Quote

But at the beginning, our definition of the genocide was what happened to Armenia in 1917 or 1919, it's happened to the Jew in Europe, and we were not realizing - In our point of view, they have not the tools to do a genocide.

It's time to recognise the Armenian Genocide.

On the eve of World War I, an estimated two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire. Well over a million were deported and hundreds of thousands were simply killed.

It was commonplace to hear it said, after the Bosnian genocide kicked off in 1992 and the Rwandan genocide erupted in 1994 and the Darfur genocide began in 2003, that the 'international community' had learned nothing since the Holocaust.

I'm half-Armenian. Even though my grandparents did not discuss the genocide, and my father - like many sons and daughters of immigrants - wanted to be as 'American' as possible, I was always aware of it. How could I not be?

The Armenian Genocide is such a controversial and very sensitive issue because the Turkish and Armenian people disagree about the facts of what actually happened. I know how strongly Armenians feel about the Genocide, and how it's never been recognised. At the same time, I do not hold today's generation of people accountable.

I bow down in memory of the victims, and I come to tell my Armenian friends that we will never forget the tragedies that your people has endured.

Leaned on by Turkey and understandably wary of false equivalences - for not every death is a massacre, and not every war is genocidal - Israel connives in Armenian genocide denial.

One could reasonably argue that the Turkish pogrom against the Armenians during World War I qualifies as a crime against humanity, as does the United States' ethnic cleansing of Native Americans.

The legacy of the Armenian Genocide is woven into the fabric of America.