Sunday 13 June 2010

A Casebook of Denials of Doing Harm to Others and Rewards to People and Nations Who Overcome Denial




Israel Charny

This is the second of two stories on the conference on Armenian-Turkish relations that took place at Istanbul University in March 2006 – and in 2008 Istanbul University published a book of the proceedings containing presentations at the conference variously in Turkish and English.

This lecture was given in the heart of Istanbul. It is about the denials of many countries, but not including Turkey.

In the previous issue of GPN Genocide Prevention Now, we presented an editorial note and a summary report of the conference by Israel Charny ("Istanbul Report"), and then the courageous paper presented by Yair Auron in which he asserted the validity of the Armenian Genocide. Intriguingly, Auron’s reference to the Armenian Genocide had been deleted from his title in the program, but the conference honored his right to speak, the Turkish press then amazingly reported his remarks openly and accurately, and subsequently the conference organizers reproduced Auron’s talk – the text published in GPN - here too entirely accurately, without any revisions or deletions.

In the present issue we present the talk given by Israel Charny as it too was reproduced entirely accurately by Istanbul University in the book of the conference, including a clear affirmation of the validity of the Armenian Genocide and a forthright disclaimer by Charny from any association with the many denials of the Armenian Genocide that also appear in the book.

Life gets very puzzling when the deniars and censors have attacks of honesty and faithfulness, but the puzzle is welcome.

Please click here for a fully referenced pdf version of this article