TEHRAN- When I heard the words of the Irish lawyer defending South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, I began to reminisce about an old memory of mine during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

As the lawyer quoted a priest in the Bethlehem Church in the West Bank, I unwittingly recalled the sight of a memorial statue located in the yard of an Armenian sanctuary in the besieged city of Bushehr. 

I was only sixteen when I was forced to take shelter in the Holy Karapet Church to avoid relentless Iraqi fire. I remember the statue had caught my attention for several days. I used to sit outside the building and stare at the veiled marble woman holding a deceased child in her arms. Shrapnel from earlier strikes had penetrated the statue and accurately hit the woman's heart. For the longest time, I thought the statue was a symbol of the Virgin Mary and her son Jesus Christ (PBU).

Maybe it was because I had no knowledge of contemporary history or that I was unable to read the Armenian inscriptions at the base of the statue that I couldn’t tell what memory the carved figure was trying to uphold. Only the number 1915 made sense to me, and that did not necessarily ring a bell.  I only found out that the statue was meant to depict the genocide of Armenians during the First World War when two priests from Isfahan came to the church to collect their belongings. 

The two middle-aged men were consumed by great fear and shock the first few days they were with us. The constant fire lighting up the sky and the looming shadow of death was new to them. We however had been in that situation for at least 6 months and had gotten used to the misery. Nevertheless, the two priests who had come to us exactly on New Year's eve helped keep our spirits up despite their shock. They told us the story of previous wars, and how Armenians were wiped out by the Ottomans as the world bore witness with its eyes open.

When the lawyer quoted Munther Isaac's poignant words, I remembered how pointless that statue at the churchyard was. 

“We will not accept your apology after the genocide. What has been done has been done. I want you to look in the mirror and ask: Where was I when Gaza was going through a genocide?”

The plea to reflect on our inaction and help the dying population in Gaza dodge genocide was probably also iterated by Armenians in the 1910s. As Isaac emphasized, history does not forgive complacency in the face of atrocities; it demands action, not just monuments. Building memorial statues won’t help us soothe our conscience once the impoverished population in Gaza is wiped off the face of the earth.