Tweet
Forward, NY
Aug 22 2007
Armenian Genocide Debate Exposes Rifts at ADL
Jennifer Siegel | Wed. Aug 22, 2007
It has been a long, hot, difficult summer for Abraham Foxman. Faced
with the fight of his professional life, the indefatigable director
of the Anti-Defamation League was forced into a rare and reluctant
retreat by the unlikeliest of adversaries: an ethnic minority
charging one of the world's most famous Holocaust survivors with
suppressing recognition of a genocide.
For weeks, Foxman, 67, faced mounting criticism for refusing to back
Armenian Americans in their quest to pass a congressional resolution
recognizing as genocide the World War I-era massacre of Armenians at
the hands of their Ottoman rulers. But after insisting that the ADL
and the United States should not risk inciting Turkey, Israel's most
important Middle Eastern ally, by labeling the episode as genocide,
he made a hasty - if less than contrite - retreat this week in the
face of a potential mutiny from fellow Jews.
`I didn't make a mistake,' Foxman said Tuesday in an interview with
the Forward. He added: `No Armenian lives are under threat today or
in danger. Israel is under threat and in danger, and a relationship
between Israel and Turkey is vital and critical, so yeah, I have to
weigh [that].'
The ADL worked to head off a full-blown public relations crisis with
a carefully worded statement, released August 21, that did not
endorse the congressional resolution but confirmed that the
`consequences' of the actions of the Ottoman Empire against the
Armenians were `tantamount to genocide.' But several observers within
the organization's leadership told the Forward that even if the
effort proves successful, the saga would likely leave behind
lingering questions about Foxman's maverick leadership style as well
doubts about the group's fundamental mission.
`Are we an organization of principle? Are we an organization that
will stand up for what's right and wrong? Or are our principles put
through some kind of filter that involves Israel's self-interest?',
said a member of ADL's national executive committee who requested
anonymity. There is `that subtext here.'
Some saw the brouhaha as a matter of chickens coming home to roost
for Foxman, who has served as the ADL's director since 1987. Over the
years, Foxman has charged an array of foes with misrepresenting
Jewish history and fomenting antisemitism, including Mel Gibson,
Jimmy Carter, Louis Farrakhan and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president
of Iran. `There's a huge irony here,' said Jonathan Sarna, a
professor of Jewish history at Brandeis University. `The Armenian
community is using all the strategies we invented to deal with
Holocaust denial.'
Although a dispute over the Armenian genocide has simmered within
some Jewish circles for years, ADL's recent controversy commenced
last April, when Foxman told the Los Angeles Times that he opposed a
resolution, proposed by Congressman Adam Schiff and co-sponsored by
29 out 43 Jewish members of Congress, to officially recognize the
Armenian massacres of 1915-1923 as a genocide.
`The Turks and Armenians need to revisit their past,' Foxman told the
newspaper. `The Jewish community shouldn't be the arbiter of that
history. And I don't think the U.S. Congress should be the arbiter,
either.'
Although officially the ADL did not take a position on the bill,
along with B'nai B'rith International, the American Jewish Committee
and the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, all four
groups have said publicly that historians, not lawmakers, should
settle the debate over the 1.5 million Armenian deaths. Earlier this
year, the groups passed along to congressional leaders a letter from
Turkish Jews opposing the resolution.
But ultimately, Foxman and the ADL, which was founded to combat
antisemitism in 1913, confronted the bulk of public opposition. The
issue erupted last week when the town council of Watertown, Mass. -
home to one of the country's oldest and largest Armenian communities
- voted to withdraw from an ADL-run anti-discrimination program. With
other area towns poised to follow suit, ADL's New England regional
board, one of the organization's most influential and moneyed, issued
a statement backing the congressional resolution, and the board's
professional head, regional director Andrew Tarsy, publicly disavowed
Foxman's position.
Tarsy was summarily fired last Friday, resulting in the cascade of
events - including the resignations of two regional board members,
condemnation of the ADL by such prominent Jews as Harvard Law
Professor Alan Dershowitz and a public rift with the Jewish Community
Relations Council of Greater Boston, which organized a petition
campaign among the area's Jewish groups - that forced Foxman and the
ADL's national leadership to change course.
