A GOOD PLACE FOR BLUE CROSS

Boston Globe
September 22, 2008
United States

BLUE CROSS Blue Shield of Massachusetts is being challenged by some
local Armenian-Americans and their supporters to defend its sponsorship
of antibias programs run by the New England Anti-Defamation League. On
balance, continued corporate partnership with the ADL is not only a
defensible position, but the right one.

Abraham Foxman, the head of the national ADL office, blundered badly
last year when he failed to acknowledge unambiguously that Ottoman
Turks committed genocide against Armenians during and after World War
I. It was an especially egregious lapse for a Jewish organization
well-schooled in the lessons of the Holocaust. A dozen cities and
towns in Massachusetts subsequently jettisoned the ADL’s No Place
for Hate program, which trains local leaders to counter hate crimes
and intolerance in their communities.

Tomorrow, a Blue Cross official is scheduled to address the Watertown
town council, which is asking the state’s largest healthcare insurance
company to sever its relationship with the ADL.

Blue Cross provided funding for No Place for Hate from 2001-2006, and
currently provides in-kind services, including meeting space for the
program. It can point to a statement last month by the ADL national
office that terms the massacres of Armenians by its rightful name –
genocide – as well as the 2008 ADL calendar that memorializes the
"genocide of approximately 1.5 million Armenians" from 1915-1923.

It can point with pride to a June intervention in Marshfield, where
the New England ADL mobilized an effective community response to an
alleged racial assault of a black man. And the local ADL chapter
deserves special recognition for forcing the national office to
clarify its policy on the Armenian genocide.

Shari Melkonian, chairwoman of the Armenian National Committee of
Eastern Massachusetts, says that ADL is still avoiding a "full and
public acknowledgement" of the genocide. Some of the ADL’s public
statements condemning the genocide could be clearer. But much of this
debate has become bogged down in ADL support for Israel, which counts
Turkey among its few friends in the Islamic world, and reluctance in
Congress to pass a resolution condemning the Armenian genocide.

Local officials shouldn’t be dragged into this morass. They need
to stay focused on ways to address and prevent local hate crimes,
including vandalism of houses of worship and harassment of ethnic
and religious minorities in schools. Such goals are well-served by
the ADL’s No Place for Hate program.

Recent attempts by some ADL detractors to unseat the program in
Marshfield suggest an unhealthy obsession. Blue Cross, which promotes
the well-being of communities, should maintain its healthy support
for No Place for Hate.