Now it is a crime in France to deny the armenian genocide, and a Turkish writer.....

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
French Jews go around vandalizing mosques, etc?

IIRC, it's been seen (a handful of youngsters).
However, this is absolutely not the crux of the matter. I can see among my Jewish friends and relatives the rise of distrust/dislike for Muslims as a whole. Broadsweeping negative generalizations of the kind I didn't hear a few years back. While I don't know people who are outright hateful, I think this will come in only a few years.

This wave doesn't only concerns my personal circle: almost all French Jewish intellectuals have a negative stance toward Islam, and some of them outright disparage the Muslims. Among the Jew-heavy antiracist league (LICRA), I've heard a member who had outright racist comments against Muslims*. To me, the rise of Islamophobia among French Jews is as clear as the rise of antisemitism among French Muslims. And it's a matter worthy of worry.


*The comment was that the Muslims were inherently antisemitic, that must be in their genes.

[GePap]

Surprised this did not make it:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061013/wl_afp/franceturkeyarmenia_061013192541

Nobel winner denounces French genocide bill

ANKARA (AFP) - Dissident Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Literature Prize, denounced a French bill that would make it a crime to deny Turks commited genocide against Armenians, saying it flouted France's "tradition of liberal and critical thinking."

"What the French did is wrong," Pamuk, better known for criticizing his own government, told the NTV television from New York, a day after the bill was voted in the lower house of the French parliament, infuriating Ankara.

"France has a very old tradition of liberal and critical thinking and I myself was influenced by it and learned much from it.

"But the decision they made constitutes a prohibition. It does not suit the French tradition of liberalism," he said.

The bill, which still needs the approval of the Senate and the president to take effect, foresees up to one year in jail and a heavy fine for anyone who denies that the World War I massacres of Armenians under Ottoman rule were genocide, a label Ankara fiercely rejects.

The 54-year-old Pamuk himself stood trial in Turkey this year for contesting the official line on the massacres under an infamous provision for "insulting Turkishness," which Ankara is under
European Union pressure to amend.

The trial was dropped on a technicality in January, but won Pamuk the reputation of a "traitor" among Turkish nationalists.

His Nobel award, announced shortly after the French vote on Thursday, was greeted with mixed reactions at home.

The government was among the many who hailed the first Turk to win a Nobel prize, but skeptics questioned whether Pamuk was rewarded for his writing or the political dissidence that has often embarrassed his country in the West.

Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc and several newspaper columnists had called on the writer to speak out against the French bill if he was an earnest campaigner for free speech.

Pamuk, a staunch advocate of Turkey's bid to join the European Union, urged his compatriots not to "blow the issue out of proportion" in their reactions to France.

"Don't burn the duvet for a flea," he said, using a Turkish proverb.

Commenting on the mixed reaction to his award, Pamuk said: "There was never a Nobel literature prize that was not met with any (negative) reactions... I'm not angry with anyone. People are free to think what they like."

"These debates will one day end but the fact will remain that Turkey has won a Nobel prize," he said. "I'm very honored and proud to have brought this award to my country."

Pamuk first drew the ire of the state in the mid-1990s when he denounced the treatment of the Kurdish minority as the army waged a heavy-handed campaign to suppress a bloody separatist insurgency in the southeast.

The state extended an olive branch in 1998, offering him the accolade of "State Artist," but Pamuk declined.

[Seeker]

I'm old fashioned. I still believe in the old 'fire in a crowded theatre' standard. Arguing about history is NOT the same thing.

No society gains by killing free speech. And the word' limiting' is a dodge, if larry flint or whoever can't say what he wants then no one can.

[MarkG]

stop refusing Turkey's entrance to the EU was the best move we ever did in the last 30 years after all.

now other Europeans have to deal with Turkey's politics as well...

on a more serious note, if there was a law about the Jewish genocide, there should be one for the Armenians as well. too bad we dont have a large Pontic Greek minority (who suffered similar stuff as the Armenians) in France...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontian_Greeks

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Just curious, since EU HQ is sitting right there in Brussells: does France have a law making it a crime to deny the Belgian genocide in the Congo? Or was that not a genocide?

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Since when has the UN ever done anything competantly? They **** up the English language just as they **** up most other things they touch.

Oh come one, such a convention isn't made and more importantly isn't signed by individual countries before not hordes of international and national experts (including, and esp. from the countries that sign it) walked over it back and forth and finally agreed to its content. So it's a bit too easy to blame the UN for everything when nearly all countries (again - incl. the US) signed the thing.

[_BuRjaCi_]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Since when has the UN ever done anything competantly? They **** up the English language just as they **** up most other things they touch.

