Monday, February 06, 2006

Please Add Guenter Lewy to the List of Genocide Deniers

Dear Friends,

A few days ago, I received by email alert an article, titled "Revisiting the Armenian Genocide" published in the Middle East Quarterly (Fall 2005). The author is Guenter Lewy, who is, according to the article, a "professor emeritus of political science, University of Massachusetts, and the author of The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (University of Utah Press, 2005)".
The article is available at:
http://www.meforum.org/article/748/.

The author obviously denies the historical fact of the Armenian Genocide, although he tries to appear as unbiased and rational at the beginning and the end of the article. Naturally, the article was praised by the Turkish daily newspaper the Zaman Online.
(See http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&trh=20050829&hn=23459)
I searched, but I didn't find the name of the author in the list of 69 so-called scholars, who signed an advertisement which appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Times on December 2, 1985, which questioned insidiously the evidence of the Armenian genocide.
(See http://www.freewebs.com/deniarschallenge/document2.htm). So, I began a wide search in the web and found out interesting information about the author.
He "left his native Germany in 1939 at the age of fifteen, emigrating to Palestine and then to the US. A political scientist, he has taught at Columbia University, Smith College, and became Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is the author of Religion and Revolution, America in Vietnam, The Cause That Failed, and The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies".
(See http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_22-8-2004_pg3_8).
I also found out that he "has received numerous distinctions and fellowships from organizations and institutions, including the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Rockefeller Foundation".
(See http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/publications/occasional/2002-06/paper.pdf-%20page%2095). (Page 95 of the document).
The three American organizations and institutions, which have "granted numerous distinctions and fellowships" to Guenter Lewy, have strong relations with Turkey. The proofs are in the following:

· The American Council of Learned Societies-Turkey relations
(See http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ARIT/FellowshipPrograms.htm).

· The National Endowment for the Humanities-Turkey relations:
1. (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ARIT/FellowshipPrograms.htm).
2. (http://www.cuinfo.cornell.edu/Student/GRFN/GRFN.php?mode=record&code=A1034).
3. (http://cesww.fas.harvard.edu/calarc/calarc_grant27.html)

· The Rockefeller Foundation-Turkey relations:
1. (http://www.marlamallett.com/powell.htm).
2. (http://www.hri.org/news/turkey/trkpr/1999/99-08-04.trkpr.html) (No. 19 of the Contents).
3. (http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2003/05/02/30988.html).
4. (http://muse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/access.cgi?uri=/journals/pedagogy/v002/2.3palmer.html&session=9083560).
It is noteworthy that the same Rockefeller Foundation contributed $30,000 on Oct. 6, 1915, to the fund which was raised to aid the Armenians driven from their homes by the Turkish Government. (http://www.cilicia.com/armo10c-nyt19151007b.html).
So, it is aware of the facts of the Armenian Genocide, but is supporting now the Genocide deniers!!

To those who are updating the list of names of the Armenian Genocide deniers, please add "Guenter Lewy" to your lists.

And in his answer to this message, dated Mon, 12 Sep 2005 12:02:16 EDT, Prof. Gregory H. Stanton, the First Vice President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars said :

Dear Mr. Ashjian,
I read the article by Guenter Lewy to which you kindly referred me. I am appalled. It is such a blatant denial article that I am amazed that the Middle East Quarterly published it. But the organization that sponsors the journal has a very questionable professional reputation itself, so perhaps I should not be surprised.
As you know, the evidence for the Armenian genocide does not just rest upon the three sources Guenter Lewy attempts to discredit. (He doesn't even do a good job of discrediting those sources.) It also rests on literally thousands of eye-witness testimonies, eyewitness reports by diplomats and missionaries, and a mountain of other data. Lewy's article is directly contrary to the official opinion of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, passed by unanimous resolution, declaring that the Armenian massacres were genocide, and that attempts to deny that fact have no basis in sound scholarship.
I must leave it to specialists to reply to Lewy, though I see little point in doing so. (The technique of deniers is to bog down scholars in petty debates, so real scholars won't have time to do their research.) You may be interested in an article I wrote called "Twelve Ways To Deny A Genocide." I show how these tactics have been used to deny the genocide in Darfur. They are also used by Lewy and others who deny the fact of the Armenian genocide.
Sincerely,
Greg Stanton
Prof. Gregory H. Stanton
First Vice President
International Association of Genocide Scholars
Telephone: [I omitted ]
Cell: [I omitted ]
E-mail: IAGSVP@aol.com
Website: www.isg-iags.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Armenian_Genocide/Archive_6

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