I have written about the idiot anti-Semite Christopher Jon Bjerknes, who threatens to sue me for calling him the former, but apparently Anti-Semitism is not his only hobby.

Where is thy robe, sir jerkness?

One of our readers just sent me a link to the notorious Ku Klux Klan retiree David Duke’s official website where Jon Bjerknes has a post, from August 22, 2007, on his theory that the Armenian Genocide was done by the Jews. 

And, of course, this is not the only “contribution” by Bjerknes to the klansite. He has a post on Jewish bankers (who are, of course, at fault for the Armenian Genocide) and several others.

Reading Abe Foxman’s newest genius at the Jerusalem Post, where he basically says he used the G-word for Jewish unity, I wondered if his new stance is not more dangerous than his previous absolute denial of the Armenian Genocide.

What brought laugh to my face, though, was a single-sentenced comment by a Texas reader of the Jerusalem Post, saying, ADL means “Armenian Defamation League.”

Link: http://blogcentral.jpost.com/index.php?cat_id=7&blog_id=76&blog_post_id=1489

To what extent the Armenian Genocide has “benefited” Zionism is a question often asked in these days. But “contributions” such as the claim that Jews have carried out the Armenian Genocide are clrearly anti-Semitic.

And what troubles me is when a respected website such as www.GenocideEvents.com is sending me an e-mail announcing that “HISTORIAN CHRISTOPHER JON BJERKNESS [WILL] SPEAK IN AN UNPRECEDENTED PUBLIC LECTURE, ON WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, 2007, ON THE TOPIC OF ‘WHO WERE THE YOUNG TURKS, THEIR MOTIVES AND THEIR ETHNIC ORIGINS.'”

Christopher Jon Bjerkness is the self-proclaimed historian from http://jewishracism.com/ whose latest book’s title speaks for itself, “The Jewish Genocide of Christian Armenians.” So of course the idiot was going to speak in front of a small nationalist Armenian crowd in California that the Armenian Genocide was done by the Jews (what gives hope is the fact that this small crowd could not get the event happen at an Armenian venue and, instead, at the United Community Church in Glendale, California). And quite ironically, this anti-Semite’s book reminds me of a similar title by an anti-Armenianist, “THE NAZI-ARMENIAN GENOCIDE OF JEWS 1935–1945.”

And please. Don’t tell me I need to waste my time reading a 500-page book that tells me my people were cleansed out of their ancestral homeland by the Jews. The fact that some masterminds of the Armenian Genocide had Jewish heritage doesn’t prove much – there were masterminds who also had Assyrian and even Armenian blood. And, perhaps, some individual Jews have benefited from the Armenian Genocide by having some business competition eliminated, etc. But what does this have to do with the Armenian-Turkish conflict?

I assume most Armenians are, justly, outraged with many Turkish-Jews’ support of the Armenian Genocide denial. There is one like that at the Metro State College of Denver in Colorado, Robert Hasan. The guy is a Turkish Jew now teaching history at this college and an adamant denier of the Armenian Genocide.

Actualy I heard of Hasan from a senior Jewish friend of mine – he was reading literature on genocide at Barnes & Nobles when Hasan interrupted him, introduced himself and urged my friend to make sure to learn about the Genocide that ARMENIANS COMMITTED against the Turks!
Of course my friend was outraged and he is actually now doing as much awareness work for the Armenian Genocide as for the Jewish Holocaust.

Now take this case and make your judgement. Is Hasan a Zionist or a nationalist Turk with a permanent brain damage? I don’t care which one he is, but idiots like him don’t ignite anti-Semitism in me to declare that the Armenian Genocide was committed by the Jews that’s why Turkish Jews deny it! And yes, it is anti-Semitism to blame Jews for the Armenian Genocide. And not because Jews, as every other people, are not capable of a genocide (and in fact, according to the Old Tastement, they may have as well committed one long time ago) but ignoring the Pan-Turkist ideology that carried out the Armenian Genocide and blaming Zionism instead is very unintelligent.

Paradoxically, a select debils are taking advantage of Christopher Jon Bjerkness’ limited “acceptance” among some Armenian circles to misinterpret the Zionist charge in the Armenian Genocide to deny the Armenian Genocide in quite stupid ways. Barbara Lerner, for example, has contributed to National Review Online (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDI2ZmMwMjJhNjMxZGNmZGVjOTc5MmQwMDY5OWY0ZmY=) with her “judgment time” by trying to defend professional deniers of the Armenian Genocide as victims of anti-Semitism:

“…[M]en like Guenter Lewy, Edward J. Erickson, Andrew Mango, Justin McCarthy, Stanford Shaw, Norman Stone, and Michael Gunter — are regularly compared to Holocaust deniers like David Irving and Ernst Zundel, and dismissed as ‘genocide deniers.’ On many blogs and websites, Armenians often accuse these scholars of being part of a Jewish and/or Zionist conspiracy, because Israel has always steadfastly rejected the genocide charge, as Turkey’s own Jewish citizens do.”

