Boston Globe, MA
Aug 24 2008

Building bridges

By Yvonne Abraham
Globe Columnist / August 24, 2008

The Anti-Defamation League could use somebody like Lenny Zakim about now.

The late, legendary activist made the ADL’s New England office into a
civil-rights powerhouse. In his 20 years there, Zakim, who died in
1999, pioneered Jewish-Catholic and Jewish-black alliances, bringing
his immense powers of persuasion to fight gender and race
discrimination battles, too.

But the past year has gutted Zakim’s ADL. The organization has been
needlessly mired in a controversy with the Armenian community over the
unwillingness of the national ADL to characterize as genocide the
Ottoman Turkish massacre of as many as 1.5 million Armenians from 1915
to 1923.

Armenian activists persuaded Watertown to pull out of the ADL’s No
Place for Hate Program, arguing that the organization was refusing to
call the massacres genocide because of Israel’s desire to maintain
good relations with Turkey. Twelve other Massachusetts cities and
towns have also abandoned the hate-crime prevention program.

The controversy has alienated not just Armenians, but also members of
the Jewish community who once saw the regional ADL as a beacon.

"There are many of us who are not only reluctant but unwilling to
include them in our efforts any more," says Rabbi Howard Jaffe of
Temple Isaiah in Lexington.

A few days ago, the ADL named a new regional director, Derrek
Shulman. In addition to fractured relations with local communities,
Shulman will inherit the rift between the local chapter and the ADL’s
national chief, Abe Foxman.

Last year, Foxman fired regional director Andrew Tarsy for insisting
that the national ADL acknowledge that the massacres constituted
genocide.

Foxman, under immense pressure, issued a statement last August calling
the "consequences of" the massacres "tantamount to genocide" and
reinstated Tarsy.

It was a cynical half-measure, carefully worded to leave open the key
possibility that Ottoman Turks did not intend to wipe out the
Armenians. His mealy-mouthed concession didn’t even come close to
satisfying his critics, particularly because the national ADL has also
lobbied against a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian
genocide.

Tarsy resigned after it became clear the national chief was unwilling
to go further.

Many in the community are rightly incensed at what they see as the
hypocrisy of a Jewish organization failing to recognize genocide for
political reasons.

"By taking a morally bankrupt position, they have rendered the voice
of the ADL hollow," says Jaffe, the rabbi from Lexington.

Understandably, Shulman won’t comment on this till he starts his new
job in October. But in the interim, the standoff has gotten more
complicated.

On Friday, a statement by Foxman appeared on the regional ADL’s
website saying the ADL is being "demonized" even though "we have
referred to those massacres and atrocities as genocide." Perhaps
Foxman thinks no one will recall how he hedged the "acknowledgement"
he finally coughed up last year?

But Armenian activists haven’t let up. They are trying to convince
Mashpee to follow other cities and towns out of the No Place for Hate
program. And they’re urging Blue Cross-Blue Shield, which supports the
program, to pull its funding.

They reacted to Foxman’s latest statement with caution yesterday.

"We first want to see how this is going to manifest itself before we
embrace this," said Anthony Barsamian, public affairs chairman for the
Armenian Assembly of America, a Washington advocacy group.

Zakim, so good at building bridges that they named one for him, was
known not just for saying what was right, but for backing up his words
with action.

If Shulman is going to honor that legacy, he’s going to have to move
Foxman beyond a statement buried on a website. He has his work cut out
for him.

08/08/24/building_bridges/