Imagine being forced to leave your home right now. Saying goodbye to the life you once knew — the home you love, the city you navigate like the back of your hand, the country you’ve known for so long. Imagine walking past your neighbor’s door for the last time and taking your final steps on the street you’ve walked along countless times. Imagine the immense pressure of deciding within minutes where the next chapter of your life will unfold. Imagine this all happening because your people face systematic persecution and mass killings right in front of your eyes. You fear for your own life and worry tirelessly about your loved ones. Imagine not knowing when, if ever, you’ll come back. For countless Armenian families, this was the devastating reality of the Armenian Genocide. The Armenian Genocide began in 1915, when Ottoman Turkey carried out mass killings and forced deportations of Armenians from their ancestral homeland. Although 1915 marks the conventional beginning of the Armenian Genocide, Armenians had experienced persecution and massacres in preceding decades, and the violence continued even beyond that year. During this period, many survivors fled in desperate search of safety and peace elsewhere in the world, hoping to have a fresh start to safely preserve the culture they had been forced to leave behind. Some of those families found refuge in Jerusalem, where Armenians had already lived for centuries. As Ara Daglian so eloquently explains in a University of Washington article, Armenians first arrived in the fourth century, and the community stayed stable for centuries. Then, between 1915 and 1920, thousands of refugees fleeing the Armenian Genocide arrived in Palestine, most settling in Jerusalem. They did more than just survive there. Armenian silversmiths, goldsmiths, tailors, and photographers opened shops and joined the city’s economy. A printing press and the Gulbenkian Library preserved Armenian knowledge and literature. Still, more than a century after the Genocide, Jerusalem’s Armenian community is being made to feel unwelcome. In the first three months of 2026, the Religious Freedom Data Center, an Israeli monitoring group, recorded 33 incidents of harassment against Christians in Israel, most of them in Jerusalem. Between April and June, that number nearly doubled. In August, police arrested six people — five of them minors — after they were filmed spitting at the entrance of St. James Monastery in the Armenian Quarter and throwing stones at the walls. Later, four more were detained for spitting at the Armenian Patriarchate. Then, in September, a 9-year-old Armenian boy was pepper-sprayed while riding his bike through Jerusalem. He is one of the many targets of a surge in harassment centered on the Armenian Quarter. Today, an estimated seven million Armenians live outside of Armenia. Together, they constitute the Armenian Diaspora; communities that have endured hardships across generations while building lives far beyond their ancestral homeland. Despite the geographic distances separating them, these communities remain connected through a shared commitment to preserving Armenian identity. On the surface, preserving that identity may seem like a duty that falls solely on Armenians. However, looking deeper, it becomes clear that societies must also recognize their role in this. They must also uphold the rights and dignity of the Armenian communities that live alongside them. So where does the responsibility of the societies around them begin? The answer is simple. Regardless of race, ethnicity, or religion, we all share one fundamental trait: our humanity. The obligation of inclusivity is not born of shared suffering but rather of shared humanity. Disregarding this shared humanity comes with severe consequences. The recent incidents of harassment targeting Jerusalem’s Armenian community illustrate why global inclusivity is crucial. What does inclusivity look like in practice? It looks like a child riding his bike home from school without checking over his shoulder. It looks like the entrance to a monastery being just a door, not some kind of target. It looks like a neighbor who sees harassment and says something instead of keeping quiet. Authorities should treat spitting, stone-throwing, and assault against Christian clergy and residents as the hate incidents they are and make the results of these cases public. People everywhere can learn the history of the Armenian Genocide and recognize the Armenian communities that live in their own cities. All of us, wherever we live, can ask the same question: who is made to feel unwelcome, and what exactly are we doing about it? The Armenian Genocide left many lessons behind. One of the most important is what happens when a society decides that some people matter less. Inclusivity means understanding that every life is dear to the person living it as ours is to us. Humanity is the home we already share. No one should be made to feel like a mere guest in it. Acknowledgement: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author, not necessarily Our National Conversation as a whole.