While otherwise consistent in providing links to references, Lerner, for some reason, fails to provide any links to any of the “many blogs and websites, [where] Armenians often accuse these scholars of being part of a Jewish and/or Zionist conspiracy.”

I have my own conspiracy theory about Ms. Lerner; she needs to get laid.

Original cartoon by Lucine Kasbarian

You thought he was a denier, but did you know he was also an urologist?

Turkey’s official chief historian Yusuf Halacoglu, who has made news at Blogian for his role in covering up the discovery and the destruction of a possible Armenian Genocide mass grave, is under fire now for what many in Turkey see as racist comments against both Armenians and Kurds.

Photo: Halacoglu

Halacoglu, the head of the governmental Turkish Historical Society, has now ridiculed himself by proclaiming at a conference that there are no Kurds in Turkey: “Kurds are converted Turkmen and Kurdish Alevis are converted Armenians.” (Halacoglu is quoted as saying in the Turkish Daily News)

Apparently, after going through the penises of PKK (a militant Kurdish group deemed as terrorist by the West) members, Halacoglu has once again discovered there has been no Armenian Genocide. He is quoted in the Turkish press as saying, “For example when some PKK members are arrested it becomes apparent that they are not circumcised.”

If a Kurd is not circumcised then he must be Armenian, thinks Halacoglu. If there are so many covert Armenians in Turkey then there has been no Armenian Genocide, thinks – or should I say hallucinates – Halacoglu. I wonder what Halacoglu could find out by looking at my penis.

It is difficult to say what is the most shocking aspect about Halacoglu’s new hallucination – denying the Kurdish identity, propagating conspiracy theories about Armenians, denying the Armenian Genocide or trying to even more dehumanize Kurds by calling them Armenians? 

Kenan Ercel, a native of Turkey now at the Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts, says that the motivations behind Halacoglu’s statements are ignored.

There is much talk and outcry around Halacoglu’s latest statements but
what gets surprisingly little attention in the midst of all the hubbub is
the motivation behind those statements, which is not so much to deny Kurds
a separate ethnic identity (he already backpedaled on that) but to
downplay the scale of the 1915 deportations. As Halacoglu stated in a TV interview yesterday (on SkyTurk), if it can be shown that hundreds of thousands of Armenians who were believed to have disappeared from Anatolia were actually still there under the guise of a different ethnicity (Alevi Kurds), then it can be proven that the deportations were no where near as widespread as they are claimed to be. In the said interview he argued that if this hidden population was accounted for, the number of Armenians living in Turkey as of 1920 would turn out to be 1.3 million! Hence, not only was there no genocide, but even the “tehcir” was very limited in scope.

As to how such a sizeable Christian population managed to meld in
(almost en masse) with a Muslim sect without being noticed by the CUP authorities and their collaborators, I’m sure Halacoglu has other fairy tales to tell.

graphic by HragVartanian.com

By this point perhaps most of you know about the Anti-Defamation League affair and Armenian Genocide denial that has appeared in the international media.

While you can review information (photos, videos) on the affair and get updated with the developments through www.NoPlaceForDenial.com, a website founded by Armenian-American activists, you can sign a petition at www.FireFoxman.com, a website established by Jewish-American activists.

Just noticed through blogs.google.com that a new blog, Akcam.info, has been set up to support Turkish historian Taner Akcam who is being targeted by ultranationalists of his kin for his scholarship on the Armenian Genocide – a holocaust that official Turkey says never happened.

The purpose of this website is to inform the public and the U.S. authorities of the dangers to Pr. Akcam’s life. Pr. Akcam is one of the first Turkish academics to acknowledge and discuss openly the genocide of the Armenians by the Turkish government in 1915. He is one of a growing number of Turkish scholars and intellectuals who are challenging Turkey’s insistent declarations that the organized slaughter of Armenians did not occur. Pr. Akcam is the victim of a lynching campaign that has an uncanny resemblance to the campaign against Hrant Dink immediately prior to his assassination on January 19, 2007. Act now before it is too late.

By Ahmet Altan, Gazetem.net July 9, 2007 (translated from Turkish)

I met Taner Akcam at an American university city where the winters are long and harsh.
I had heard of him many times.

He was one of the leaders of an old legendary left wing organization.
And, he did not care about any ‘title, name, or class’ of anyone, including his, as he only defined people by their ‘deeds.’

You were a man as much as your deeds.

He was joyful, humorous, and would not complain even under difficult circumstances.
At the university, he was teaching history, I, literature.

During the long winter nights, we would meet sometimes, and he would tell me about his life experiences with a sense of humour exclusive to him.

He had attempted to “democratize” his illegal leftist organization and as a result he had made himself an enemy of his own organization.

