When the cause entails healing from wounds and yearning for justice, anniversaries can be bittersweet. The American Hellenic Institute (AHI) on April 13 celebrated the 50th Anniversary of its founding, a triumph of Greek-American community action and solidarity in 1974, but Turkey’s illegal occupation, which followed its brutal invasion in violation of U.S. and international law and the NATO charter continues – marking a darker anniversary.
AHI’s efforts in support of Cyprus, Greece, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the strengthening of U.S. relations with all three continue nevertheless, and the more than 400 people who packed the ballroom of the Capital Hilton were not just there to celebrate the past, but to re-commit to the future. The annual gala is AHI’s most important fundraising effort, with ticket sales, donations, and auctions generating resources to continue its work of informing the U.S. Congress, the Executive Branch of Government, the all-important think tanks in the American capital, as well as the media.
The noble endeavor is founded on a great principle and a powerful maxim respectively, proclaimed for decades by AHI’s founder, the late and revered Eugene T. Rossides: The Rule of Law, shamelessly violated by Turkey to this day, and the need, ignored at the Community’s peril, that the advocacy efforts Greek-Americans always be placed in the context of American interests. Indeed, on an evening when Iranian rockets and drones were raining on Israel and death and destruction continued in Ukraine, the continued importance of AHI’s mission was crystal clear – allowing to Turkey continue to violate with impunity the rules-based international order built by America after WWII is a green light to aggressors everywhere.
Περισσότερα at thenationalherald.com
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Source: tornosnews.gr/en/