Applying Lessons From the Armenian Genocide to Gaza

My grandmother and her family were driven from their home in 1915 during what Armenians at the time called the Deportations and the Massacres. Later, this brutal and bloody six-year Ottoman campaign of dispossession, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder would come to be known as the Armenian genocide. Today, April 24, is commemorated annually as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

My grandmother’s parents and younger sisters died on the deportation route. After that, my grandmother and her younger brother were among 8,000 Armenian orphans herded into a tent camp in the Syrian desert on the outskirts of Ras al Ain. It is estimated that 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives in this mass annihilation, and I have spent most of my career as a writer plumbing this terrible history.

Genocide is not an event, but a process. For Armenians, it is a process that never ends and one that takes on different forms, including the denial of historical reality. In 2020, a decades-long struggle with Azerbaijan over the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabagh, which Armenians call Artsakh, turned into a renewed war. Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, with the aid of Syrian mercenaries, and with drones and arms supplied by Israel, took over more than half of the territory, forcing Armenians to flee their towns and villages.

In early 2023, Azerbaijan enforced a blockade and siege on the remaining area, and then in September of that year launched another military campaign to complete the job. On Sept. 19, 2023, aerial photographs of the more than 100,000 Armenians fleeing Artsakh in a snaking convoy of cars resembled the deportation caravans of my grandmother’s childhood more than a century earlier.

I watched the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh unfold on social media from afar, as I was on a trip to Greece at the time. I flew home to New York City on Oct. 7, 2023, and when I opened my smartphone upon landing, I saw the news of the Hamas incursion into southern Israel. Before being able to fully register that violence, I understood immediately that Israel’s response would be cataclysmic.

As the descendant of Armenian genocide survivors, I was sickened to witness the same despisal and dehumanization that my people have faced—this time being meted out to Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli officialdom boldly announced its genocidal intent, and we were told not to believe what they were saying or what we were witnessing in real time. All our institutions in the U.S. as well as in Europe—the government, the media, arts organizations, and the academy—with few exceptions, were colluding with and covering for what was recognizable as a genocide.