He had criticized the anti-democratic stand of the PKK, had been included in the ‘death list’ of the organization, and in an attack, one of his friends had been mistakenly killed.
He would really be moved by sorrow while talking about that.

He was an exceptionally meticulous man.

When he was telling me how he would regularly load up his luggage with detergent bottles before travelling illegally to the Bekaa Valley camp, he would foreground not the difficulties he endured, but the “entertaining contradictions of life.”

He was a leader who carried detergent cleaners, not weapons.

He was researching the deportations of the Armenians executed by the Committee of Union and Progress at that time and he was emphasizing that this amounted to ‘genocide’.

What he claimed so openly and clearly was a difficult thing to do for a Turk at that time.
But he believed in what he spoke, and he spoke what he believed.

Of course he knew that what he was talking about would get him into trouble and he lwas not ooking for trouble, but it was not in his nature to keep quiet in order to avoid trouble, it was not in his nature to shut up about things that he believed.

He would list the actions of the Ittihadists one by one.

He was earning respect with his courage and honesty.

Then I returned home.

He went to another university in the United States.

He wrote new books, he made new enemies.

I received an e-mail from Taner recently.
One line specifically was frightening:
‘First it was Hrant, and I think they put me second in line.’

I remembered Hrant’s last editorial before he died, where he wrote ‘they will kill me’.
We had learned about a murder plot –known almost by the entire state apparatus, documented in intelligence reports numerous times– only after the murder.

No one could help Hrant.

No one had the opportunity or the time to cry that ‘the murder is coming’.

And our ‘lack of awareness’ had cost Hrant his life.

Now Taner was saying, ‘they put me next in line, I guess’.

Hrant’s murder showed us that the State would condone even new murders in order to cover up the sins of the Ittihadists.

That is why alarm bells rang inside me in a more scary fashion when I read Taner’s mail.
It is obvious that ‘that voice, the instict’ which warned Hrant before his murder is now warning Taner.

And he senses the gun being aimed at him.

Are they going to kill Taner for saying ‘Armenians were subjected to genocide’?

Don’t people of our society have the right to say what they believe about our own history?

Does everybody have the obligation to speak in the same way as the state?
Is death the price to pay for not sharing the state views and theses on our history?
Which discussion on history can be punished by death?

Are you going to kill every single person who says ‘Armenians were subjected to genocide’?

If you commit this murder, will the bloodshed prove that ‘there was no genocide’?

It is the very spirit of Ittihadists that is going arounf in this country, they go on killing the Armenian, the Sunni, the Protestant, the Kurd, indiscriminately.

How much longer will this go on?
How much longer will people be killed?

This state and this society could not protect Hrant.
Let us at least protect Taner.
He is a brave and an honest man.
He uttered what was most difficult in this country. He spoke because he believed.
I believe any man who speaks his mind knowing that will put him in trouble deserves respect, regardless of what he believes in.

Death is lingering around his door now.

There are so many newspapers, so many journalists, so many intellectuals in this country; will no one speak up to protect Taner?

Never forget.

Our silence will kill Taner.

If anything happens tomorrow, we will be all complicit.

Protect a person.

Do this so that you can say ‘I am too a human being’.
If you don’t…then you carry your silence like death all your life.

A Statement by Taner Akçam

July 16, 2007

In May 2007, I revealed the identity of Murad “Holdwater” Gümen, the secretive Webmaster of Tall Armenian Tale, an extensive and influential site devoted to “the other side of the falsified Genocide” and the defamation of genocide scholars, myself included. Mr. Gümen has been a leading voice in an ongoing campaign to denounce me as a traitor to Turkey and as a terrorist who ought to be of interest to American authorities.

For the last three years, disinformation about me from Tall Armenian Tale has been disseminated all over the Internet, eventually reaching the open-source encyclopedia, Wikipedia. This campaign, which intensified after the November 2006 publication of my book, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, culminated in my detention by Canadian and American border authorities last February, on suspicion of terrorism. As evidence, they showed me my vandalized Wikipedia biography.

Just one month before this incident, the assassination of Istanbul-based journalist Hrant Dink by an ultranationalist gunman had put Turkey’s intellectuals on high alert. We knew that in the months before his death, Mr. Dink had been targeted by an increasingly vicious media campaign intent on portraying him as a traitor. Among other things, Dink was pilloried for revealing the Armenian identity of Sabiha Gökçen, the adopted daughter of Turkey’s founding father, Kemal Ataturk. Leading the pack against Dink was Hürriyet newspaper, one of the most influential publications in Turkey.

In the campaign against me, disinformation from Tall Armenian Tale was copied to YouTube videos describing my “terrorist” activities. I received death threats by email. My lectures and book tour were disrupted, and poison-pen letters were sent to the hosting universities. Following my lecture on November 1, 2006, at City University of New York, I was physically assaulted.

