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Of course Turks admit to the slaughter of the Armenians. The present Turkish govt just does not accept the term “genocide”.
The Armenian massacres are described on Turkish websites today, and I can’t imagine that there is no mention in Turkish school history books.
And whether it is or isn’t in school books, Turks all know about it. Second time I heard about this massacre, was from a Turkish friend.
The following is from the English Wikipedia site on the Armenian Genocide.
The Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, does not accept the word genocide as an accurate description of the events.In recent years, it has faced repeated calls to accept the events as genocide. To date, twenty-one countries have officially recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this view

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Yes, I do know quite a lot about Jews, including Ethiopian Jews and some of the myths of Jews elsewhere in Africa, also Jewish communities in India and elsewhere in the East, and even the Arab Jews. I am not sure what this has to do with this discussion though. Perhaps you could explain your apparently confused reasoning (or maybe you have some profound point to make).

I also have no intention of being politically correct. If any one group of people tend to use barbaric tactics that other civilised people don’t, I will speak out. I will for example, openly condemn black ANC politicians for political and state corruption and I will become annoyed with the police (as I did with our local station last week) when I once again see a corrupt police officer. We must, for example to call a corrupt police force a corrupt police force, even though there are some good policemen in their ranks. If that makes me a racist (which it probably does), then this is a label I will accept. To do otherwise would disgrace our battle for a better world.

But enough of a diversion – Lets focus on the core issue

Do you see Arab suicide bombers blowing up innocent people, Yes/No
Am I correct to say there has never been a single Jewish suicide bomber, Yes/No
Can you therefore assume that suicide bombing is an Arab pastime Yes/No
So one of the undesirable racial attributes of the Palestinians as a group that they encourage some of their youth to become suicide bombers to kill innocent people.

Do the Israelis build bomb shelters in all the towns and villages near their boarders, Yes/No
Do the Israeli military track every incoming missile Yes/No
Do the Palestinians encourage civilians to hang round (even in the field of fire) during a conflict, Yes/No
So one of the racial attributes of the Israeli (Jewish) people to protect their community from harm

So there are attributes that the Palestinians as a group exhibit that hinder peace, have done for the last 60 years and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. Ag shame, poor little Ayhrabs, wmust we all fight the Jews because the Palestinians won’t negotiate….

Unfortunately, Israel has had to teach various countries and people round them to treat the Jew with respect. Think of the Egyptians in 1967, the Syrians and people of Lebanon in the last conflict. This time round it is the Hamas supporters. The cost has always been heavy and it will be again this time but it is the only formula that Israel has found that works.

And it’s wise to understand that the Israelis aren’t out to win any cheap international public relations exercise, their attention is fixed to the single goal of peace in Israel, nothing more, nothing less.

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Justin,
If you can’t use google properly to do research, then don’t pretend to do it, especially if you rely on others to do your home work for you. The total figure for all dead in Bosnia is just over 100,000 as the mirsad tokaca of the Missing Persons project in Bosnia has reported and also as reported by bosnian newspaper Dani where he was interviewed by Emir Suljagic (also admitted most from Srebrenica were soldiers in the bosnian army). NTB, the norwegian state broadcaster reported this figure over 4 years ago. I bet you people like to call Bosnia 1992+ ‘genocide’, but would not use the word ‘genocide’ to what happened in Yugoslavia during World War II.

To the other posters on Kosovo, most of the Albanian dead were KLA fighters. Even Thaci has publicly admitted this. This is something that the media doesn’t like to mention.

What is it with you guys? “If I’m not a victim of ‘genocide’ then I’m irrelevant” crowd? You think that for the last 20 years of all the ‘genocides’ reported by the western media that your contrived one is special and stands out? Or are you just fashionistas? You like to wear the label because when you cannot stitch together a cogent argument to support your opinion you can always trot out ‘genocide’ so that anyone who disagrees immediately becomes a ‘genocide denier’? Smells like fascism to me.

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In 1947/1948 The new UN decided to create a few Bantustans to protect minorities from being slaughtered by majorities in the soon to be new free post colonial states. Pakistan was divided off from India, to protect the Muslim minority from being slaughtered by the Hindu majority. Israel was divided off from The Middle East, to protect the Jews from being slaughtered by the Muslim majority. The rest is propaganda.

Garzukhai

In 1915 a million Armenians were killed in a genocide by the Turks. There are only a few hundred thousand left in Turkey now. They are allowed to have Armenian schools and Armenian teachers, but their history teacher has to be a Turk. The Turks will not admit to this history.

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No such death camp ever existed, it was a media creation and that can be objectively demonstrated.

Time to give it up. Time to move on. There was no genocide in the now curiously mono ethnic Kosovo.

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Read this article from the New York Times - of all places!

What You Don’t Know About Gaza

By Rashid Khalidi

January 10, 2009 “NY Times”

NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.

THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.

THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.

WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”
Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming “Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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