As of press time, the ADL had not announced whether Tarsy would be
reinstated. In speaking to the Forward, Foxman - who is slated to
release a book, `The Most Dangerous Lies: The Israel Lobby and the
Myth of Jewish Control,' next month - remained almost defiantly
unapologetic.
`We've never denied that there was a massacre, we [just] didn't
engage in the g-word,' Foxman said. `Now, they've insisted on the
g-word. Fine.' He added: `If my going public and saying this was a
genocide can bring unity to the community, and can make the Armenian
community feel that they're being heard, then I did it.'
The national director said he personally had believed that the
Armenian tragedy constituted genocide before saying so publicly, but
that his reversal was motivated by a concern for Jewish welfare. `I'm
saying it sincerely. I still don't think it's our issue, but so many
people believe it is our issue... I said okay,' Foxman said.
He added: `I saw what this was doing to the unity of the Jewish
community at a time we need unity. Israel is under threat. European
Jewry, Latin American Jewry are under attack. In America, we're being
attacked as disloyal. This is not a time for Jews to be attacking
each other over an issue that is really not central.'
Armenian American leaders welcomed the ADL's updated position but
deemed it far from a full victory.
`This is a current-day issue,' said Anthony Barsamian, director of
public affairs for the Armenian Assembly of America. `Speaking about
genocide in Turkey will get you killed. Last fall, I traveled to
Turkey and met with Hrant Dink, who was then the editor of the
[Turkish-Armenian newspaper] Agos, and he was assuring me that this
was an issue for Turks and Armenians within Turkey, and three months
later, he was assassinated.'
Within the ADL, Foxman's critics also seemed unlikely to be fully
placated. Although Foxman is widely credited within the organization
as a master tactician equally adept at handling world leaders and
big-time donors, his detractors have long resented what they see as
his propensity to unilaterally adopt positions, as when he lobbied
for a pardon for financier Marc Rich in the final days of the Clinton
administration. In 2001, Foxman angered leaders in Los Angeles when
he unexpectedly fired the director of the ADL's Pacific Southwest
region.
`This is déjà vu,' said Joel Sprayregen, a longtime critic of Foxman
who is a former national vice chair of the ADL and honorary chair of
its Chicago region. `To many of us, it seems, here he does it again.'
http://www.forward.com/articles/11470/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Aug 22 2007
Armenian Genocide Debate Exposes Rifts at ADL
Jennifer Siegel | Wed. Aug 22, 2007
It has been a long, hot, difficult summer for Abraham Foxman. Faced
with the fight of his professional life, the indefatigable director
of the Anti-Defamation League was forced into a rare and reluctant
retreat by the unlikeliest of adversaries: an ethnic minority
charging one of the world's most famous Holocaust survivors with
suppressing recognition of a genocide.
For weeks, Foxman, 67, faced mounting criticism for refusing to back
Armenian Americans in their quest to pass a congressional resolution
recognizing as genocide the World War I-era massacre of Armenians at
the hands of their Ottoman rulers. But after insisting that the ADL
and the United States should not risk inciting Turkey, Israel's most
important Middle Eastern ally, by labeling the episode as genocide,
he made a hasty - if less than contrite - retreat this week in the
face of a potential mutiny from fellow Jews.
`I didn't make a mistake,' Foxman said Tuesday in an interview with
the Forward. He added: `No Armenian lives are under threat today or
in danger. Israel is under threat and in danger, and a relationship
between Israel and Turkey is vital and critical, so yeah, I have to
weigh [that].'
The ADL worked to head off a full-blown public relations crisis with
a carefully worded statement, released August 21, that did not
endorse the congressional resolution but confirmed that the
`consequences' of the actions of the Ottoman Empire against the
Armenians were `tantamount to genocide.' But several observers within
the organization's leadership told the Forward that even if the
effort proves successful, the saga would likely leave behind
lingering questions about Foxman's maverick leadership style as well
doubts about the group's fundamental mission.
`Are we an organization of principle? Are we an organization that
will stand up for what's right and wrong? Or are our principles put
through some kind of filter that involves Israel's self-interest?',
said a member of ADL's national executive committee who requested
anonymity. There is `that subtext here.'
Some saw the brouhaha as a matter of chickens coming home to roost
for Foxman, who has served as the ADL's director since 1987. Over the
years, Foxman has charged an array of foes with misrepresenting
Jewish history and fomenting antisemitism, including Mel Gibson,
Jimmy Carter, Louis Farrakhan and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president
of Iran. `There's a huge irony here,' said Jonathan Sarna, a
professor of Jewish history at Brandeis University. `The Armenian
community is using all the strategies we invented to deal with
Holocaust denial.'
