07/26 WatertownTab:DiMascio: ‘No Place for Counterfeit Tolerance’
WATERTOWN, MA -
In the light of recent revelations, it has become abundantly clear that Watertown would be better off were it not ensnared in the “No Place to Hate” quagmire.
The current controversy has done nothing but (ironically) cause division; threaten, if not encroach upon, free speech; and in general become a distracting nuisance. In short, it is exactly the kind of phony feel-good twaddle that our municipal government has no business getting involved in.
But alas, the die has been cast. We find ourselves in bed with Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti Defamation League and Armenian genocide denier extraordinaire.
Despite this sad truth, TAB editor Chris Helms advises us not to “throw out the baby with the bath water” (Editorial, July 20, “Keep ‘No Place for Hate.’”) He adds: “when our friends disappoint us, the solution isn’t to stop being friends.”
Wow! I’m completely awestruck by my editor’s Solomonic wisdom. Why, his argument is truly a Socratic wonder! Rivaled only by the “alternative logic” recently articulated by our Council president!
First of all, ya just gotta wonder: Has Chris Helms listened to a few too many Grateful Dead records? He sure seems to be singing their “psychedelic hit:” “A Friend of the Devil is a Friend of Mine.”
Secondly, any “friend” who denies the Armenian genocide is no “friend” of Watertown and should be no “friend” of yours, Mr. Helms! You might ask yourself if overindulgence in mainstream media Kool Aid has induced this biased absolution.
Watertown has no choice but to extricate itself from “No Place to Hate.” How can Watertown — of all places — remain associated with a genocide denier, no matter how remote the connection?
The ADL’s collaboration in Turkey’s genocide denial is not simply a matter of hypocrisy by the national organization. Local “No Place to Hate” committees (ADL ancillaries) stand equally in contempt because they have not withdrawn their affiliation and or demanded Foxman’s dismissal.
Foxman’s actions are a vile repudiation of the very principles the ADL claims to advocate. They damage the ADL’s credibility, stripping it of any moral authority. More importantly, “No Place to Hate” now appears to be nothing more than counterfeit tolerance based on selective indignation.
Local sponsors claim they are not participants in the ADL’s genocide denial. OK, fair enough. Why didn’t they immediately inform us? Instead, they allowed the Council to reaffirm “No Place to Hate” unaware of Foxman’s treachery! If they didn’t know beforehand, will they now publicly condemn Foxman? Demand his immediate termination? Sever any and all ties with the ADL until he’s removed and repudiated?
As for Watertown, our continued participation (in “No Place to Hate”) would amount to nothing less than a tacit approval of the Armenian genocide and its subsequent denial.
Our town has always been a welcoming community. Just look at the diversity that occurred here naturally. We didn’t need ADL social engineers or a federal mandate. And we don’t need a silly sign stating the obvious or programs sponsored by organizations that have dubious agendas!
If we insist on affirming what is already clearly evident, why not craft our own proclamation of fraternal love? We can design our own silly sign, with our own catchy slogan. Heck, we all know “Kumbaya.” We can certainly sing it without the discordant virtuoso Abraham Foxman, leading his phony feel-good orchestra.
Why should we continue to associate with an organization that, by duplicitous leadership, denies the Armenian genocide?
Not only should Watertown withdraw from the program, we should take a page from the activist handbook. Why not urge other communities to boycott the “No Place to Hate” until the ADL removes Foxman? By doing so, we could help restore the ADL’s integrity and truly be able to say that Watertown condemns hatred in all its forms.
Watertown’s residents did not ask to be ensnared in this quagmire. We, rather I might say, the Town Council was hoodwinked. That’s what happens when the council gets embroiled with inane gestures that have little if anything to do with municipal governance.
This controversy should serve as a lesson. Watertown’s municipal government exists to govern the town. The council should limit its activity to pressing matters such as the budget, the town’s infrastructure, and future development. It has limited time and resources, and can ill afford to waste them on feel-good proclamations, social engineering, idiotic signs and politically correct pandering.
Unfortunately, having fallen into a trap, the council has every moral obligation to act forthwith to rectify the situation. The citizens of Watertown should give them no rest until they do!
We owe no less to the multitude of Armenians that fled persecution to legally settle in Watertown. We owe no less to ourselves as a loving and welcoming community.
John DiMascio of Copeland Street may be reached at irevbacon@worldnet.att.net.
[Editor’s note: Andrew H. Tarsy, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the ADL does not deny the Armenian Genocide. In a letter to the editor, he writes: “Neither ADL nor our national director, Abraham H. Foxman, has lobbied against the legislation. Rather, when asked by media, we expressed an opinion that the issue was one to be resolved between the two countries — Armenia and Turkey.”]
In the light of recent revelations, it has become abundantly clear that Watertown would be better off were it not ensnared in the “No Place to Hate” quagmire.
