Pursuit of legal claims for #reparations by descendants of #ArmenianGenocide survivors is a HUMAN RIGHT, it is a basic form of redress & justice for atrocity crimes victims. Moral posturing on this issue by our usual white savior TDW is despicable. (1/10) https://twitter.com/Tom_deWaal/status/1388024718939365379

(2/10) TDW tries in his article TWICE to muddy the waters w/ "all lives matter" style arguments by mixing #ArmenianGenocide victims in a bag of "5 million mostly Muslim" victims. This is genocide denial. Period. @YesVicken called him out in another thread: https://twitter.com/YesVicken/status/1388161067449192451

(3/10) TDW (a non-lawyer by the way) pontificates that the 1948 #Genocide Convention cannot be applied retroactively. This is absolutely wrong and refuted pretty strongly by a towering figure like William Schabas in his paper "Retroactive Application of the Genocide Convention."

(4/10) To support his false claims about the genocide convention, TDW also attributes to #Lemkin things he NEVER said or implied. The very motive driving Lemkin was ending #impunity not helping perpetrators of genocide to get away with. This is academic dishonesty par excellence.

(5/10) Then TDW alleges Azerbaijanis had nothing to do with the #ArmenianGenocide of 1915. This is akin to saying the Vichy government or Mussolini had no links to the destruction of the European Jewry and #Holocaust. This is not just nonsense, this is malicious. And here is why:

(6/10) The first Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Khan Khoyski sanctioned the massacre of 10K-30K Armenians in Baku in 1918 with the help of the Army of Islam which had mixed Ottoman & Azerbaijani soldiers led by Ottoman Nuri Pasha, the elder brother of the famous Enver pasha of CUP;

(7/10) #Azerbaijan demonstrated the extension/revival of that same genocidal intent when it committed the pogroms of #Sumgait, Baku and Maraga in late 1980s and early 1990s ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of #Armenians from Azerbaijan;

(8/10) Apart from Azerbaijan being the only other state other than Turkey that vehemently denies the #ArmenianGenocide. It denies the right of indigenous Armenians to live in #Artsakh, commits atrocities against them today and threatens to invade Armenia proper (just last week).

(9/10) TDW is an absolute liar by calling for the opening of the archives in Boston, which have been open for all researchers for a while now. Meanwhile, he fails to call for the full opening of #Ottomanarchives, which my historian friends suffer major difficulties in accessing.

(10/10) TDW also likened having endured a genocide to "a badge of honor," then revised over protests to "an angry weapon of identity politics." This shows the extent to which this "public intellectual" identifies with victims of atrocities and his lack of moral compass. Pathetic.