MidEastYouth.com
Aug 23 2007

ADL woes in Watertown lead to Turkey-Israel Drama

Miriam (Egypt/Israel/USA)
August 23rd, 2007
Who knew my little hometown would cause such a ruckus?

The No Place For Hate controversy has some very unexpected ripple
effects, including the firing of the New England head of the ADL by
the head honcho Abe Foxman because he dared to acknowledge the
Armenian Genocide (Foxman has only said the events are `tantamount to
genocide) and surrounding towns like Arlington, MA also ousting the
No Place For Hate program affiliation from their town.

But now the repercussions have become international. The Jerusalem
Post today reports that Turkey has sent its ambassador to Israel back
to work early to resolve tensions with the ADL.

So, here are the had gadya-like sequentials: Israel is supported by
the ADL who didn’t acknowledge the genocide and then sort of did,
whereupon Turkey was offended:

The Turkish Foreign Ministry statement said that to describe the
events during WWI as `genocide’ was `without historical and legal
basis,’ and that contrary to the ADL’s claim, there was no consensus
on this matter among historians.

`We see this statement as an unfortunate one that is unjust to the
Holocaust, which has no precedent, and to its victims. And we expect
it to be corrected,’ the statement read.

Thank you, but no thank you, Turkey. It’s nice that you’d like to
pretend that your ire has something to do with respecting the
suffering of the Holocaust, but Israel has publicly acknowledged its
own commiseration with the Armenians that comes out of empathy with
them. So no deal.

I had a very personal look at the inside of this Turkish-Armenian and
now Turkish-Armenian-Jewish-Israeli issue as a student in the same
department as Fatma Muge Gocek, one of the few Turkish Scholars to
acknowledge the suffering of the Armenian people. She is quoted as
saying the following in 2006 on the anniversary commemorating the
genocide:

I want you to know that as an ethnic Turk I am not guilty, but I am
responsible for the wounds that have been inflicted upon you,
Armenians, for the last century and a half. I am responsible for the
wounds that were first delivered upon you through an unjust
deportation from your ancestral lands and through massacres in the
hands of a government that should have been there to protect you. I
am also responsible for the wounds caused by the Turkish state’s
denial to this day of what happened to you back then. I am
responsible because all of this occurred and still occurs in the
country of which I am a citizen. Yet I want to tell you that I
personally travel every year to your ancestral lands to envision what
was once there and what is not now. When I am there, I realize again
and again how much your departure has broken the human spirit and
warped the land and the people. I become more and more aware of the
darkness that has set in since the disappearance of so many lives,
minds, hopes and dreams.

I’d really like to hear what any of our Turkish bloggers think about
all this.

As an endnote, I am still torn that some of the most vocal resistance
to the ADL’s program comes from a very HATEFUL group of Watertown
citizens who post on the blog Mass Resistance whose initial
opposition to No Place For Hate came from their own homophobia and
very intolerant, right-wing attitudes.

/adl-woes-in-watertown-lead-to-turkey-israel-drama /