The current controversy has done nothing but (ironically) cause division; threaten, if not encroach upon, free speech; and in general become a distracting nuisance. In short, it is exactly the kind of phony feel-good twaddle that our municipal government has no business getting involved in.
But alas, the die has been cast. We find ourselves in bed with Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti Defamation League and Armenian genocide denier extraordinaire.
Despite this sad truth, TAB editor Chris Helms advises us not to “throw out the baby with the bath water” (Editorial, July 20, “Keep ‘No Place for Hate.’”) He adds: “when our friends disappoint us, the solution isn’t to stop being friends.”
Wow! I’m completely awestruck by my editor’s Solomonic wisdom. Why, his argument is truly a Socratic wonder! Rivaled only by the “alternative logic” recently articulated by our Council president!
First of all, ya just gotta wonder: Has Chris Helms listened to a few too many Grateful Dead records? He sure seems to be singing their “psychedelic hit:” “A Friend of the Devil is a Friend of Mine.”
Secondly, any “friend” who denies the Armenian genocide is no “friend” of Watertown and should be no “friend” of yours, Mr. Helms! You might ask yourself if overindulgence in mainstream media Kool Aid has induced this biased absolution.
Watertown has no choice but to extricate itself from “No Place to Hate.” How can Watertown — of all places — remain associated with a genocide denier, no matter how remote the connection?
The ADL’s collaboration in Turkey’s genocide denial is not simply a matter of hypocrisy by the national organization. Local “No Place to Hate” committees (ADL ancillaries) stand equally in contempt because they have not withdrawn their affiliation and or demanded Foxman’s dismissal.
Foxman’s actions are a vile repudiation of the very principles the ADL claims to advocate. They damage the ADL’s credibility, stripping it of any moral authority. More importantly, “No Place to Hate” now appears to be nothing more than counterfeit tolerance based on selective indignation.
Local sponsors claim they are not participants in the ADL’s genocide denial. OK, fair enough. Why didn’t they immediately inform us? Instead, they allowed the Council to reaffirm “No Place to Hate” unaware of Foxman’s treachery! If they didn’t know beforehand, will they now publicly condemn Foxman? Demand his immediate termination? Sever any and all ties with the ADL until he’s removed and repudiated?
As for Watertown, our continued participation (in “No Place to Hate”) would amount to nothing less than a tacit approval of the Armenian genocide and its subsequent denial.
Our town has always been a welcoming community. Just look at the diversity that occurred here naturally. We didn’t need ADL social engineers or a federal mandate. And we don’t need a silly sign stating the obvious or programs sponsored by organizations that have dubious agendas!
If we insist on affirming what is already clearly evident, why not craft our own proclamation of fraternal love? We can design our own silly sign, with our own catchy slogan. Heck, we all know “Kumbaya.” We can certainly sing it without the discordant virtuoso Abraham Foxman, leading his phony feel-good orchestra.
Why should we continue to associate with an organization that, by duplicitous leadership, denies the Armenian genocide?
Not only should Watertown withdraw from the program, we should take a page from the activist handbook. Why not urge other communities to boycott the “No Place to Hate” until the ADL removes Foxman? By doing so, we could help restore the ADL’s integrity and truly be able to say that Watertown condemns hatred in all its forms.
Watertown’s residents did not ask to be ensnared in this quagmire. We, rather I might say, the Town Council was hoodwinked. That’s what happens when the council gets embroiled with inane gestures that have little if anything to do with municipal governance.
This controversy should serve as a lesson. Watertown’s municipal government exists to govern the town. The council should limit its activity to pressing matters such as the budget, the town’s infrastructure, and future development. It has limited time and resources, and can ill afford to waste them on feel-good proclamations, social engineering, idiotic signs and politically correct pandering.
Unfortunately, having fallen into a trap, the council has every moral obligation to act forthwith to rectify the situation. The citizens of Watertown should give them no rest until they do!
We owe no less to the multitude of Armenians that fled persecution to legally settle in Watertown. We owe no less to ourselves as a loving and welcoming community.
John DiMascio of Copeland Street may be reached at irevbacon@worldnet.att.net.
[Editor’s note: Andrew H. Tarsy, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the ADL does not deny the Armenian Genocide. In a letter to the editor, he writes: “Neither ADL nor our national director, Abraham H. Foxman, has lobbied against the legislation. Rather, when asked by media, we expressed an opinion that the issue was one to be resolved between the two countries — Armenia and Turkey.”]
07/23: The New Republic: K Street Cashes In On The 1915 Armenian Genocide
by Michael Crowley
Final Resolution
As a rising St. Louis politician in the mid-1970s, Richard Gephardt was among a dynamic group of aldermen dubbed "The Young Turks." So perhaps it's not surprising that, 30 years later, the former Democratic minority leader of the House of Representatives has aged into an Old Turk. This spring, Gephardt has been busy promoting his new favorite cause--not universal health care or Iraq, but the Republic of Turkey, which now pays his lobbying firm, DLA Piper, $100,000 per month for his services. Thus far, Gephardt's achievements have included arranging high-level meetings for Turkish dignitaries, among them one between members of the Turkish parliament and House Democratic leaders James Clayburn and Rahm Emanuel; helping Turkey's U.S. ambassador win an audience with a skeptical Nancy Pelosi; and, finally, circulating a slim paperback volume, titled "An Appeal to Reason," that denies the existence of the Armenian genocide of 1915.
