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The Wisconsin Jewish ChronicleWednesday=2C October 8=2C 2008

Article wrong about ADL’s Armenian genocide ‘reversal’

As a member of the `ragtag group of activists in Boston’ mentioned in
the JTA article `In 5768, establishment faced new upstarts’ in the
Sept. 26 Chronicle, I must object to the writer’s statement that the
Anti-Defamation League `reversed its refusal to recognize the Armenian
genocide.’

In fact, the ADL worded its August 2007 release in such a way as to
actually contravene the international legal definition of genocide.

The phrasing circumvents the `intent’ required by the 1948 United
Nations Genocide Convention by suggesting that Armenians died simply
as a `consequence’ of World War I conditions and not from a planned
program of extermination – which just happens to be Turkey’s position.

The Massachusetts Municipal Association and 12 of the 13 Massachusetts
communities that dissociated from the ADL’s No Place for Hate program
did so after the ADL’s statement, judging it unacceptable.

The ADL has been playing a double game, issuing a disingenuous
statement while simultaneously advancing the Turkish government’s
agenda by opposing a Congressional resolution formally affirming the
Armenian genocide.

Moreover, ADL leaders have repeatedly endorsed Turkey’s call for a
historical commission to investigate the Armenian genocide, much like
Ahmadinejad’s 2006 conference that purported to examine the Holocaust.

This denying tactic has been condemned by the International
Association of Genocide Scholars, as well as groups like the Southern
Poverty Law Center.