lynne chichakian

Award winning documentary producer 2 x @TheCdnAcademy. former @cbc radio and television journalist. 2021 working with @jhrnews in DRC, and Kenya.

[Mohammed El-Kurd @m7mdkurd]

NEW: The Board of Directors at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) will formally change its definition of who qualifies as a journalist, to broadly exclude slain Palestinian and Lebanese journalists who worked for government-funded media outlets. Israeli, American, and Ukrainian journalists who work for state-funded outlets or are embedded with the military will remain recognized as journalists, of course.

The move was catalyzed to appease the right-wing Zionist rag The Free Beacon, which has repeatedly accused Palestinian and Lebanese journalists of being undercover militants or used their political opinions or affiliations as justification for their killing by the IOF.

This is a racist scandal of massive proportions for everyone involved, and it makes a mockery of the purported mission of the organization. It is absolutely abhorrent that the organization’s resources are wasted on this cowardly witch-hunt, at a moment in history that is the deadliest for journalists, especially in Palestine and Lebanon.

[lynne chichakian @chichakian]

@SMohyeddin At this point I have no desire to hear anything they have to say about the Armenian genocide. Years of co-opting it to advance their agenda in the Middle East.

[lynne chichakian @chichakian]

Valuable background in this post about Israel's decades long refusal to acknowledge The Armenian Genocide.

[Kegham Balian @kbalian90]

BREAKING: Jerusalemite Armenian community leader Hagop Djernazian delivers a scathing indictment of Israel’s decades-long refusal to recognize the Armenian Genocide, arguing that what was dismissed for years as diplomatically “inconvenient” is now being repackaged as a moral imperative.

His full statement: Part 1/2

Following Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar's announcement that the Government of Israel will discuss recognizing the Armenian Genocide, I feel compelled to share some thoughts and facts for a clearer picture of the issue.

In 2013, as a 13-year-old boy, I attended my first Knesset session on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. I could never have imagined that more than a decade later I would still be writing about the same issue.

For years, the only political party that consistently raised the recognition was Meretz, not because it served a political interest, but because its members believed recognition was a moral and historical obligation of any crime. Late Minister Yossi Sarid had the courage in 2000 to attend the memorial in the Armenian Quarter and Zehava Galon in 2015, while others didn’t even accept invitations to attend the memorial service.

Year after year, members of the Armenian community, representatives of the Armenian National Committee, clergy, and supporters attended committee meetings with hope, but for years we returned back home disappointed. Every discussion ended the same way, the Government of Israel would send a representative to explain why this was not the right time to recognize the Armenian Genocide. Suddenly 2026 is the right time to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

On 20 April 2020, the government's position was stated clearly by former MK Tzachi Hanegbi from the Likud party:
"We, the Jewish people, know very well what genocide means. However, the Government of Israel believes that the question of recognizing the historical events that took place in the Ottoman Empire is a complex issue, with historical, political, and diplomatic dimensions. Therefore, it is not appropriate for the Knesset to adopt an official position on the matter."

This was not a one-time argument. It was the consistent position of successive Israeli governments for many years.

Former President Reuven Rivlin, for whom I have respect, took a very different approach for many years. Long before becoming President, while serving as Speaker of the Knesset, he repeatedly spoke in favor of recognizing the Armenian Genocide, not because of political calculations or as leverage against Turkey, but because he believed it was the morally right thing to do. As he said in the Knesset in 2012: "It is forbidden to turn this question and this expression of solidarity into a political issue."

From my own experience, I know that even after becoming President, he never abandoned this position. Recognition was never a political tool for him; it was a matter of historical truth and moral responsibility. President Rivilin was the first one to hold a session on the Armenian Genocide at the Residence of the President in 2015 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Genocide.

I also witnessed, on numerous occasions, attempts by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to prevent meetings or initiatives in which the Armenian Genocide might be officially raised. That is why today's sudden appeal to morality raises difficult questions. If recognition is now considered a moral obligation, why was that same argument rejected for decades?