Few people would place the Armenian genocide on their top ten--or even top 1,000--list of the day's pressing issues. In fact, many Americans would likely be at a loss to explain who or what the Armenians are, much less what happened to them 90 years ago. Not so in Washington. For the past several years, U.S. representatives, lobbyists, and foreign emissaries have been locked in a vicious struggle over a resolution in Congress that would officially deem as genocide the massacre of up to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish government has fought this effort with the zeal of Ataturk--enlisting a multimillion-dollar brigade of former congressmen and slick flacks, as well as a coterie of American Jews surprisingly willing to downplay talk of genocide. But the Armenian-American community has impressive political clout--enough that a majority of House members have now co-sponsored the resolution. And that means a ferocious final showdown is looming, one so charged that this arcane historical dispute could even interfere with the war in Iraq.
Even more striking than the historic Turkish-Armenian hatred festering in the halls of Congress, however, is the way Washington's political elites are cashing in on it. Take Gephardt. While the Turks and Armenians have a long historical memory, Gephardt has an exceedingly short one. A few years ago, he was a working-class populist who cast himself as a tribune of the underdog--including the Armenians. Back in 1998, Gephardt attended a memorial event hosted by the Armenian National Committee of America at which, according to a spokeswoman for the group, "he spoke about the importance of recognizing the genocide." Two years later, Gephardt was one of three House Democrats who co-signed a letter to then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert urging Hastert to schedule an immediate vote on a genocide resolution. "We implore you," the letter read, arguing that Armenian-Americans "have waited long enough for Congress to recognize the horrible genocide." Today, few people are doing more than Gephardt to ensure that the genocide bill goes nowhere.
It's one thing to flip-flop on, say, tax cuts or asbestos reform.
But, when it comes to genocide, you would hope for high principle to carry the day. In Washington, however, the Armenian genocide industry is in full bloom. And Dick Gephardt's shilling isn't even the half of it.
Representative Adam Schiff may be the first person elected to Congress through the politics of the Armenian genocide. Back in 2000, Schiff was a California state senator challenging Republican incumbent Jim Rogan. The Burbank-area district is home to 75,000 Armenian-Americans, or about 10 percent of the population, many of them desperate to see Washington brand the Turks as genocide artists.
In September of that year, Hastert paid a campaign visit to the district and delighted Armenians by vowing to call a vote on a genocide resolution (which Rogan had co-sponsored). It's possible Hastert was stirred by questions of historical guilt. But, as one GOP campaign official admitted, the vote would also happen to offer Rogan "a very tangible debating point" against Schiff.
Mass murder may be strange fodder for a debating point. But in America's tight-knit Armenian community, it can seem that people want to debate little else. Most Armenian-Americans are descended from survivors of the slaughter and grew up listening to stories about how the Turks, suspecting the Orthodox Christian Armenians of collaborating with their fellow Orthodox Christian Russians during World War I, led their grandparents on death marches, massacred entire villages, and, in one signature tactic, nailed horseshoes to their victims' feet. (The "horseshoe master of Bashkale," the Ottoman provincial governor Jevdet Bey was called.) Turkey's refusal to acknowledge the guilt of their Ottoman forbears infuriates Armenians, leaving them feeling cheated of the sacred status awarded to Jewish Holocaust survivors.
It wasn't until the mid-1970s that the Armenian community, which today numbers up to 1.4 million, grew active enough to press its case in Washington. At first, few people here took them seriously. After a fruitless House debate about the genocide in 1985, for instance, one Republican scoffed at "the most mischief-making piece of legislation in all my experience in Congress." But the cause gained traction in the 1990s, thanks largely to then-Senate Republican leader Bob Dole, who never forgot the Armenian doctor who treated him after he was severely wounded in World War II.
With Rogan's seat on the line in 2000, a first-ever vote on a genocide resolution seemed a sure thing--that is, until the Turkish government mobilized its lobbying team, led by former Republican House Speaker Bob Livingston, its $700,000 man in the field. In a state of affairs one furious Republican described to Roll Call as "ridiculous," Livingston found himself battling a measure meant to protect the very House majority he had briefly presided over just two years earlier. A Turkish threat to cancel military contracts, including a $4.5 billion helicopter deal with a Fort Worth-based company, ensured the opposition of powerful Texas Republicans like Tom DeLay. Hastert was cornered. But he found cover in Bill Clinton, who warned that Turkey might shut down its American-run Incirlik air base, from which the United States patrolled the no-fly zone over northern Iraq. Citing Clinton's objections, Hastert pulled the bill.
