Recent hate crime shows education about Armenian Genocide is badly needed in America | Opinion

A few weeks ago someone posted flyers on streetlight poles near an Armenian American church in Glendale that said the genocide against Armenians needs to be resumed.

“’Never again’ does not apply to Armenia,” the flyer said. “Israel fully supports our Azeri-Turk brothers to complete Armenian genocide.” It was signed by “Rabbi.” Glendale police pledged to investigate the incident as a hate crime.

That it was such a crime there can be no doubt, as the hatred fairly drips off it. That someone could still hold such a disgusting view in 2023 is itself shocking. Even more so the effort to link it to Israel with the Holocaust reference. That someone could support Azerbaijan’s ongoing military conflict against Armenia is revolting.

Toward the goal of making sure Americans know that there was an Armenian Genocide so it indeed never happens again, four members of Congress, including Republican David Valadao of Hanford, are about to introduce a bill called the Armenian Genocide Education Act.

If passed by Congress, the act would allocate $10 million to the Library of Congress for educational programs “about the history, lessons, consequences, and ongoing costs of the Armenian Genocide,” says the Armenian National Committee of America in announcing the proposal.

Genocide’s toll

As the hateful flyers show, the education is sorely needed. Most Americans remain ignorant of the fact 1.5 million Armenians died from 1915 to the mid-1920s in what historians today consider a genocide and the forerunner to the Jewish Holocaust.

The genocide was directed by three leaders of what was then the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor to current-day Turkey. Turkish authorities today refuse to accept that their nation was involved in the genocide.

But Fresno’s Armenian American families retain painful memories of loved ones who either died by killings, starvation or during forced deportations.

Sevag Tateosian of Fresno remembers how his grandparents had been wealthy landowners whose property was confiscated by Ottoman Turks. They had to flee for their lives.

“The truth is that for Armenians in America and around the world, there is this heaviness that we feel when it comes to the Genocide, and this idea that so much was taken from us,” Tateosian wrote in an op-ed published in The Bee in 2020.

Formal recognition

Armenia is a landlocked nation in the Caucasus with Turkey to the west, Georgia and Azerbaijan to the north and east and Iran to the southeast. Since the 1990s, Armenia has been in bloody conflict with Azerbaijan over the mainly Armenian-inhabited Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Azerbaijan carried out a months-long war in 2020 against Armenia. Some 200 Armenian soldiers were captured and the Azerbaijani government was accused of mistreating them, some brutally.

In 2021, President Biden became the first president since Ronald Reagan to recognize the Armenian Genocide. But he also continued U.S. aid to Azerbaijan, which was criticized by Armenian Americans in Fresno and elsewhere.

Support the bill

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy should back efforts by Valadao and California colleagues Anna Eshoo of Palo Alto and Ted Lieu of Los Angeles, plus Gus Bilirakis of Florida, to get the Armenian Genocide Education Act approved. Eshoo is one of two congressional representatives with Armenian roots.

Historians are in agreement that Ottoman Turks scapegoated Armenians, as well as some other nationalities and religions, as the reason for their empire’s decay. The history of the genocide should be known by Americans. On April 24, the 108th anniversary of the start of the genocide, may the United States acknowledge the painful history borne by Armenians, and support their right to live freely in their homeland and abroad.

You can go

Several events are planned in Fresno on Monday, April 24, the 108th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide:

▪ Flag raising ceremony at 10:30 a.m. at City Hall.

▪ Remembrance at Fresno State’s Armenian Genocide Monument, 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Flowers will be provided to students to lay at the memorial.

▪ Commemoration program at the monument, 6:30 p.m. Participants will lay flowers around the center of the monument, which will be followed by a religious service and remarks by Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval. Karnig Kerkonian, an international law and appellate lawyer, will deliver the keynote address. Kerkonian is the co-host of “Frontlines,” an online program on law, human rights and the Armenian experience.