If only the innocent would cast the first stone

Beginning on April 24, statesmen and parliaments started issuing statements against Turkey one after another, as if answering an invitation to a lynching. The statement by the Pope, who would later have to say "it was a quotation, not our own expression," followed by declarations from the European Parliament and from the state authorities of Austria, France and Germany, and the remarks of the Russian president, paint a sufficiently clear picture of the nature of this campaign.

When one looks at the history of each of the states that made statements, their histories are full of the most savage and most insidious genocides. In fact, the scene resembles so closely the situation of the Pharisees, with their aggressive posture toward the woman brought before Jesus whom they were trying to stone on a charge of adultery. Recall how Jesus looked at the woman's situation, and then turned to the sinners, each more sinful than the next, each cunningly loading all their crimes onto that woman and transforming themselves into heroes of honor, and said: "Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone."

According to the account, no one dared to pick up that first stone in the face of this proposal of Jesus. For Jesus made everyone aware of his own sin; he held up a mirror that showed everyone his sin. In this way no one found the opportunity to hide there a sin that others did not know of or could not prove, and to put on a performance before others. This detail is important, because when it is not known, people are far more inclined to claim innocence for the sake of obtaining some social or political gain.

Indeed, the states that bear the sin of the world today are able to calculate that they can clear themselves through the show of humaneness they put on over events that took place a hundred years ago. In fact, every one of them is far more at fault, far more sinful, than Turkey, even with regard to the Armenians in the events of 1915 itself.

If a tragedy befell the Armenians, one of those primarily responsible was Russia, because it was the first to incite the Armenians in Anatolia, to incite them with the promise of founding a state, and to make them rise up against the Ottomans. Is Russia innocent toward the Armenians who, finally, wearing Russian uniforms and raiding Turkish-Kurdish-Arab Muslim villages, tried to carry out a genuine plan of genocide? Will using the concept of "Armenian genocide" now and loading all the sin onto Turkey be enough to exonerate itself? If such a policy can in practice be valid today, what international standard of conscience can we be speaking of as prevailing?

Who can say that Russia is not directly responsible for the blood of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians killed right before our eyes today, in the most savage and inhuman conditions? Let us not go back too far. Today, when the smoke of crimes against humanity committed fresh in Syria, in Iraq, in Egypt is still rising, when blood is flowing in the open, is going back a hundred years not, at the very least, a kind of massacre of conscience?

We could, of course, also mention what France itself did to the Armenians, in addition to what it did in Algeria and in Rwanda. If you like, let us open the file on the subtle strategy of exploitation it displayed in destroying the lineage of the Armenians who supposedly fled genocide and took refuge in France, by driving them to the very front lines on the fronts of both the First and the Second World Wars. It is said, for example, that the Armenian population killed on those fronts because of these practices was far larger than the number of Armenians who died in the deportation.

And the Netherlands? Its share in the genocide carried out against the Bosniaks in Srebrenica in 1995, under the supervision of its own commanders and with their assistance, has not even been called to account.

And what are we to say of Germany's President? Do you suppose he is looking for an accomplice who would share the uniqueness of the Jewish genocide, by making Turkey a partner in the crime of genocide?

The fact that all these powerful culprits are rushing today, with lust, as if joining a lynching campaign, into the race to accuse Turkey of genocide shows only one thing: a race to flee their own guilt. That is why they fully deserve an address like that of Jesus: Let the one who is innocent of genocide cast the first stone!

Just as none of them is innocent, their joining this campaign in order to cover up their own guilt further increases their guilt regarding genocide. Because through this campaign they also cover up the crimes in which they are buried up to their necks. With subtle propaganda techniques they also take their precautions against a possible Jesus who might show them their crimes in the mirror. By resorting to yet another trick they introduced into the Christianity they have distorted, the "scapegoat" trick, loading all their sins onto today's Turkey on account of the event of 1915, they are killing Jesus all over again.

Incidentally, since the subject was opened through Jesus, let us end the matter with a joke that suits the situation. You know, the one about the Christian who, shocked in the evening by something new he has learned about Jesus, starts beating up a close Jewish friend he meets the next morning. When his Jewish friend asks, "What is going on, why am I getting this beating?", he says, "I found out, you people killed Jesus." When the friend reacts, "But that was two thousand years ago, what does it have to do with me?", our man says, "So what, I just found out."

As the Europeans who join the genocide campaign try to settle, today, accounts from a hundred years ago, they are of course neither as innocent nor as endearing as the Christian in the joke. On the contrary, their condition resembles that of the frenzied people who join a lynching campaign. Their motivation is crusader, and their accounting is like that of a bankrupt merchant rummaging through old ledgers.