AGENCY CUTS TIES WITH ADL PROGRAM
By Keith O’Brien
Boston Globe
April 9 2008
MA
The Massachusetts Municipal Association severed ties yesterday with
the Anti-Defamation League’s embattled No Place For Hate program,
reigniting a debate that had gone quiet recently over the ADL’s
position on the World War I-era Armenian genocide.
In a unanimous vote, the board of directors at the MMA, a nonprofit
advocacy group for Massachusetts cities and towns, expressed "strong
disapproval" in the ADL for failing to unequivocally acknowledge the
Armenian genocide at a national meeting last November, according
to a statement released yesterday. "Unequivocal recognition," the
MMA’s board of directors said, "is both a matter of basic justice to
its victims as well as essential to the efforts to prevent future
genocides." And without it, officials said, they could no longer
sponsor the ADL’s antibigotry program.
"We think this is an issue on which there can be no equivocation,"
said Jonathan Hecht, a Watertown town councilor and member of the
MMA’s board of directors. "My personal view," he said, "is that
No Place For Hate is not credible as long as the ADL is unable to
unequivocally recognize the genocide."
At least 12 Massachusetts communities have pulled out of the program
since last summer, beginning with Watertown, when it became known
that the ADL did not support legislation in Washington officially
recognizing the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of Ottoman
Turks between 1915-1918 as genocide. As towns began to sever ties, and
even the ADL’s regional leaders called for unequivocal recognition,
the national ADL issued a carefully worded statement calling the
deaths of Armenians at the hands of Turks "tantamount to genocide."
But critics quickly called for a stronger, clearer statement. And
when it did not come, local Armenian-Americans began lobbying other
communities, as well as the MMA, to stop participating in No Place
For Hate.
The MMA’s decision to do so yesterday will send a "clear message"
to communities that still welcome the program, said Sharistan
Melkonian, chairwoman of the Armenian National Committee of Eastern
Massachusetts. And the regional ADL conceded in a statement yesterday
that the vote was a disappointment. But Robert Trestan, the ADL’s
civil rights counsel for the Northeast, did not believe the vote
would lead to still more communities pulling out of the program.
"I think that towns that have stuck with the program have realized
that the ADL has a tremendous amount to offer them," Trestan said.
"We’re in towns all over the state, and that’s what we want to continue
to do."