Although a dispute over the Armenian genocide has simmered within
some Jewish circles for years, ADL's recent controversy commenced
last April, when Foxman told the Los Angeles Times that he opposed a
resolution, proposed by Congressman Adam Schiff and co-sponsored by
29 out 43 Jewish members of Congress, to officially recognize the
Armenian massacres of 1915-1923 as a genocide.
`The Turks and Armenians need to revisit their past,' Foxman told the
newspaper. `The Jewish community shouldn't be the arbiter of that
history. And I don't think the U.S. Congress should be the arbiter,
either.'
Although officially the ADL did not take a position on the bill,
along with B'nai B'rith International, the American Jewish Committee
and the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, all four
groups have said publicly that historians, not lawmakers, should
settle the debate over the 1.5 million Armenian deaths. Earlier this
year, the groups passed along to congressional leaders a letter from
Turkish Jews opposing the resolution.
But ultimately, Foxman and the ADL, which was founded to combat
antisemitism in 1913, confronted the bulk of public opposition. The
issue erupted last week when the town council of Watertown, Mass. -
home to one of the country's oldest and largest Armenian communities
- voted to withdraw from an ADL-run anti-discrimination program. With
other area towns poised to follow suit, ADL's New England regional
board, one of the organization's most influential and moneyed, issued
a statement backing the congressional resolution, and the board's
professional head, regional director Andrew Tarsy, publicly disavowed
Foxman's position.
Tarsy was summarily fired last Friday, resulting in the cascade of
events - including the resignations of two regional board members,
condemnation of the ADL by such prominent Jews as Harvard Law
Professor Alan Dershowitz and a public rift with the Jewish Community
Relations Council of Greater Boston, which organized a petition
campaign among the area's Jewish groups - that forced Foxman and the
ADL's national leadership to change course.
As of press time, the ADL had not announced whether Tarsy would be
reinstated. In speaking to the Forward, Foxman - who is slated to
release a book, `The Most Dangerous Lies: The Israel Lobby and the
Myth of Jewish Control,' next month - remained almost defiantly
unapologetic.
`We've never denied that there was a massacre, we [just] didn't
engage in the g-word,' Foxman said. `Now, they've insisted on the
g-word. Fine.' He added: `If my going public and saying this was a
genocide can bring unity to the community, and can make the Armenian
community feel that they're being heard, then I did it.'
The national director said he personally had believed that the
Armenian tragedy constituted genocide before saying so publicly, but
that his reversal was motivated by a concern for Jewish welfare. `I'm
saying it sincerely. I still don't think it's our issue, but so many
people believe it is our issue... I said okay,' Foxman said.
He added: `I saw what this was doing to the unity of the Jewish
community at a time we need unity. Israel is under threat. European
Jewry, Latin American Jewry are under attack. In America, we're being
attacked as disloyal. This is not a time for Jews to be attacking
each other over an issue that is really not central.'
Armenian American leaders welcomed the ADL's updated position but
deemed it far from a full victory.
`This is a current-day issue,' said Anthony Barsamian, director of
public affairs for the Armenian Assembly of America. `Speaking about
genocide in Turkey will get you killed. Last fall, I traveled to
Turkey and met with Hrant Dink, who was then the editor of the
[Turkish-Armenian newspaper] Agos, and he was assuring me that this
was an issue for Turks and Armenians within Turkey, and three months
later, he was assassinated.'
Within the ADL, Foxman's critics also seemed unlikely to be fully
placated. Although Foxman is widely credited within the organization
as a master tactician equally adept at handling world leaders and
big-time donors, his detractors have long resented what they see as
his propensity to unilaterally adopt positions, as when he lobbied
for a pardon for financier Marc Rich in the final days of the Clinton
administration. In 2001, Foxman angered leaders in Los Angeles when
he unexpectedly fired the director of the ADL's Pacific Southwest
region.
`This is déjà vu,' said Joel Sprayregen, a longtime critic of Foxman
who is a former national vice chair of the ADL and honorary chair of
its Chicago region. `To many of us, it seems, here he does it again.'
http://www.forward.com/articles/11470/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress