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In Friday’s edition of “Best of the Web Today,” James Taranto writes this analysis of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan giving Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres a tongue-lashing during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos: “One obvious point is that Turkey is hardly in a position to criticize Israel for responding firmly to terrorist attacks” (referring to repeated Turkish air and ground incursions into northern Iraq to go after the Kurdish Workers' Party), and “[a] less obvious point is that Erdogan might have killed whatever chance his country had of becoming a member of the...

This year commemorates the 93rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. In 1915, the ottoman empire under the auspices of the young turks carried out the first genocide of the 20th century and set a precedent for all future genocides. One and a half million Armenians were systematically massacred as they were evicted from their homes onto the merciless deserts of eastern turkey and into the darkness of the Black Sea.

Was there an Armenian genocide during World War I? While it was happening, no one called the slaughter of Armenian Christians by Ottoman Turks "genocide." No one could: The word wouldn't be coined for another 30 years. But those who made it their business to tell the world what the Turks were doing found other terms to describe the state-sponsored mass murder of the Armenians. ... Was there an Armenian genocide during World War I? The Turkish government today denies it, but the historical record, chronicled in works like Peter Balakian's powerful 2003 study, "The Burning Tigris," is overwhelming. Yet...

The fallout from Armenian Genocide denier James Taranto’s July 26th column, "It Didn’t Happen," continues over these charges of countenancing genocide against Barack Obama and of genocide denial against John Kerry: Barack Obama's latest pronouncement on Iraq should have shocked the conscience. In an interview with the Associated Press last week, the freshman Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate opined that even preventing genocide is not a sufficient reason to keep American troops in Iraq. …One may take the position that genocide would not be the likely result of an American retreat from Iraq. That is the view of Mr....

In a commentary ("It Didn’t Happen") and this video ("Iraq’s Vulnerabilities Overlooked") OpinionJournal’s James Taranto decries Barack Obama’s comments on the possibility of genocide in Iraq and John Kerry’s contention on C-SPAN’s "Washington Journal" (RealPlayer required) that genocide did not engulf the region after the U.S. left Vietnam: "Senator Obama gave an interview last week to The Associated Press, and made a comment, that in my view really ought to shock the conscience. He said that preventing genocide is not a good enough reason to leave American troops in Iraq. … [I]t’s OK to allow the genocide of Arabs and...

Let’s not mince words. It was a teenager who pumped three bullets into Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, 53, at the entrance to the offices of Agos, the bilingual Armenian-Turkish weekly newspaper he founded in 1996. But Dink’s execution is a direct consequence of the policies of the Turkish government concerning the Armenian Genocide, and what Amnesty International terms "a pattern of judicial harassment against him for peacefully expressing his dissenting opinion."For more than nine decades, successive Turkish governments have denied that Ottoman Turks carried out a systematic – nearly successful – genocidal plan to exterminate Armenians. The official Turkish position...

When The Stiletto was watching Hannity & Colmes the other day, one of the segments concerned the hateful, hysterical blog comments by posters lamenting the failure of the Taliban suicide bomber who reportedly tried to assassinate Vice President Dick Cheney outside the Bagram air force base in Afghanistan.Citing New York Congressman Charles Rangel’s 2005 remark that the Iraq War “is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed” and Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman’s comparison of global warming denial to Holocaust denial, one of the guest pundits denounced the over-the-top propensity of the far left to equate people...

The Stiletto had a lot on her plate these past few days – the Libby case, global warming, Ann Coulter, the appeals court ruling that gun ownership does not require militia membership – so this irrational and insensitive WaPo op-ed piece on H.R. 106 by columnist Jackson Diehl got back burnered. If revenge is a dish best eaten cold, The Stiletto is now ready to dig in.A nonbinding resolution, H.R. 106, was introduced by Adam Schiff (D-CA) on January 30, 2007 ("Affitrmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution"). The resolution: calls upon the President to ensure...