My detention was the last straw. I challenged Mr. Gümen to stand up in public.

The unmasking of an individual who had been running a campaign of slander against me was presented to readers of Hürriyet as a criminal or unethical act. I was said to have endangered Mr. Gümen’s life.

“Murad Gümen, who has been defending Turkey for over 30 years under the assumed name ‘Holdwater,’ had his identity unmasked by Taner Akçam, supporter of the claim of a so-called genocide….Upon publication of his identity, Gümen became a target and has been the subject of a hate campaign.”—“Secret Lobbyist Deciphered,” Hürriyet, June 21, 2007

“Murad Gümen, whose identity was unmasked by Taner Akçam, has been the target of a flood of insults sent by Armenians via the Internet. Gümen, who’s been accused of racism, has had his photograph published on the Web….[Taner Akçam]’s disappeared. It has not been possible to reach Taner Akçam….Murad Gümen is a successful illustrator and film producer who lives in America.”—“Immediate Target,” Hürriyet, June 22, 2007

“Taner Akçam fled Turkey years ago. He lives overseas, in the United States at this point, and gets fed by the Armenian lobby. He vomits hate towards our country in all of his books and his speeches. Recently he unmasked the Web site that was maintained by Murad Gümen, who has been defending the Turkish position on Armenian issues in the United States, and he revealed the latter’s identity which had been kept secret until now. This individual named Taner Akçam who has spent his life living outside of the country, writing articles and giving speeches against Turkey…[T]his individual…escaped overseas, works in opposition to Turkey, betrayed his country, and serves the Armenian lobby by promoting the position that ‘there was an Armenian genocide’ all over the world!”—Emin Çolasan, “Bravo Atilla Koç! This is How You Introduce Turkey!”, Hürriyet, June 23, 2007

Hürriyet’s reportage concerns me deeply, for three reasons.

First, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the lynching mentality that was created against Dink. Having revealed the identity of a secret slanderer, I am now being denounced as a traitor who “vomits hate towards our country.”

My second cause for concern has to do with an anonymous email that I received on June 11, 2007: “Today we have started fighting you and those creatures you call your friends, within the boundaries of the law. But if we don’t get the result we’re looking for, we’ll start trying other alternative ways. It would be better for world peace and truth if sewer germs like you were taken off the planet…tomorrow is going to be much more difficult for you. Pray that the devil takes you away soon because otherwise you’ll be living a hell on earth… you think you’ve discovered who “Holdwater” is …you have gotten it all wrong. Right now the world is full of millions of Holdwaters…One day you and your wild Armenian blood brothers will drown in this sea of Holdwaters…The truth hurts…it really does. One day you are going to feel the pain so badly that when you read these lines, you’ll remember how you were.” The similarity in character between the campaign against me by Hürriyet and the language used in this threatening email is frightening.

The writer of that letter concludes, “Who am I? You’re going to find out, Taner, you’re going to find out.” Was it a coincidence that the Hürriyet campaign began just 10 days later?

Third, Hürriyet cold-bloodedly disregarded the most basic principles of journalism. Their headline on the second day of coverage proclaimed that I had “disappeared.” Readers were given the impression that I had gone into hiding the day after Hürriyet reported my unmasking of Murad “Holdwater” Gümen.

The fact is that my office address, telephone numbers, and email address are all available online. The University of Minnesota, College of Liberal Arts, the Department of History, and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies have full-time staff. There is no record of a call, not one single email, from Hürriyet. They never bothered to contact me. They didn’t check their facts or attempt to interview me. And when I demanded a correction, the editor-in-chief ignored my letter.

Thus, in Dink’s case and also in mine, one of the most influential and widely circulated national newspapers does not hesitate to transform itself into a weapon. Once again, intellectuals and activists who dare to question the government’s “official history” are being put on notice. This shameful campaign not only endangers my life and the lives of my colleagues, my family and friends; ironically enough, the very notion of free expression is being undermined by the very institution that depends on it most: the public press.

And what is the point, after all? I published a scholarly study that deviated from the official position of the Turkish State. One should ask the Turkish authorities whether they truly believe that shooting the messenger will prove that their position on 1915 is the correct one.

Tired of the e-mail contest between the Armenian Assembly of America and the Armenian National Committee of America informing you about the new number of U.S. Representatives who have co-sponsored House Resolution 106 urging George W. Bush to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide as such? Then DO IT YOURSELF!

Visit www.thomas.loc.gov, type “Armenian Genocide” in the Search Bill Text, click on SEARCH, select H.RES.106.IH (the first item).

You can find out the number and the list of the cosponsors (AND MANY OTHER THINGS such as the text of the bill in full) by clicking on “Bill Summary & Status.” 

And if you still can’t do it yourself… the number of the cosponsors is now 220.