By *Associated Press*
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
The Anti-Defamation League yesterday reversed itself and called World War
I-era killings of Armenians a genocide.
ADL director Abraham Foxman’s statement that the killings of Christian
Armenians by Muslim Turks "were indeed tantamount to genocide" came after
weeks of controversy. The ADL had called the deaths of up 1.5 million
Armenians an atrocity, but stopped short of saying it was genocide: a
planned extermination.
Last week, heavily Armenian Watertown withdrew from the ADL’s "No Place
for Hate" program. The ADL fired New England regional director Andrew Tarsy
after he agreed the killings were genocide. Acton and Newton were mulling a
break with the ADL, and several Jewish groups signed a letter urging the ADL
to acknowledge the genocide.
Foxman would not comment on whether Tarsy would be rehired.
James Russell, professor of Armenian studies at Harvard University,
said evidence of the Armenian genocide is overwhelming. He said the word
"genocide" was invented in the 1940s by a lawyer looking for a legal term to
describe the Armenian killings.
"The word was invented to describe what had happened to the Armenians
in the first place," he said. "If there’s any ambiguity there, then the
Declaration of Independence might as well be considered a British royalist
document."
State Rep. Rachel Kaprielian (D-Watertown) said she was "relieved and
heartened and glad." Asked if Watertown would re-establish its ties to the
ADL, she said, "The dust has to settle on this."
Source: cleid=1018359