Rogan tried to accuse Clinton of playing politics, and someone sent out a last-minute mailer featuring Schiff next to a Turkish flag. But it wasn't enough, and Schiff beat Rogan by nine percentage points.
The episode--by showcasing crass partisan politics, expensive access-peddling, sleazy political attacks, corporate lucre, and the specter of geostrategic calamity--opened a new era in Armenian genocide politics. "That was sort of the first introduction to how aggressive the Turks are," says one former Republican congressman.
For the next six years, Turkish lobbying mostly kept the Armenian genocide resolution off the Washington agenda. Then came a calamity for the Turks: the 2006 midterm elections. Suddenly, Democrats, who had always been more supportive than Republicans of the Armenian cause, were in power. Even worse, California Democrats with Armenian-American constituencies ascended to senior leadership positions. Among them was the new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, with thousands of Armenian-Americans in her Bay Area district, has spoken passionately on the subject. "This Armenian genocide is a challenge to the conscience of our country and the conscience of the world. We will not rest until we have recognition of it," she declared in 2001. Likewise, one of Pelosi's closest confidantes, California Democrat Anna Eshoo, is the granddaughter of an Armenian who resents the notion that her grandma's memories of genocide amount to "a fairy tale." And even Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, not previously known for his interest in Transcaucasian affairs, paid a recent visit to the Armenian capital of Yerevan and toured a national genocide memorial, where he declared that "[t]he facts are that a genocide occurred."
It's little wonder, then, that proponents of the genocide resolution like Adam Schiff have never been so optimistic. "This is the best opportunity we've had for a decade," the tanned and mild-mannered Harvard Law graduate told me in his Capitol Hill office recently.
Which is also why, warns Schiff, "we're seeing the strongest pushback from the Turkish lobby that I've ever seen."
A few weeks ago, I called the Turkish Embassy to request an interview. A couple of days later, I heard back--not from the embassy, but from an American p.r. consultant employed by the Turks.
He suggested we meet the next day at a Starbucks. I found him in a corner behind a glowing white iBook. He had long slicked-back hair, a, seersucker suit, and a blinking Bluetooth earpiece, and looked ready for a power lunch with the sharky agent Ari Gold from "Entourage." He informed me our conversation would be off the record, before launching his well-honed argument against the genocide resolution.
My Starbucks contact wasn't the only Turkish emissary who prefers to operate in the shadows. Another D.C.-based operative, who spoke to me from a hotel room in Ankara, where he was chaperoning a very prominent Democrat, also insisted that the substance of our conversation be off the record. He asked that I not even reveal his identity. "I don't have a dog in this hunt," he insisted, despite his place on the Turkish payroll. "My only hunt is for truth."
The truth, as the Turks see it, is simple: There was no genocide. The Armenian death toll is exaggerated, and most died from exposure or rogue marauders during mass relocations. (One Turkish activist even cheerily assured me that, after the relocations, "everyone was invited back.") The Turks say that the G-word implies an intent that can't be proved. This stance is more than just a matter of fierce national pride. The Turks are terrified at the prospect of huge financial and territorial reparations for the Armenians.("Cash," drools one Armenian nationalist blogger, "lots of cash.")
So, instead of doling out lots of cash to the Armenians, Turkey showers Washington with political operators more than happy to argue their case--for the right price. Few niches of Washington lobbying are as lucrative as the foreign racket, which explains why more than 1,800 lobbyists are currently registered to represent more than 660 overseas clients. Thus the Turks have found no shortage of willing pitchmen. Turkey currently maintains expensive contracts with at least four different Washington lobbying and p.r. firms. The result is that unsuspecting congressmen and staffers frequently find themselves badgered by well-heeled Turkish emissaries. Not long ago, one lobbyist invited a senior congressional aide to dinner at his suburban mansion. When he arrived, the aide was surprised to find himself surrounded by Turks keenly interested in his views on the genocide bill. (This time, the hard sell backfired; the staffer indignantly retorted that he believed a genocide had taken place, causing the lobbyist's face to go "ashen.")
The Turks insist that they need these expensive fixers and aggressive tactics to counter America's relentless Armenian grassroots lobby. In addition to Gephardt (who did not respond to a request for comment), Turkey contracts the services of David Mercer, a connected Democratic fund-raiser and protege of the late Democratic Party chairman Ron Brown. The Turks also pay $50,000 monthly to the Glover Park Group, a powerhouse Democratic firm stocked with connected former Clinton White House aides Joe Lockhart and Joel Johnson, for p.r. services.
That work included advice on shaping an April full-page New York Times advertisement, which called for a new historical commission (which the Armenians call a sham) and urged Washington to "support efforts to examine history, not legislate it."