In 2016, MK Zehava Galon summarized exactly what many of us felt after years of attending these hearings: "Year after year, we give false hope to those gathered here. It does not befit the Knesset to continue discussing this issue annually without adopting a decision recognizing the Armenian Genocide on behalf of the State of Israel and the Knesset." Those words perfectly describe what our community experienced.

[lynne chichakian @chichakian]

@academic_la Does he have any evidence that Hamas stole quadcopters?

[lynne chichakian @chichakian]

@robrousseau @BenMulroney Running cover for incels

[Raffy Boudjikanian @CBCRaffy]

Story for @CBCPolitics :
World Zionist Organization removed from Canada's West Bank sanctions draft before release: sources
https://t.co/OhXKlpuzBb

[lynne chichakian @chichakian]

@kbalian90 ❤️❤️❤️❤️

[Jenny Kwan @JennyKwanBC]

I demanded action from @LenaMetlegeDiab to expedite processing for 136 postgrad Gazan students on full scholarships to 26 Cnd universities. In response in HoC last week- she said all will be processed in the next 10 days -will be watching closely to make sure she follows through.

[Sean Tucker @SeanTucker16]

Feeling overwhelmed with joy! FINALLY a pathway for these magnificent Palestinian university students trapped in Gaza ❤️🥹

[Samira Mohyeddin سمیرا @SMohyeddin]

Israel killed photographer Fadi Almeghari today in a targeted attack on his car in Gaza.

[Kegham Balian @kbalian90]

The son and daughter of Kegham Djeghalian walking along the beach in Gaza, Palestine, 1940s.

Kegham Djeghalian was an Armenian-Palestinian photographer who opened Gaza's first photography studio in 1944.

[Jeremy Diamond @JDiamond1]

I barely recognized the journalist Ali al-Samoudi when I saw him this week. He had been imprisoned by Israel — without charge and without a trial — for a year, during which time he lost half his body weight.
He is one of 105 Palestinian journalists who have been imprisoned by Israel since October 7, 2023 — most without charge, according to @pressfreedom.

[Democracy Watch @DemocracyWatchr]

DWatch will file constitutional challenge of PC Party Premier Doug Ford’s excessive secrecy changes to Ontario’s freedom of information (FOI) law that retroactively cover up Fords cellphone records & Cabinet communications with lobbyists. Details: https://t.co/XmgLZJyrFv #onpoli

[Kegham Balian @kbalian90]

Israel's Envoy to Christians supported Azerbaijan during the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), which led to the destruction of churches and the mass exodus of 150,000 Christian Armenians.

Today there are no Christians in Artsakh.

Zero. Zilch.

[Back On This App and It’s Still Hell @wickdchiq]

You’re witnessing the defunding of public healthcare for private health. Please note that private healthcare also uses public funds so these provincial governments are double-dipping in public funds to finance a system many people can never access

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

Journalists worldwide should stand up for colleagues who are murdered.

[Mariam Barghouti مريم البرغوثي @MariamBarghouti]

BREAKING— two Palestinians, including a child, killed and several other children injured in an ongoing Israeli attack on a school in the village of Mughayer northeast of Ramallah.

This is second attack of its kind in the last 24 hours, and comes after a convoy for an Israeli minister ran over and killed a child in Hebron, south of the West Bank.

Israelis are carrying out intensified and increasingly violent attacks in the West Bank with the purpose of dispossessing Palestinians from their homes and lands.

[Adrian Harewood @CarAdrianH]

Before travelling to #Iran on an 11 day reporting trip journalist @dimitrilascaris contacted 200+ Canadian media outlets and proposed filing stories for them. Only one expressed interest but never followed up. I spoke to him on my podcast.
https://t.co/julwJLTXQO via @YouTube

[Zachary Al-Khatib @ZaKhatib]

Edmonton Police Services contracted with Corsight AI, an Israeli company whose technology has reportedly been used for mass surveillance in Gaza, to patrol the city streets and scan citizen's faces.

The Gaza Laboratory is being exported around the world.

https://t.co/mTWIgVdJpL