Israeli minister is unaware of his country’s policy on Armenian Genocide issue

14.02.2007

YEREVAN (YERKIR) - Ottawa-Canadian Jewish organizations organized a conference with Armenian community of Canada on the issue of the Armenian Genocide on February 6.

The ANCC (Armenian National Committee of Canada) told PanARMENIAN.Net that during debates between Aris Babikian, ANCC executive director, and Israel's minister of public security Avi Dicter the latter said he is not aware of any decision or policy by his government to deny the Armenian Genocide.

May be Israel's minister of public security Avi Dicter should be reminded of the following:
"One of Israel's leading scholars of the Jewish Holocaust has angrily compared the country's Nobel prize-winning Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, to a holocaust denier after an interview in which Mr Peres made the astonishing claim that the Armenians - 1.5 million of whom were slaughtered by Ottoman turks in 1915 - never experienced a genocide.

Mr Peres' statement appeared in the turkish Daily News prior to a recent state visit to turkey; the paper says he went so far as to refer to the Armenian account of the mass slaughter as "meaningless"."http://hyelog.blogspot.com/2007/02/non-recognition-of-armenian.html

and

"The U.S. is not the only country to cave in to pressure from Ankara. The turkish Daily News recently quoted Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres saying, "We reject the attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. It was a tragedy what the Armenians went though, but not a genocide."

After protests poured into Israeli embassies around the world and critics at home denounced him for "Holocaust denial," Peres claimed to have been partially misquoted. But in light of Israel's longtime refusal to acknowledge what happened to the Armenians as genocide, his clarification isn't very convincing. "http://hyelog.blogspot.com/2001/04/no-other-word-for-it.html

Earlier in the day Babikian participated in a panel discussion titled “Having Our Voices heard: Enhancing Effectiveness of the Ethnic Community Advocacy.” He presented the Armenian National Committee's advocacy work in the past 40 years on behalf of the Canadian-Armenia community and specially the organization’s efforts to secure the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the federal, provincial and municipal governments.


Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.