ADL fires New England Director for acknowledging Armenian genocide

[wicket]

Unbelievable.

LINK

The national Anti-Defamation League fired its New England regional director yesterday, one day after he broke ranks with national ADL leadership and said the human rights organization should acknowledge the Armenian genocide that began in 1915.

The firing of Andrew H. Tarsy, who had served as regional director for about two years and as civil rights counsel for about five years before that, prompted an immediate backlash among prominent local Jewish leaders against the ADL's national leadership and its national director, Abraham H. Foxman.

"My reaction is that this was a vindictive, intolerant, and destructive act, ironically by an organization and leader whose mission -- fundamental mission -- is to promote tolerance," Newton businessman Steve Grossman, a former ADL regional board member, said yesterday.

"I predict that Foxman's actions will precipitate wholesale resignations from the regional board, a meaningful reduction in ADL's regional fund-raising, and will further exacerbate the ADL's relationship with the non-Jewish community coming out of this crisis around the Armenian genocide." Tarsy, 38, said he had been struggling with the national position for weeks and finally told Foxman in a phone conversation Thursday that he found the ADL's stance "morally indefensible."

-snip-

The letter, signed by Foxman and Glen S. Lewy, the ADL's national chairman, said "we have acknowledged the massacres of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire and called on Turkey to do more to confront its past and reconcile with Armenia. We will continue to press Turkey, publicly and privately . . ." But the letter also makes clear that the national ADL feels the safety of Israel, which considers Turkey a rare Muslim ally, is paramount.

[hlthe2b]

1. WOW...

Truth and Politics = Oil and Water, it seems...

[wicket]

4. Same as it ever was, unfortunately

:(

[shenmue]

2. Shame

:(

[TomClash]

3. What a surprise

"But the letter also makes clear that the national ADL feels the safety of Israel, which considers Turkey a rare Muslim ally, is paramount."

Honest Abe, I couldn't have said it better myself.

[pansypoo53219]

5. it wasn't

the only time the turks tried genocide. butt genocide has happened many times in history.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

6. *cough* Kurds *cough*

[Bjorn Against]

7. I don't trust the ADL, this is an example of why

It seems to me that Foxman is more concerned about promoting the interests of Israel than he is with stopping hate crimes. To ignore a genocide simply because the nation that committed that genocide is allied with a nation you support is indefensible. There are many other respectable organizations out there that are protecting people from hate crimes that we can support, the ADL is not one of them though. Until they get rid of Foxman and start worrying more about stopping anti-semitism than they do about propping up the Israeli government I can not support them.

[smirkymonkey]

8. So does this mean they are only concerned with genocide when

it perpetrated against Jews?

It seems to me that genocide against any population is a threat to us all.

[burythehatchet]

10. As you know, that was the only genocide ever.

[formercia]

9. If the Israeli government tried to get along with its neighbors

and began treating the Palestinians as equal human beings, this argument would be moot.

[Scurrilous]

11. Fire Foxman (July 9, 2007)

Denying the Armenian Genocide should be the last atrocity perpetrated by the ADL chief.

<snip>

"Abdullah Gul needed a favor. It was February 5 of this year, and the Turkish foreign minister was fighting a push in the U.S. House of Representatives to recognize the Turkish murder of over one million Armenians during World War I. In past years the House had placated Turkey by dropping similar resolutions. But now, with the American-Turkish alliance weakened by the Iraq war, the resolution had found renewed support. Gul summoned representatives from the Anti-Defamation League and several other Jewish-American organizations to his room at the Willard Hotel in Washington. There he asked them, in essence, to perpetuate Turkey’s denial of genocide.

Abraham Foxman’s ADL acquiesced, and in so doing, performed the pièce de résistance of Foxman’s highly effective, if unintentional, decades-long campaign to demoralize Jewish America and send young Jews scurrying for the communal exit doors. The ADL chief is a danger to the future of the community, and it is a scandal that he remains at the head of a major Jewish organization. Foxman must go. And the organization he has done so much to shape must either change or go with him.

Soon after the meeting with Gul, the ADL joined three other American Jewish organizations—the American Jewish Committee, B'nai Brith International, and the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs—to deliver to Congress a written plea from the Jews of Turkey that the U.S. not recognize the Armenian Genocide. Turkish Jews are more vulnerable now than at any time in recent history as they struggle to reassert their place in a society polarized by the competing visions of Turkey’s Islamists and secular nationalists, so it is hardly surprising that they would parrot their government’s denialist claims. By dutifully passing their letter to Congress, the Jewish American groups cynically exploited a small, frightened Jewish minority.

Worse was to come. “I don't think congressional action will help reconcile the issue. The resolution takes a position; it comes to a judgment,” said Foxman in a statement issued to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The Turks and Armenians need to revisit their past. The Jewish community shouldn't be the arbiter of that history, nor should the U.S. Congress." Foxman‘s statement is in every way that matters equivalent to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s claim that he takes no position on the historicity of the Jewish Holocaust, but only hopes to see the matter resolved by dispassionate study. Throughout the Congressional saga surrounding the resolutions, virtually no one other than Turkish lobbyists had explained their opposition by challenging the nearly undisputed consensus among historians that a genocide did indeed take place.

It is a scandal of unprecedented proportion when one of the most prominent figures in our community, a man who claims to speak on our behalf, publicly challenges the historicity of another community’s genocide. Foxman’s ADL no longer represents the interests of the Jewish community. In fact, it seems the only interests it represents are its own."

http://www.jewcy.com/feature/2007-07-09/fire_foxman

[wicket]

12. Thanks for the link

n/t

[Selatius]

13. What is the life of one Armenian in front of Ottoman firing squads vs. one Jewish life in a camp?

The moral hypocrisy of Foxman is showing. The tragedy is that anybody died, and to speak out for the death of one but not the other is an insult against all who died in genocide.

[wicket]

14. kick

:kick:

[mmonk]

15. Are they trying to outdo the ATC?

I still don't know why it's that sensitive of an issue. The average American could care less about such things. I guess it still stirs things up in Turkey.

[wicket]

16. Update: 2 members of regional ADL board quit

Firing of local director brings protest, debate

At least two prominent board members of the regional Anti-Defamation League have resigned in protest over the national ADL's decision to fire the regional director for acknowledging the slaughter of Armenians during World War I as genocide.

Former chairman of the Polaroid Corp., Stewart L. Cohen, and City Council member Mike Ross told the Globe yesterday they could no longer be part of an organization with national leaders who refused to acknowledge the Armenian genocide and fired regional director, Andrew H. Tarsy, on Friday for taking a position in support of Armenian-Americans.

"I'm devastated by that and it's not something I can support," said Ross, whose father is a Holocaust survivor. "So I have to take this step. I can only hope that it helps to send a message and that the very good people of the Anti-Defamation League can reconsider their position."

Cohen, who resigned in frustration hours after Tarsy was fired, said the entire affair has been a blow to the ADL membership. "Everyone is incredibly sad," he said. "Some I would describe as heartbroken."

The resignations -- which may be the first of others to come -- were announced as members of the local Jewish and Armenian-American communities praised Tarsy and the regional board for taking stands recognizing the Armenian genocide and criticized the ADL's national director, Abraham H. Foxman, for taking a position out of step not just locally, but perhaps nationally.