard Lewis of Princeton, Stanford Shaw of UCLA, Justin McCarthy of the University of Louisville, Gunter Lewy of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Israel’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres.

No person or nation has ever even been accused of an Armenian genocide in a court of law. Armenia has refused to take their allegation for adjudication to the International Court of Justice for 73 successive years under Article IX of the Genocide Convention. Other cases alleging genocide have proceeded before the ICJ, for example The Gambia’s pending suit against Myanmar for genocide of the Rohingya. The reason for the prolonged Armenian idleness is self-evident. They fear they will lose.

Their fear is fully justified. The Genocide Convention excludes politically motivated killings. Armenians themselves shouted from the rooftops at the post-World War I Paris Peace Conference that they died in large numbers fighting for the Triple Entente hoping for an independent Armenian nation. Their deaths were indistinguishable from the Confederate soldiers who died at Gettysburg during the Civil War on behalf of the Confederate States of America. The Armenian deaths were anchored to a political dispute over independence from the Ottoman Empire.

The Holocaust is the gold standard for proving genocide. Over 10,000 pages of documentary evidence and live testimony subject to cross-examination was submitted to the post- World War II International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg. Due process was honored. The verdict was rendered by judges, not politicians. The evidence included Mein Kampf, Kristallnacht, the Nuremberg laws stripping Jews of citizenship and the rights to a livelihood, speech, religion, or association, and extermination camps at Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

What have Armenians produced? Not a crumb of evidence introduced in a court of law and tested by the fires of cross-examination—the greatest engine ever invented for the discovery of truth. No equivalent of Mein Kamp or Kristallnacht. No equivalent of the Nuremberg decrees or extermination camps.

Indeed, Armenians were a favored minority in the Ottoman Empire serving at the highest levels of the civil service and the military. They were killed in large numbers during World War I because they defected to the enemy. But their deaths were not disproportionate to the deaths of Ottoman Turks. And what is war other than the legalization of first-degree murder not in self-defense?

The Allied Powers had more than ample opportunity to prosecute Ottoman Turks for war crimes after World War I. The Ottoman Empire was in ruins. The Allied powers had access to all Ottoman archives in Istanbul. But they refrained for lack of reliable, admissible incriminating evidence. The release of the Malta detainees is exemplary.

The British arrested 144 high Ottoman officials and sent them to Malta “to try and sentence the Turks.” An investigation on the mass killing of Armenians continued for two years based on Articles 230 and 231 of the Treaty of Sèvres. In addition to the Ottoman archives, every document deemed to be in America was examined. Proof of the “Armenian massacre” was sought in Egypt, Iraq, and Caucasia. But no evidence was found that a British court would consider sufficient. The British Crown Prosecution Service in a document dated 29 July 1921, thus announced to the British government that, with the “evidence in hand” none of the Turks on Malta could be prosecuted for an alleged Armenian massacre. They were unconditionally released.

Big lies with political and financial backing endure. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are still taken as gospel in many countries in the Middle East. The Armenian genocide lie persists because of the rich backing of ANCA and their bought political toadies. It is contemptible that President Joe Biden has stooped so low. It is what could be expected of despotic rulers, but not the President of the United States who purports to celebrate justice.

/s/Bruce Fein

Bruce Fein

Counsel for Turkish Anti-Defamation Alliance