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TEL AVIV, Israel- Despite pressures brought forth by the Israeli government, the International Conference on Holocaust and Genocide met here beginning Sunday, June 20, at the Hilton hotel with close to 250 participants, consisting of scholars, historians and community leaders hailing from numerous countries throughout the world.
Only as close as four days before the actual opening, the fate of the conference was unclear as organizers were still debating whether they should cancel, reschedule or relocate it as the result of the Israeli government's pressure, which was prompted by threats made Turkey. As reported during the opening remarks, bowing to Turkish pressures, the Israeli government not only withdrew its support of the conclave, but took steps to convince major and prominent participants to cancel their participation. It was also reported that the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. had gone as far as contact key personalities who had indicated their desire to attend the conference as planned calling on them to review their decision.
The efforts on the part of the Israeli government were somewhat successful as about one third of those who had indicated their desire to attend this unprecedented conference chose to cancel their participation and virtually boycott it.
When realizing that the conference was still going to be held despite the pressures, the Israeli government put still another pressure on the organizers to have the site of the conference relocated to United States. However, this attempt also failed as organizers argued that there was not enough time to make contingency plans toward relocating the site asserting that some of the participants had already arrived in Israel ahead of the schedule and thus there was no time to make last minute changes.
The conference was under the sponsorship of Hunter College of the City of New York and the Henrietta Szold Institute for Research in the Behavorial Sciences in Jerusalem.
At the formal opening of the conference on Sunday evening, Prof. Israel Charney, executive director, offered extensive information on the series of developments which almost doomed the its success. After stating that the goal of the conference was to project genocide as a universal problem in the history and future of all peoples, he offered a detailied accounting of the pressures first brought...