10/10 Watertown Blog: House committee approves Armenian genocide recognition bill

House committee approves Armenian genocide recognition bill
Posted on October 10, 2007 by Chris Helms
Filed Under Armenians in Watertown, Feds!

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House this afternoon voted 27-21 to pass the Armenian genocide bill (H.Res.106) on to the full House.

The committee vote is the next chapter in the long fight by Armenian advocates to have the U.S. Congress recognize as genocide the killings of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire during and after World War I.

Expect the temperature of this debate to go way, way up. The Washington Post today came out vigorously against the Congressional resolution. (The Post requires registration, so I don’t know if the link will work for everyone. The editorial’s headline, “Worse Than Irrelevant” tells you where it’s coming from.) Here’s a key section:

IT’S EASY to dismiss a nonbinding congressional resolution accusing Turkey of “genocide” against Armenians during World War I as frivolous. Though the subject is a serious one — more than 1 million Armenians may have died at the hands of the Young Turk regime between 1915 and the early 1920s — House Democrats pushing for a declaration on the subject have petty and parochial interests.

Today’s vote was also previewed in the N.Y. Times and has been all over CNN. And Joey Kurtzman over at jewcy.com calls President Bush on the carpet for flip-flopping over the issue.

Source: http://blogs.townonline.com/watertown/?p=5531