The Wall Street Journal Online has been posting video interviews with its reporters and editorial staff on the events of the day. In this one, "Edwards Campaign Continues," (under the Opinion tab, in case the balky Brightcove link doesn’t load properly) OpinionJournal.com editor James Taranto explains that John Edwards’ decision to continue his presidential quest after wife, Elizabeth, learned that her cancer has metastasized is impractical and not well-thought out because they may both be in denial. The 3:41 interview ends with an Easter egg-like surprise: After Taranto notes that the couple "is human after all," host Ed Crane praises...

The United States government continues to remain silent on free speech restrictions in Turkey – most notably, what the European Union has called the "infamous" Article 301 of the Penal Code. Under Article 301, more than 60 fiction and non-fiction writers have been prosecuted for "denigrating Turkishness" – typically, for acknowledging the Armenian Genocide.Turkish novelist and Novel Laureate Orhan Pamuk was prosecuted under Article 301 because he told a Swiss magazine, "Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it." Another Turkish novelist, Elif ªafak, was also tried...

The Los Angeles Times describes a series of mostly lefty documentaries being financed by philanthropists – filmanthropists – who "have deep pockets and issue-driven agendas. Rather than make high-class dramas that might carry some mild social message, these producers are turning out full-blown advocacy movies."The paper notes that, "in the eight months since Al Gore's global-warming wake-up call, ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ was released, the documentary film marketplace has exploded" and that these filmanthropists want to "shine a spotlight on social injustices, or government malfeasance, and even to recast history in the service of human uplift and national reconciliation."Among the documentaries...

Last night, The Stiletto went to see "Screamers," a powerful and moving documentary that asks why genocides keep occurring – from the 1915-1917 near-annihilation of Armenians by Ottoman Turks (warning: graphic images) to today’s ethnic cleansing in Darfur. You can watch the trailer here.The title of the documentary is meant to refer to those who don’t silently stand by as genocides are unfolding, notably Harvard Professor Samantha Power, author of "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide" (2002). Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, assassinated 10 days ago in Istanbul by a Turkish nationalist sympathizer, is also interviewed.The film...

Sometimes, a man’s career comes down to one word – just ask Michael Richards. For U.S. diplomats, that word is “genocide,” when referring to the murders of 1.5 million Armenians – nearly every man, woman and child – who were executed, starved or deported from the countryside in forced death marches through the Syrian desert by the Ottoman Turks. ... Tiptoeing around the Armenian Genocide began with the Clinton administration ... NOTE: The original source includes links to relevant Web sites and articles.

More than 1,400 Turks spent New Year’s Eve - also the first day of the Muslim feast Eid al-Adha (or Eid ul Adha; for some unfathomable reason, no two Muslims can agree on a standardized spelling for anything) - in hospital ERs after stabbing or otherwise injuring their hands and legs while sacrificing thousands of cows, sheep, goats and bulls. Four of the injured were crushed by the weight of large animals falling on them; three others suffered fatal heart attacks. The rite is meant to commemorate G-d having provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice in place of his...

Global Language Monitor, a nonprofit group that studies word usage, has chosen "macaca" as the most politically incorrect word of 2006, followed by "Global Warming Denier." "There are now proposals that ‘global warming deniers’ be treated the same as 'Holocaust deniers’: professional ostracism, belittlement, ridicule and, even, jail," the group's president, Paul JJ Payack, tells Reuters. Just as African-Americans take offense at equating the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s to today’s gay marriage rights campaign, The Stiletto takes strong exception to equating global warming with holocaust denial or genocide denial. The scientific evidence for global warming is...

The Stiletto wondered about James Taranto’s stance on the Armenian Genocide ... today he outed himself as a genocide denier in a stunningly hypocritical article replete with intellectual dishonesty and moral cowardice. About the new law passed by the French parliament that makes it a crime to deny that the Turks tried to wipe the Armenians off the face of the earth in 1915 (to do so is punishable by a year’s imprisonment and a €45,000 fine - the same as for denying the Nazi Holocaust - Taranto writes: "We have no opinion on whether the events of 1915 constitute...