"Never Again" to the Crimes Against Humanity

• 01.29.2015, 03:04
•  Europe,  Near East,  World,  Diaspora

The Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in his speech in United Nations General Assembly in New York on the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust called the United Nations "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide" just a symbolic document, which did not "succeed in realizing its commitment", reports J-Wire. He called this a reason why the history repeated – meaning the Armenian Genocide of 2015 and some two decades later the next being the Jews.

Speaking about the Armenian Genocide, the Israeli President quoted the words of Avshalom Feinberg, a leading member of Nili, the Jewish underground which cooperated with  the Allies during the First World War: "My teeth have been ground down with worry, whose turn is next? When I walked on the blessed and holy ground on my way up to Jerusalem, I asked myself if we are living in our modern era, in 1915, or in the days of Titus or Nebuchadnezzar? Did I, a Jew, forget that I am a Jew? I also asked myself if I have the right to weep ‘over the tragedy of my people’ only, and whether the Prophet Jeremiah did not shed tears of blood for the Armenians as well?"

Calling these 100 years, years of "hesitation and denial’, Reuven Rivlin, however, stressed that in his country no one denied that fact. He even brought the example of his family, his parents who had witnessed "Armenian refugees arriving by the thousands – starving, piteous survivors of calamity."

Speaking about the Jews who were the next to be massacred and as a result of which 6 million people were killed, the President called the United Nations not only make statements, but to go ahead with "decisive actions". "To the extent that we believe that the voice of justice has not been silenced; to the extent that we believe in the dream of a different, more compassionate human race; we have the duty, here, in this Assembly, to act together as a determined and unified international community, which does not yield to narrow and inappropriate interests," – said the President. ""Never again", is not just a pledge by the survivors, and also not a pledge by the world only to the members of the Jewish People. "Never again" is, first and foremost, the very essence of this United Nations Organization, it is its mission, it is the primary and principal rationale for its existence," – concluded Reuven Rivlin.

"Never again" a term, which both contains pain and a call to take serious steps to avoid such massacres as the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust.  "Never again" said the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, calling the whole world to "jointly struggle for the prevention of the crimes against humanity." "I pay tribute to the memory of the innocent victims of Holocaust and express our support and solidarity to the Jewish people, and the Jewish Community of Armenia. This year Armenian people are commemorating the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, and we more than anyone empathize with the pain of the Jewish people," – said the President of Armenia.

The Jewish community in Armenia in its turn also made a statement which was of the same nature as that of the Israeli President. The statement of the Jewish community says that it was the "non-condemnation and non-recognition of the fact of Armenian Genocide by some states that led to the Holocaust, and to new acts of genocide," reports news.am. The statement accused the international community for indifference and for not recognizing the fact of any genocide in the world. "Conceiving the sad historic heritage of two peoples, very much like each other in fortune, we should make efforts so that those appalling facts of history never recurred," – is said in the statement.

100 years passed from the Armenian Genocide... The pain, the memories, the sufferings of a whole nation still remains, as if it passes through our blood. This will never fade away, but the fact that Armenian Genocide and other genocides of the world are not being condemned by the world, that there are still countries which deny facts, deny the obvious, makes our pain more severe and fills our hearts with the feeling of injustice towards those lost innocent lives.