Overly simplified to the extreme. MY personal opinion is that the UN is incompetent because there are 6 country's (including and especialy America and China) that can stop any meaningfull resolution in the security councli. As an example I take the genocide in Darfur where it is basicaly China's interest not to do anything or the Iraq invasion where it was tehnicaly illegal but nobody considered any sanctions against America because of its extreme influence.

James Bolton summes up what's wrong with the UN by saying that the secrity council should be reduced to one member: the USA. But not the way he meant it.

Americains tend to diss the UN wenhever it trys to do something they don't like and they shoot it down. But when someone (like China or Russia) does the same thing, they call the UN incompetent.

There's a word for that: Hypocrisy

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Just curious, since EU HQ is sitting right there in Brussells: does France have a law making it a crime to deny the Belgian genocide in the Congo? Or was that not a genocide?

AFAIK, there is no official acknowledgement of any genocide in Congo.

Maybe the Congolese minority will push for that at some point. However, I haven't heard about anyone making ruckus about it yet.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Spiffor

AFAIK, there is no official acknowledgement of any genocide in Congo.

Maybe the Congolese minority will push for that at some point. However, I haven't heard about anyone making ruckus about it yet.

So genocide only matters once a well-organized, well-funded lobby cries "genocide"? Well, that's certainly the moral high ground.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
So genocide only matters once a well-organized, well-funded lobby cries "genocide"?

There is some truth in this, it seems. Perception is everything, and with the right PR the case can be won in the public mind. This 'trial by media', more than the facts, context, and rigourous Due Process, can be sufficient to establish guilt or innocence in the public mind.

The problems that can stem from this are clear, and have been touched on earlier. 'Genocide Inflation' can occur as figures are bumped up, and propaganda can obscure the facts. There is a risk that the unique character of the WW2 Holocaust is undermined, if the definition is cast too wide, and bloody but much smaller scale tragedies are repeatedly equated with it.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


The problems that can stem from this are clear, and have been touched on earlier. 'Genocide Inflation' can occur as figures are bumped up, and propaganda can obscure the facts. There is a risk that the unique character of the WW2 Holocaust is undermined, if the definition is cast too wide, and bloody but much smaller scale tragedies are repeatedly equated with it.

What "uniqueness"? The Holocaut is certainly NOT the only genocide around. The fact that the Germans were the most technically proficient folks to attempt to exterminate a group does not mean that other mass attrocities like what happened in Rwanda, or the work of the Khmer Rouge is not on the same ground.

That said, I find the French law silly, and of little political worth.

[Cort Haus]

What "uniqueness"?

I wasn't saying that the Holocaust was the only genocide around. I did, though refer to it's unique character. Your two examples are certainly genocides, but neither are on the scale of the Holocaust, which was effectively several genocides rolled into one.

If some are of the opinion that, as genocides go, there was nothing too special about the Holocaust, then I will have to disagee.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Cort Haus

What "uniqueness"?

I wasn't saying that the Holocaust was the only genocide around. I did, though refer to it's unique character. Your two examples are certainly genocides, but neither are on the scale of the Holocaust, which was effectively several genocides rolled into one.

If some are of the opinion that, as genocides go, there was nothing too special about the Holocaust, then I will have to disagee.

First of all, each Genocide is "unique."

The issue of scale is in my mind irrelevant to the crime of Genocide. If a group were to number only 300,000 and 290,000 are wiped out, then that makes it a rather successful genocide. If the Holocaust is bigger than say the Rwandan genocide, it is because:
a. The Germans sought to wipe of a larger group
b. The Germans had a much larger area from which they sought to exterminate
c. The Germans had more time
d. The Germans were in control of a rich, industrialized state.

Those are all differences in quantity, but the quantitative difference at the end between these two cases are not large enough to becomes a qualitative difference.

Second, currently, the "Holocaust" label applies only to the specific campaign by the Germans to wipe out Jews, the Roma, and other undesirables, but the label is not generally applied to the murder by neglect of millions of Soviet prisoners, nor would it have been applied to the planned extermination by famine and slave labor of tens of millions of Slavs in the East.

[Bosh]

or the work of the Khmer Rouge is not on the same ground.

How the hell is what the Khemer Rouge did genocide? Horrifically bloody and evil maybe, but definately not genocide...

[GePap]

Originally posted by Bosh

How the hell is what the Khemer Rouge did genocide? Horrifically bloody and evil maybe, but definately not genocide...

The Khmer Rouge set out to destroy entire "classes" of people, city dweller and the educated. That fits the definition of Genocide, which does not apply only to ethnic or religious groups. And they were rather successful at it too, seeing how they killed almost 1/3 of the countries' population.