[Peace-discuss] The Politics of Genocide, Continued

[David Green]

ADL faces fight over Armenian position

Ben Harris

A small, local protest against an Anti-Defamation League program in 
the Boston suburbs is shining a spotlight on the American Jewish 
community's refusal to get behind a congressional bill acknowledging 
the Armenian genocide.

Published: 08/07/2007

NEW YORK (JTA) -- A small, local protest against an Anti-Defamation 
League program in the Boston suburbs is shining a spotlight on the 
American Jewish community's refusal to get behind a congressional 
bill acknowledging the Armenian genocide.

Introduced in Congress in 2005, the bill states that the Ottoman 
Empire massacred 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923, and 
calls on the president of the United States to recognize the killings 
as genocide. The measure is being vigorously opposed by Turkey, 
Israel's closest ally in the Muslim world, which has enlisted a 
number of high-profile Washington lobbyists -- including several with 
ties to Jewish groups -- to press its case.

The Anti-Defamation League, along with B'nai B'rith International, 
American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Institute of National 
Security Affairs, say they are not taking a position on the bill. At 
the same time, however, they are echoing the Turkish line that the 
debate over what happened should be settled by historians, not 
American lawmakers; also, earlier this year, the four groups passed 
along to congressional leaders a letter from Turkish Jews opposing 
the resolution.

Until now, the consequences of such steps have been limited to a few 
critical articles, including a polemic entitled "Fire Foxman," 
published on the Web magazine Jewcy.com. But now, anger over what 
some perceive as the ADL's pandering to Turkey, is threatening to 
derail efforts by the organization to bring its highly regarded anti- 
gigotry program to Watertown.

The Armenian community of Watertown, Mass., -- one of the largest in 
the country -- is threatening to shut down the local "No Place for 
Hate" program, an ADL-sponsored initiative to certify communities 
that sponsor educational programs celebrating diversity.

"Here in Watertown, you can't ignore the Armenian genocide," said 
Ruth Thomasian, the sole Armenian member of Watertown's "No Place for 
Hate" planning committee, which operates independently of ADL. "You 
can't call it ‛alleged' or ‛supposed' or ‛research says.' 
Genocide happened."

The controversy began a month ago with a letter to the local weekly 
newspaper in Watertown, a community of some 32,000 people, of which 
as many as 20 percent are of Armenian descent. The letter, which 
called for the committee to sever ties with the ADL, sparked a flurry 
of responses; soon after, the controversy was the subject of a front- 
page story in the Boston Globe.

"The Armenian community in Watertown is a very important part of the 
fabric of the town," said Will Twombly, the co-chair of the planning 
committee. "Needless to say, when this letter appeared in the 
newspaper lots of people had concerns about the issue, and questions 
as well."

"This is not an issue where we take a position one way or the other," 
Foxman told JTA, referring to the longstanding feud between Turkey 
and Armenians over the issue. "This is an issue that needs to be 
resolved by the parties, not by us. We are neither historians nor 
arbiters."

Earlier this year, a delegation of Turkish Jews visiting Washington 
warned Jewish leaders that a resolution could harm Turkey's tilt 
towards the West and create problems for the country's Jews. Some 
20,000 Jews live in Turkey, where a community has flourished for 
hundreds of years.

Though Jewish organizational leaders would not confirm that either 
the safety of Turkish Jews or the alliance with Israel factored into 
their position, Turkish Jewish leaders explicitly linked Israel's 
well-being to the defeat of the resolution. In their letter to 
congressional leaders, the Turkish Jews noted the importance of close 
ties between Israel, the United States and Turkey, before warning 
that passage of the resolution could endanger American interests.

Around the same time, Foxman spoke out explicitly against the 
congressional resolution, saying it is not the job of Congress to 
settle the question. Foxman also asserted that, while massacres of 
Armenians undoubtedly did take place, the jury is still out on 
whether those massacres qualify as genocide. Such questioning has 
been rejected by Armenians as flat out wrong and described by 
scholars as disingenuous.

"It's not a matter of debate," said Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust 
scholar at Emory University. "There is an overwhelming consensus 
among historians that work in this area that there is no question 
that this is a genocide. You can't deny this history."

Joey Kurtzman, the author of the Jewcy article, told JTA that Jewish 
organizations should be "visible and vocal in standing with the 
Armenian community."

"Unless Jewish Americans are comfortable for others to remain 
similarly agnostic about whether the Holocaust took place, we ought 
to be every bit as furious with Foxman as are Armenian Americans," he 
said. "Foxman ought to issue a public retraction and an apology to 
the Armenian community, and also to the Jewish community. Barring 
that, he should be fired."

In an apparent attempt to short-circuit the controversy playing out 
in Watertown, ADL's Boston office seemed to backtrack from the 
organization' s line.

"ADL has never denied what happened at the close of the First World 
War," the Boston officer asserted in a letter to be published later 
this week in the Boston Globe. "There were massacres of Armenians and 
great suffering at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. We believe 
today's Turkish government should do more than it has done to come to 
grips with the past and reconcile with Armenians."

The "No Place for Hate" committee and the ADL are currently working 
to set up a meeting. It appears unlikely that sentiments conveyed in 
the letter to the Boston Globe will be enough to assuage the anger 
that Armenians feel over what they see as a blatant denial of their 
history.

"We probably would have to sever our ties if the ADL does not get 
into a conversation with us and work this issue out," Thomasian said. 
"This is a wonderful opportunity to have a public understanding of 
the whole nine yards of this denial, why perfectly reasonable people 
fall into traps like this."


       
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