Bernard-Henri Lévy is interviewed about the Armenian genocide and the congressional resolution to recognize it (see these earlier posts of mine). In general I think it's a good interview. Lévy writes:
What I expect from myself is faithfulness to the Jewish message, which is a message of universality, and my neighbor's lack of faithfulness in the idea of universality does not give me the right not to be faithful myself. It is the truth to say that there was a genocide in Armenia. It is the truth to say that the denial of the Armenian genocide by Turkey is a reason for despair. It is the truth to say that I feel a kinship with the sons and grandsons of the survivors of the Armenian genocide. I'm not engaging in politics; I'm just trying to be faithful to the message of my ancestors and the books in which I believe.But I have a reservation about this statement of his:
[S]ingularity [i.e. of the Holocaust - NG] does not mean that it was the only genocide, and precisely because we - our parents - had to suffer the worst, we are obligated to pay attention to the suffering of those in Rwanda and Armenia.If the Holocaust was meaningfully singular in any moral sense (an issue I've discussed here), it was not because of some quality or degree of Jewish suffering. That also goes against Lévy's own subsequent statement:
The sense of my life, personally, is to refuse the clash of memories, the clash of victimhoods. 'I am a victim. You are not a victim. I am more a victim. You are less a victim.' I hate that... we must break the competition of victimhoods.Precisely so.