But the kingpin of Turkish advocacy is Bob Livingston, whose lobbying firm, the Livingston Group, has hauled in roughly $13 million in Turkish lucre since 2000. Livingston, best remembered for his comically brief stint as House Speaker-elect at the height of the Clinton impeachment debacle (before he tearfully admitted his own extramarital affair and resigned from Congress in disgrace), has lobbied on a range of issues dear to Turkey's heart. But it's his tireless fight against the genocide resolution that makes him a hero in Ankara. Back in 2000, Livingston's team personally contacted 141 different members of Congress in the five-week run-up to the aborted vote. And on October 19, the day the vote was canceled, Livingston met personally with Hastert to ensure its demise. Mission accomplished.
Likewise, when Adam Schiff tried to pass a symbolic House amendment related to the genocide in 2004, Livingston's firm again sprang into action. As detailed in a recent Public Citizen study of foreign-agent public lobbying records, the firm immediately barraged GOP leaders like DeLay and Hastert with e-mails and faxes. Its team also badgered everyone from top House aides to officials at the National Security Council, the State Department, the Pentagon, and Vice President Dick Cheney's office. Livingston's office even called the House parliamentarian, apparently hoping to throw a procedural wrench into Schiff's gears. Against this onslaught, Schiff's puny amendment didn't stand a chance. For its work in 2004, Turkey paid the Livingston Group $1.8 million.
But, while Bob Livingston may be the winner of the Turkish lobbying lottery, the prize for biggest hypocrite is still up for grabs. Dick Gephardt isn't the only lobbyist who has flip-flopped on the genocide (though he gets points for having his firm distribute "An Appeal to Reason," the genocide-denying pamphlet that offers a strangely postmodern assessment of the imprecise nature of history--a convenient stance if your forbears committed mass murder--including a quotation attributed to philosopher Karl Popper, contending that "our knowledge is always incomplete"). There's also former Democratic representative Steve Solarz of New York. Solarz was one of the first backers of a genocide resolution way back in 1975. By 2000, he was working with Livingston to defeat it, raking in $400,000 for his efforts.
It's not just the lobbyists whose stance on the genocide seems suspiciously malleable, however. Seven House members who have co-sponsored the resolution this year have already changed their positions. One is Louisiana Republican Bobby Jindal, who on January 31 added his name to the co-sponsor list--but then withdrew his support the same day. Lobbying records show that, also on January 31, Livingston called Jindal and spoke to him about the resolution.
(Jindal's office didn't respond to requests for comment.) Others have seemingly positioned themselves less on the basis of historical or moral considerations than on good old pork politics. Gunay Evinch, a representative of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, recalls how one House resolution supporter privately explained his position: "I don't believe it was technically genocide," the congressman said. "But I need highway funds."
Earning a special commendation for dubious behavior is Washington's Jewish-American lobby. In one of this tale's strangest twists, the Turks have convinced prominent Jewish groups, not typically indifferent to charges of genocide, to mute their opinions. In February, Turkey's foreign minister convened a meeting at a Washington hotel with more than a dozen leaders of major Jewish groups. Most prominent groups now take no official position on the resolution, including B'nai B'rith, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (aipac), and the American Jewish Committee. The issue "belongs to historians and not a resolution in Congress," explains Anti-Defamation League director Abe Foxman, who outright opposes the resolution. "It will resolve nothing." But it's also clear that Turkey's status as Israel's lone Muslim ally counts for a lot, too. "I think a lot of Israelis agree," Foxman told me. (One person involved in the fight offers a more cynical explanation: "Jewish groups don't want to give up their ownership of the term 'genocide.'")
The Turks have also conspicuously hired some lobbyists with strong Jewish ties. Their payroll includes a Washington firm called Southfive Strategies, which bills itself as "a Washington D.C.
consulting boutique with access to the White House, congressional leadership, and influential media organizations." Southfive is run by Jason Epstein, a former Capitol Hill lobbyist for B'nai B'rith, and Lenny Ben-David, an Israeli-born former deputy chief of mission at Israel's Washington embassy and a longtime aipac staffer whose previous firm, IsraelConsult, also worked for Turkey.
Some Jewish leaders, to be sure, find such realpolitik less than tasteful. "It is obscene for us, of all people, to quibble about definitions," one prominent California rabbi recently told the Jewish Journal. But, when I asked one Jewish-American aligned with the Turks whether he truly believes that genocide didn't take place, he stammered that "the verdict" is not in, before adding, "If you're asking do I sleep at night, I do."
Strange as it may be to find a World War I massacre on the 2007 Washington agenda, even more bizarre is the possibility that it may precipitate an international crisis. At one March House subcommittee hearing, Adam Schiff got a rare opportunity to grill Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Angry over the Bush administration's opposition to the Armenian genocide resolution, Schiff pressed Rice: "Is there any doubt in your mind that the murder of a million and a half Armenians between 1915 and 1923 constituted genocide?" Schiff even pointedly appealed to Rice's background in "academia." But the ever-disciplined Rice wouldn't bite. "Congressman, I come out of academia. But I'm secretary of state now. And I think that the best way to have this proceed is for ... the Turks and the Armenians to come to their own terms about this."
