Lest we forget
By Gideon Polya
MWC News
On ANZAC Day, Australia’s most sacred day, the nation solemnly pauses to remember those 100,000 Australian heroes who have died in wars. The phrase inextricably linked to ANZAC Day is “Lest we forget”. However the Mainstream media, politicians and academics of Australia have overwhelmingly ignored – “forgotten”- the horrendous number of civilians who died in wars in which Australia has been involved and the moral courage of a small number of pacifists who refused to be party to the evil of war. An extraordinary omission from ANZAC Day remembrance is the Armenian Genocide in which 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Turkish nationalists in WW1 and which was precipitated by the 1915 invasion of Turkey at Gallipoli by Allied forces, including the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs), a failed invasion by the ANZAC forces from which ANZAC Day takes its name.
April 24 is Armenian Genocide Day of Remembrance sacred to Armenians. It remembers the mass murder in Turkey of 1.5 million Armenians in WW1 that commenced the night before the Allied invasion of the Dardanelles in 1915 involving British, French, Newfoundland, Indian, French West African, Australian and New Zealand forces and which occurred after months of Allied shelling of the Dardanelles. April 25 is ANZAC Day sacred to Australians and New Zealanders that commemorates the invasion of Turkey by Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) forces at Gallipoli in a failed attempt inspired by Winston Churchill to open the Dardanelles to Allied warships, The Allied forces evacuated at the end of 1915 after a campaign in which about 220,000- 250,000 Allied forces died (including 8,000 Australians) and about 220,000-250,000 Ottoman Turkish defenders died.
The near-coincidence of these sacred memorial days, Armenian Genocide Day and ANZAC Day, is no coincidence. The Ottoman Turkish Empire had been forced into the First World War (WW1) on the side of Germany by the British who were eager to dismember the Ottoman Empire and seize the oil-rich Middle East. Turkey was being attacked by the British and French in the West and by the Russians in the East. After months of Allied shelling of the Dardanelles, by 24 April 2015 the Allied invasion was imminent and Turkish xenophobia exploded into the Armenian Genocide that commenced with the killing of the Armenian community leaders and went on to kill 1.5 million Armenians [1].
Remarkably, while ANZAC Day is the most sacred Memorial Day in Australia, the intimately connected near-coincidence of Armenian Genocide Day has been resolutely ignored in the 97 years since ANZAC Day was first proclaimed in 1916. Thus, for example, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC, the Australian equivalent of the UUK BBC, and “Aunty” to its numerous loyal fans) is a taxpayer-funded radio and TV network that has a major role in Australian life, culture and identity. Yet searches of “the entire ABC site” using the ABC’s Search function for the terms “Armenian Genocide Day of Remembrance” and “Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day” yield zero (0) results and a search for “Armenian Genocide Day” turns up just ONE (1) result and that simply due to a comment made by Dr Gideon Polya in response to an ABC radio program entitled “The Armenian Genocide” [2]. in which Turkish scholar Professor Taner Akcam (sociologist and historian, Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marion Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies in the Department of History at Clark University, Massachusetts) was interviewed about his book “The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire” (Princeton University Press) [3].
Just as Australian complicity in the Armenian Genocide has been whitewashed from history, so have been Australia’s “secret genocide history” and its complicity in other genocidal atrocities after the WW1 Armenian Genocide as summarized below:
[…]
What can decent people do? Decent people must (a) inform everyone they can (lying Mainstream media certainly won’t) and (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all those involved in gross human rights abuses, genocide commission, holocaust commission, genocide denial, and holocaust denial.
Lest we forget, indeed.
[1]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, now available for free perusal on the web.
[2]. “The Armenian Genocide”, ABC Radio National, Late Night Live.
[3]. Taner Akcam, “The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire”.
– See more at: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/26451-anzac-armenian-genocide.html#sthash.FWXd2YWX.dpuf”