A Lesson on Sticking to Your Guns and Your Principles

By Vic Gerami

Last year, I was invited to be on a panel titled “Multigenerational Legacies of the Turkish Genocide of the Armenian People After the Dissolution of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)”, organized by Dr. Yael Danieli, Founder and Executive Director of the International Center for the Study, Prevention, and Treatment of Multi-Generational Legacies of Trauma; Director of the Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and Their Children; and past president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

I was one of five Armenian-Americans on that panel, two of whom I knew personally, moderated by Dr. Danieli herself. It was April 2024, and the Palestinian genocide was already underway. Dr. Danieli wanted a Zoom rehearsal the day before the event, which I agreed to.

That “rehearsal” turned into a grotesque display of genocide denial wrapped in academic arrogance. Almost immediately, Dr. Danieli began watering down the Artsakh genocide, parroting Azerbaijani propaganda, and minimizing what had happened to my people.

So I stepped in, firmly, respectfully, and with facts. I reminded everyone that the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, Genocide Watch, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, among others, have all recognized the Artsakh atrocities as genocide.

With a smug smirk and condescension only the self-appointed “experts” seem to master, she replied, “Well, nowadays everyone is going around calling everything genocide.”

Imagine that, a supposed trauma scholar trivializing genocide, mocking the very concept she built her career on. And this, at the same time countless human rights organizations were already calling Israel’s assault on Palestinians a genocide. The hypocrisy was nauseating.

I tried again with sources, evidence, and documented proof, but it was clear she wasn’t interested in truth. She was defending Azerbaijan, Israel’s closest regional ally, and like so many, she was willing to ignore one genocide to justify another.

I was stunned. A discussion meant to honor the victims of one genocide had become a platform to deny two others.

To make matters worse, one of my Armenian co-panelists, the kind who values access over integrity, gave me attitude, as if I should water down the truth to stay “civil.” That’s not how I operate. My principles are not negotiable, and I refuse to sit silently while anyone sanitizes the suffering of my people. So I did what conscience demanded. I told them I could not be on this panel, excused myself, and logged off.

Later, another panelist, someone I considered a friend, called to defend Dr. Danieli’s behavior. We exchanged words, and I realized there was no point. You can’t reason with someone who mistakes cowardice for diplomacy. I chose to walk away with my integrity intact.

Let’s be clear: this woman, who presents herself as an “expert” on multi-generational trauma, was denying two genocides and doing it with a smirk. That’s not expertise. That’s moral rot disguised as scholarship.

Now, two years later, Israel has massacred 680,000 Palestinians, 380,000 of them infants under the age of one. The world’s leading human rights organizations, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry, UN Special Rapporteurs, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, Lemkin Institute, Genocide Watch, and dozens more, have all declared what it is: genocide.

And where are the Dr. Danielis of the world now? Hiding behind their credentials, issuing cowardly half-statements, or staying conveniently silent while history repeats itself again.

The Lesson

When faced with moral cowardice dressed up as professionalism, you don’t bow, you don’t compromise, and you sure as hell don’t stay on that Zoom call.

You walk out, head high, because truth is not up for debate, and decency doesn’t require permission.

History remembers those who stood their ground, not those who smiled through atrocity.