What Rice didn't say is that the Turks, should their lobbying firepower fail to stop the genocide bill from moving forward, have an even mightier weapon to brandish: the war in Iraq. As they did in 2000, the Turks are hinting they will shut down Incirlik, a far more dire threat now that Incirlik supplies U.S. forces occupying Iraq.
Administration officials also fear Turkey might close the Habur Gate, a border point through which U.S. supplies flow into northern Iraq.
In an April letter to congressional leaders, Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates bluntly warned that a House resolution "could harm American troops in the field [and] constrain our ability to supply our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan."
That prospect may even be dragging U.S. troops themselves into the Turkish counteroffensive. Or so says Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat and lead co-sponsor of the genocide resolution. "[The Turks] have had American soldiers call members of Congress and say, 'Don't vote for this, because I am going to be threatened in Iraq,'" Pallone says. (A Turkish embassy spokesman denied knowledge of this.)
The Turks also warn that branding them as Hitleresque is sure to enrage Turkish nationalists and heighten tensions on the closed Turkish-Armenian border. If the resolution is passed, "it's going to be a heavy, heavy blow," says Murat Lutem, a Turkish embassy official. "The upheaval will be so significant that the government won't be able to say, 'Let it be.'" That's one reason some Turkish newspapers, with their sudden interest in Capitol Hill politics, have recently read like Ottoman versions of Roll Call. The Turks are especially fixated on the Armenian ally Nancy Pelosi, whom one Turkish columnist disdained as "an uncompromising iron lady."
Faced with such intense Turkish opposition, however, Pelosi may prove less iron lady than diplomat. Democratic aides say the potential for geostrategic mayhem weighs heavily on her--never mind her 2005 declaration that "Turkey's strategic location is not a license to kill." And after she rebuffed earlier meeting requests from such Turkish dignitaries as Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, her recent willingness to meet the Turkish ambassador may be revealing.
Still, senior Democratic aides say Pelosi could press ahead--possibly in early fall. Meanwhile, a Senate counterpart to the House bill already has 30 co-sponsors, including Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton.
And so Dick Gephardt has his work cut out for him. But not without a growing toll on his reputation. Even in modern Washington, where it's taken for granted that everyone has their price, flip-flopping on genocide has the ability to shock. One person dismayed by Gephardt's reversal is Anna Eshoo. Eshoo says she was recently in an airport with former Connecticut Representative Sam Gejdenson, one of the three co-signers on Gephardt's 2000 pro-resolution letter to Hastert, when the pair spotted Gephardt. "Look who's here!" Eshoo mockingly exclaimed. "Hey Dick, the Kurds are looking for you!" Gejdenson sardonically chimed in--referring to another foe of Gephardt's Turkish client. Eshoo says it was just teasing among old friends.
But, she pointedly adds of the former House Democratic leader: "Clearly this is not a principle of his. This is business."
Source: http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=K_Street_Cashes_In_On_The_1915_Armenian_Genocide
Final Resolution
As a rising St. Louis politician in the mid-1970s, Richard Gephardt was among a dynamic group of aldermen dubbed "The Young Turks." So perhaps it's not surprising that, 30 years later, the former Democratic minority leader of the House of Representatives has aged into an Old Turk. This spring, Gephardt has been busy promoting his new favorite cause--not universal health care or Iraq, but the Republic of Turkey, which now pays his lobbying firm, DLA Piper, $100,000 per month for his services. Thus far, Gephardt's achievements have included arranging high-level meetings for Turkish dignitaries, among them one between members of the Turkish parliament and House Democratic leaders James Clayburn and Rahm Emanuel; helping Turkey's U.S. ambassador win an audience with a skeptical Nancy Pelosi; and, finally, circulating a slim paperback volume, titled "An Appeal to Reason," that denies the existence of the Armenian genocide of 1915.
Few people would place the Armenian genocide on their top ten--or even top 1,000--list of the day's pressing issues. In fact, many Americans would likely be at a loss to explain who or what the Armenians are, much less what happened to them 90 years ago. Not so in Washington. For the past several years, U.S. representatives, lobbyists, and foreign emissaries have been locked in a vicious struggle over a resolution in Congress that would officially deem as genocide the massacre of up to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish government has fought this effort with the zeal of Ataturk--enlisting a multimillion-dollar brigade of former congressmen and slick flacks, as well as a coterie of American Jews surprisingly willing to downplay talk of genocide. But the Armenian-American community has impressive political clout--enough that a majority of House members have now co-sponsored the resolution. And that means a ferocious final showdown is looming, one so charged that this arcane historical dispute could even interfere with the war in Iraq.