By Maya Balmanukyan
(Image Source: Sabbir Ahmed, Vecteezy) In this exchange, the two writers work to find common ground on an issue not currently discussed much in a bipartisan manner. What they do share most is that civil discourse is vital: Looking at an issue from both sides without being judgmental. There is no intention of determining a right or wrong answer, but to express two divergent views and leave it to the reader to decide. Break Free from Europe: US & Russia as Partners – Not AdversariesJames C. Bates Once the Russian-Ukraine War is settled, it will then be time for the US to view Russia with America’s interest at heart, not that of the Europeans; our geopolitical interests are not the same. Unlike Europe, the US does not have centuries of mistrust of Russia. Granted, the US and Western Europe viewed the Soviet Union with deserved alarm. It was an “Evil Empire”. But the Russia of today is not the Soviet Union of yesteryear. Yet, subconsciously, many Americans and Europeans perceive that they are pretty much the same malevolent colossus, with Putin being “Stalinesque”. Moreover, in many American minds, Europeans are the embodiment of advanced societies and fierce proponents of our shared “Western Values”, with the US and Europe joined at the hip. After all, Europe is the setting for numerous character-building “fairy tales” imbued within us during our early childhood formative years; think Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood. The average American perceives that what is good for Europe is good for the US and that since Europe has an adversarial relationship with Russia, the US must as well. But why are European countries like France, Germany, and Belgium seemingly more important to the US than countries like Brazil, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, all of which have larger populations than Germany, which is the most populous country in Europe (excluding transcontinental Russia)? Why does America (primarily via NATO) concentrate on Germany, France, the Netherlands, etc. over Thailand, the Philippines, Chile, Argentina, etc.? (Because it’s been this way for decades is not a good answer.) The Cold War is over. It is no longer a bipolar world, and the unipolar power of the US is coming to an end; a multipolar world is fast emerging. The days of US good, Soviet Union bad; democracy good, totalitarianism bad; capitalism good, centralized planning bad; are over. No country even tries to stridently heed to these ideologies anymore. Similarly for America: the idea that Europe is good and Russia is bad should be overcome as well. Now is the time for some “Realpolitik” instead. America cannot be the world’s primary policeman, especially since Europe consistently refuses to join the force. (For example, they have done nothing to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, though they sure talk and talk about it.) Similarly, the USA can’t afford to ensure the spread of democracy and capitalism to far-reaching corners of the world anymore (as JFK often did). Our focus should be here at home, with an emphasis on limited government, individual liberty, the welfare of American citizens, patriotism, morality, and freedom of speech. The truth is that if we adhere to our country’s founding principles, our nation’s current and future success will entice others to be like us, as we set the standard. There will be no need to cajole others; they will do so on their own. Europe, on the contrary, is in the process of expanding government (the European Union), banning popular political parties/politicians (Marine Le Pen, AfD, Restore Britain), rewarding non-citizens (unfettered illegal immigration), diminishing Nationalistic thinking (the EU again), increasing secularism (religiosity is declining precipitously, except for Islam), and limiting free speech (the Digital Services Act). In short, American values and European values are not the same, and the divide is growing. And more importantly, countries don’t necessarily need to share the same values to get along. Determining our partners (whether military, trade, economic, political) should be based on what is mutually beneficial, with these partnerships being of limited duration. The term “Partners,” not “Allies” (NATO-centric), conveys this point. The latter word implies longstanding relationships and seems to be forever connected with World War I and II. Can Russia be a partner to the US? YES, though this is probably not in the interest of Europe. (But why should this even be a major consideration of America?) Like Canada, Russia has tremendous natural resources and would be a great market for US manufactured goods and services. The US and Russia could even form a future limited military partnership to rein in a potentially hegemonistic China. Clearly, Russia and China are not suited for a long-term partnership, since for one thing, they share a 4,200-kilometer-long border, which may inevitably cause conflict over time. Secondly, like the US, Russia was founded on Christian principles, while China has embraced atheism. Like the US, Russia is increasingly controlling its borders from illegal entrants and has both Pacific and European interests. Aside from European considerations and the current war in Ukraine, America has no reason to be adversarial with Russia. And regarding the current war, we should at least try to understand the Russian perspective. For the past 35 years, Russia has made it crystal clear that it opposed the eastward expansion of NATO. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US even suggested that it would heed this Russian REDLINE. We didn’t. The Russian annexation of Crimea and the current Russian-Ukraine war were the result. But why does Russia abhor NATO expansion? For centuries in the past, Russia has been a rival of and experienced war with numerous European countries, most notably Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany. In the present, it fears that Europe (and the US) longs for its implosion so that it can then harvest the resources within. Russia also wants to avoid many of Europe’s “vices” such as open borders, lack of patriotism, the advocacy phenomenon of the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Queer-Intersex-Asexual-Plus (LGBTQIA+) agenda, a feckless military,
By Thomas Wuchte
It’s hard to keep up with all the prosecutions launched by the Trump DOJ, targeting all his perceived enemies. More and more, these attempts are failing. Today a grand jury refused to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified to congress about what she knew of the events of January 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol riot. I watched her testimony live, as did 13 million other Americans. She seemed completely credible. There was one piece of testimony she provided about a second-hand conversation she had heard about Trump. Trump allegedly had tried to grab the steering wheel of the presidential vehicle in an attempt to go to Capitol Hill to be with the rioters. She wasn’t an eye-witness to this, and she said so at the time. She was just repeating something she heard — and she made that clear. So what’s her crime? I should think Trump would WANT his supporters to think he wanted to be there with them. In a way, Cassidy Hutchinson did him a favor. Some thought Trump looked weak because he didn’t go to Capitol Hill to be with his supporters that day. But that’s not the point. Retribution against anyone who makes Trump look bad is the point. Trump’s relentless pursuit of cases like this has now become embarrassing. Justice Department officials must be shaking their heads in dismay. It will be interesting, once Trump leaves office, to see how all these White House operatives, Justice Department officials and cabinet members attempt to justify the lengths they went to in order to try and keep President Trump happy — even when their actions could hurt people very directly, truth and fairness be damned. Remember David Hearn, the Olympian accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool, even though the administration already knew the real problem was shoddy workmanship? Trump will likely pardon everyone around him, so they might not need to worry about any legal peril. But they will still have to live with themselves — and the scrutiny they will face. Enough is enough. People are sick of all the division, the anger, the corruption and the shenanigans. Let’s hope the day of reckoning is finally upon us and we see a return to sanity.
By Jeff Hall
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