The American Jewish World
VOICES OF MINNESOTA’S JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDED JUNE 12, 1912
VOLUME 95 NO. 48 AUGUST 24, 2007 10 ELUL, 5767
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Editorial
ADL and genocide denial
According to Catholic Church doctrine, the pope is infallible when
proclaiming on matters of faith or morals. In Judaism, of course,
there’s no pope, no infallible authority. We have Abe Foxman, national
director of the ADL.
No stranger to controversy, Foxman now finds himself in the midst of
a major contretemps over the ADL’s opposition to a congressional
resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide. The firing of Andrew H.
Tarsy, the ADL’s New England regional director, who broke ranks with the
national leadership on the Armenian genocide issue, has stoked the
controversy.
In a nutshell, groups like the Armenian National Committee of
America (ANCA), along with numerous scholars, have been lobbying for the
U.S. to officially recognize the dispossession and mass murder of 1.5
million Armenians by the Turkish government during World War I as an act
of genocide-the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey has
persistently denied the historical fact of the Armenian genocide, even
employing U.S. public relations firms to promulgate its viewpoint.
As support grows in Congress for passage of the Armenian Genocide
Resolution, putting the U.S. on record as recognizing this crime against
humanity, geopolitical considerations are contending with historical
truth. Specifically, the U.S. and Israel do not want to offend Turkey, a
strategic ally, by branding it as a perpetrator of genocide. This is the
argument that the ADL is propounding-and it was finally too much for
Andrew Tarsy to swallow.
"I have been in conflict over this issue for several weeks," Tarsy
told the Boston Globe newspaper last week. "I regret at this point any
characterization of the genocide that I made publicly other than to call
it a genocide. I think that kind of candor about history is absolutely
fundamental."
After Tarsy publicly called the ADL’s position "morally
indefensible," he was fired. His termination has sparked "an immediate
backlash against prominent local Jewish leaders" against Foxman and the
ADL’s national leadership, according to the Boston Globe. (The ADL and
the Jewish Community Relations Council used to share a local office and
Jewish communal defense duties; the ADL’s nearest regional office now is
in Chicago.)
This week, the ADL is taking out advertisements in New England
newspapers, including Boston’s Jewish Advocate, to explain their
position. While noting that the ADL "has acknowledged and never denied
the massacres of hundreds of thousands of Armenians-and by some accounts
more than one million-at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1918,"
the statement calls the congressional resolution "counterproductive to
the goal of having Turkey itself come to grips with the past."
Further, the ADL statement conveys "the concerns of the Jewish
community in Turkey," which is worried about the "impact of
Congressional action on them." The ADL also mentions the fact,
previously noted, that "Turkey is a key strategic ally and friend of the
United States and a staunch friend of Israel, and that in the struggle
between Islamic extremists and moderate Islam, Turkey is the most
critical country in the world."
The U.S., Israel and Foxman’s ADL deny or finesse historical truth
in the case of the Armenian genocide for various geopolitical reasons.
At the same time, those who deny the reality of the Shoah are held in
contempt by Jews and all decent-minded people; indeed, a number of
European nations prosecute the crime of Holocaust denial.
Most Jews, informed of the facts, will want to have no part in
denying the Armenian genocide. Jews should dissent from the ADL in this
matter, as did Andrew Tarsy. We didn’t vote for Foxman or any of the
national ADL leaders; they don’t speak for us on this issue.
American Jewish World
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Publisher and Editor: Mordecai Specktor