Even more striking than the historic Turkish-Armenian hatred festering in the halls of Congress, however, is the way Washington's political elites are cashing in on it. Take Gephardt. While the Turks and Armenians have a long historical memory, Gephardt has an exceedingly short one. A few years ago, he was a working-class populist who cast himself as a tribune of the underdog--including the Armenians. Back in 1998, Gephardt attended a memorial event hosted by the Armenian National Committee of America at which, according to a spokeswoman for the group, "he spoke about the importance of recognizing the genocide." Two years later, Gephardt was one of three House Democrats who co-signed a letter to then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert urging Hastert to schedule an immediate vote on a genocide resolution. "We implore you," the letter read, arguing that Armenian-Americans "have waited long enough for Congress to recognize the horrible genocide." Today, few people are doing more than Gephardt to ensure that the genocide bill goes nowhere.
It's one thing to flip-flop on, say, tax cuts or asbestos reform.
But, when it comes to genocide, you would hope for high principle to carry the day. In Washington, however, the Armenian genocide industry is in full bloom. And Dick Gephardt's shilling isn't even the half of it.
Representative Adam Schiff may be the first person elected to Congress through the politics of the Armenian genocide. Back in 2000, Schiff was a California state senator challenging Republican incumbent Jim Rogan. The Burbank-area district is home to 75,000 Armenian-Americans, or about 10 percent of the population, many of them desperate to see Washington brand the Turks as genocide artists.
In September of that year, Hastert paid a campaign visit to the district and delighted Armenians by vowing to call a vote on a genocide resolution (which Rogan had co-sponsored). It's possible Hastert was stirred by questions of historical guilt. But, as one GOP campaign official admitted, the vote would also happen to offer Rogan "a very tangible debating point" against Schiff.
Mass murder may be strange fodder for a debating point. But in America's tight-knit Armenian community, it can seem that people want to debate little else. Most Armenian-Americans are descended from survivors of the slaughter and grew up listening to stories about how the Turks, suspecting the Orthodox Christian Armenians of collaborating with their fellow Orthodox Christian Russians during World War I, led their grandparents on death marches, massacred entire villages, and, in one signature tactic, nailed horseshoes to their victims' feet. (The "horseshoe master of Bashkale," the Ottoman provincial governor Jevdet Bey was called.) Turkey's refusal to acknowledge the guilt of their Ottoman forbears infuriates Armenians, leaving them feeling cheated of the sacred status awarded to Jewish Holocaust survivors.
It wasn't until the mid-1970s that the Armenian community, which today numbers up to 1.4 million, grew active enough to press its case in Washington. At first, few people here took them seriously. After a fruitless House debate about the genocide in 1985, for instance, one Republican scoffed at "the most mischief-making piece of legislation in all my experience in Congress." But the cause gained traction in the 1990s, thanks largely to then-Senate Republican leader Bob Dole, who never forgot the Armenian doctor who treated him after he was severely wounded in World War II.
With Rogan's seat on the line in 2000, a first-ever vote on a genocide resolution seemed a sure thing--that is, until the Turkish government mobilized its lobbying team, led by former Republican House Speaker Bob Livingston, its $700,000 man in the field. In a state of affairs one furious Republican described to Roll Call as "ridiculous," Livingston found himself battling a measure meant to protect the very House majority he had briefly presided over just two years earlier. A Turkish threat to cancel military contracts, including a $4.5 billion helicopter deal with a Fort Worth-based company, ensured the opposition of powerful Texas Republicans like Tom DeLay. Hastert was cornered. But he found cover in Bill Clinton, who warned that Turkey might shut down its American-run Incirlik air base, from which the United States patrolled the no-fly zone over northern Iraq. Citing Clinton's objections, Hastert pulled the bill.
Rogan tried to accuse Clinton of playing politics, and someone sent out a last-minute mailer featuring Schiff next to a Turkish flag. But it wasn't enough, and Schiff beat Rogan by nine percentage points.
The episode--by showcasing crass partisan politics, expensive access-peddling, sleazy political attacks, corporate lucre, and the specter of geostrategic calamity--opened a new era in Armenian genocide politics. "That was sort of the first introduction to how aggressive the Turks are," says one former Republican congressman.
For the next six years, Turkish lobbying mostly kept the Armenian genocide resolution off the Washington agenda. Then came a calamity for the Turks: the 2006 midterm elections. Suddenly, Democrats, who had always been more supportive than Republicans of the Armenian cause, were in power. Even worse, California Democrats with Armenian-American constituencies ascended to senior leadership positions. Among them was the new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, with thousands of Armenian-Americans in her Bay Area district, has spoken passionately on the subject. "This Armenian genocide is a challenge to the conscience of our country and the conscience of the world. We will not rest until we have recognition of it," she declared in 2001. Likewise, one of Pelosi's closest confidantes, California Democrat Anna Eshoo, is the granddaughter of an Armenian who resents the notion that her grandma's memories of genocide amount to "a fairy tale." And even Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, not previously known for his interest in Transcaucasian affairs, paid a recent visit to the Armenian capital of Yerevan and toured a national genocide memorial, where he declared that "[t]he facts are that a genocide occurred."
