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U.S. Acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide: Implications for Current Genocidal Threats
(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Amb. Alan Baker - The recent formal recognition by President Biden of the genocide of one-and-a-half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915-1923 corrects a century-old historic anomaly by acknowledging a factual situation that, due to political pressure from Turkey, had been deliberately ignored or overlooked over the years. By the same moral and historical logic that brought the U.S. to finally recognize the Armenian genocide, one might expect similar acknowledgment of the officially-stated genocidal intentions voiced by senior Iranian politicians and military commanders against Israel. The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide determined that incitement to genocide is a crime under international law. There cannot exist a double standard that, on the one hand, acknowledges and condemns past occurrences of genocide, while, on the other hand, overlooks, ignores, downgrades and sidelines genuine, ongoing threats by the Iranian leadership to destroy the State of Israel. The writer, former legal counsel to Israel's foreign ministry and former ambassador to Canada, heads the international law program at the Jerusalem Center.