Bet you thought the US Congress was busy sorting out health care last week, or tackling unemployment. Well, they may one day return to those rather crucial domestic issues, but not before dealing with pressing foreign policy matters, such as condemnation of the four decade-old occupation of Cyprus, and labeling almost century-old massacres of Armenians as genocide.
The point in common is casting Turkey as the bad guy. The other point in common is Israel. As MJ Rosenberg noted in Media Matters Action Network, Israel had heretofore taken the Turkish view that the Ottoman-era bloodletting should not be labeled as genocide. In any case, Israel has always looked askance at others' attempts to appropriate the terms genocide and holocaust. But, says Rosenberg
since the Gaza war, Turkish-Israeli relations have deteriorated. The Turks... were appalled by the Israeli onslaught against the Gazans. And said so. Ever since, the Netanyahu government has made a point to stick it to the Turks. That battle is now being carried to Washington. The Israelis are trying to teach the Turks a lesson. If the Armenian resolution passes the House, it will not be for purely compassionate reasons, but rather, to send a message to Turkey: if you mess with Israel, its lobby will make Turkey pay a price in Washington.
The Obama Administration opposes the resolution, and it may not go beyond the Committee stage. But the point is that, like the noise about Cyprus, the pro-Israel lobby can wag the Congressional dog with impunity. For Turkey, like for Israel, and for the US, words do matter.
Like the word apartheid, which Israel would like to see relegated to the history books concerning South Africa, period. It bristles at the notion (anytime, but especially this week) that there is a parallel between its separation walls, checkpoints, bypass roads, ethnic ID cards, segregated housing on occupied land... and similar practices that ended with majority rule in South Africa. Use the word apartheid and Israel in the same sentence (oops, just did) and you'll incur the wrath of its formidable PR machine.
Word association test: if I say fundamentalism, what word immediately flashes through your brain? Be honest: "Islamic," of course. As if Muslims, in their infinite variety, had a corner on the market for religious extremism. We know to our chagrin that Christians include a fair number of end-days fundamentalists in their midst, including in the person of a certain FOX News personality.
And ask Palestinians how it is to live in ground zero of inter-religious fundamentalisms, where home-grown Islamists attempt to crowd out secular Muslims and Christians, and where Jewish settlers claiming Biblical rights to the exclusion of all others get succor from millennial American Christians, who see the Holy Land as a convenient setting for rapture. The Palestinians know that "fundamentalism" is ecumenical in its application.
So next time Congress tries to be helpful in throwing around loaded terms like "genocide" and threatening relations with longstanding allies like Turkey, or condemning "occupation" in Cyprus but ignoring a longer occupation in the West Bank, maybe it should consider the utility of sticking to the facts on the ground, instead of words that can be defined according to the political beliefs of the interested parties.