New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez pressed aggressively for answers from the Obama Administration over its refusal to properly characterize the Armenian Genocide and, more specifically, regarding how forcing U.S. diplomats into such a “totally untenable” position on this human rights issue materially harms both U.S. interests and America’s moral standing, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

The Senator’s powerful remarks and sharp inquiries came during his questioning at a hearing of the Foreign Relations Committee to consider the confirmation of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia nominee John Heffern. Mr. Heffern cited the killing of the over 1.5 million Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire, but stopped short of properly referencing the crime as ‘genocide,’ arguing that “the characterization of those events is a policy decision that is made by the President of the United States and that policy is enunciated in his April 24 Remembrance Day statement.”

Senator Menendez remarked “This is an inartful dance that we do. We have a State Department whose history is full of dispatches that cite the atrocities committed during this time. We have a convention that we sign on to as a signatory that clearly defines these acts as genocide. We have a historical knowledge of the facts that we accept would amount to genocide. But we are unwilling to reference it as genocide. And if we cannot accept the past, we cannot move forward. And so I find it very difficult to send diplomats of the United States to a country in which they will go – and I hope you will go, as some of your predecessors have – to a genocide commemoration and yet never be able to use the word genocide. It is much more than a question of a word. It is everything that signifies our commitment to saying ‘never again.’ And yet, we can’t even acknowledge this fact and we put diplomats in a position that is totally untenable,” as reported by ANCA.