PARSING GENOCIDE
Worcester Telegram
Aug 22 2007
MA
New England ADL got it right on Armenian slaughter
Andrew H. Tarsy, director of the New England chapter of the
Anti-Defamation League, should not have been fired for urging the
national ADL organization to acknowledge the Armenian "genocide." By
any sensible definition, the systematic slaughter between 1915 and
1923 of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks
qualifies for that horrific designation.
We can understand why the national ADL strives to preserve the
Holocaust as a uniquely appalling event. In its scope and in the
systematic manner in which the Nazis carried out the mass killings,
it indeed may be unique.
Sadly, however, other campaigns of systematic mass murder, before
and after the Holocaust, also warrant the designation of "genocide"
– including the campaign targeting Armenians, the "ethnic cleansing"
of Muslims in Bosnia and the ongoing displacement and slaughter of
non-Arab Sudanese in Darfur, among other such atrocities.
That such events have occurred throughout history does not diminish
their horror, nor the painful realization that such brutality against
fellow human beings has continued into the 21st century. Recognizing
genocides for what they are, wherever they may occur, is a first
necessary step toward bringing them to an end.