It's little wonder, then, that proponents of the genocide resolution like Adam Schiff have never been so optimistic. "This is the best opportunity we've had for a decade," the tanned and mild-mannered Harvard Law graduate told me in his Capitol Hill office recently.
Which is also why, warns Schiff, "we're seeing the strongest pushback from the Turkish lobby that I've ever seen."
A few weeks ago, I called the Turkish Embassy to request an interview. A couple of days later, I heard back--not from the embassy, but from an American p.r. consultant employed by the Turks.
He suggested we meet the next day at a Starbucks. I found him in a corner behind a glowing white iBook. He had long slicked-back hair, a, seersucker suit, and a blinking Bluetooth earpiece, and looked ready for a power lunch with the sharky agent Ari Gold from "Entourage." He informed me our conversation would be off the record, before launching his well-honed argument against the genocide resolution.
My Starbucks contact wasn't the only Turkish emissary who prefers to operate in the shadows. Another D.C.-based operative, who spoke to me from a hotel room in Ankara, where he was chaperoning a very prominent Democrat, also insisted that the substance of our conversation be off the record. He asked that I not even reveal his identity. "I don't have a dog in this hunt," he insisted, despite his place on the Turkish payroll. "My only hunt is for truth."
The truth, as the Turks see it, is simple: There was no genocide. The Armenian death toll is exaggerated, and most died from exposure or rogue marauders during mass relocations. (One Turkish activist even cheerily assured me that, after the relocations, "everyone was invited back.") The Turks say that the G-word implies an intent that can't be proved. This stance is more than just a matter of fierce national pride. The Turks are terrified at the prospect of huge financial and territorial reparations for the Armenians.("Cash," drools one Armenian nationalist blogger, "lots of cash.")
So, instead of doling out lots of cash to the Armenians, Turkey showers Washington with political operators more than happy to argue their case--for the right price. Few niches of Washington lobbying are as lucrative as the foreign racket, which explains why more than 1,800 lobbyists are currently registered to represent more than 660 overseas clients. Thus the Turks have found no shortage of willing pitchmen. Turkey currently maintains expensive contracts with at least four different Washington lobbying and p.r. firms. The result is that unsuspecting congressmen and staffers frequently find themselves badgered by well-heeled Turkish emissaries. Not long ago, one lobbyist invited a senior congressional aide to dinner at his suburban mansion. When he arrived, the aide was surprised to find himself surrounded by Turks keenly interested in his views on the genocide bill. (This time, the hard sell backfired; the staffer indignantly retorted that he believed a genocide had taken place, causing the lobbyist's face to go "ashen.")
The Turks insist that they need these expensive fixers and aggressive tactics to counter America's relentless Armenian grassroots lobby. In addition to Gephardt (who did not respond to a request for comment), Turkey contracts the services of David Mercer, a connected Democratic fund-raiser and protege of the late Democratic Party chairman Ron Brown. The Turks also pay $50,000 monthly to the Glover Park Group, a powerhouse Democratic firm stocked with connected former Clinton White House aides Joe Lockhart and Joel Johnson, for p.r. services.
That work included advice on shaping an April full-page New York Times advertisement, which called for a new historical commission (which the Armenians call a sham) and urged Washington to "support efforts to examine history, not legislate it."
But the kingpin of Turkish advocacy is Bob Livingston, whose lobbying firm, the Livingston Group, has hauled in roughly $13 million in Turkish lucre since 2000. Livingston, best remembered for his comically brief stint as House Speaker-elect at the height of the Clinton impeachment debacle (before he tearfully admitted his own extramarital affair and resigned from Congress in disgrace), has lobbied on a range of issues dear to Turkey's heart. But it's his tireless fight against the genocide resolution that makes him a hero in Ankara. Back in 2000, Livingston's team personally contacted 141 different members of Congress in the five-week run-up to the aborted vote. And on October 19, the day the vote was canceled, Livingston met personally with Hastert to ensure its demise. Mission accomplished.
Likewise, when Adam Schiff tried to pass a symbolic House amendment related to the genocide in 2004, Livingston's firm again sprang into action. As detailed in a recent Public Citizen study of foreign-agent public lobbying records, the firm immediately barraged GOP leaders like DeLay and Hastert with e-mails and faxes. Its team also badgered everyone from top House aides to officials at the National Security Council, the State Department, the Pentagon, and Vice President Dick Cheney's office. Livingston's office even called the House parliamentarian, apparently hoping to throw a procedural wrench into Schiff's gears. Against this onslaught, Schiff's puny amendment didn't stand a chance. For its work in 2004, Turkey paid the Livingston Group $1.8 million.
But, while Bob Livingston may be the winner of the Turkish lobbying lottery, the prize for biggest hypocrite is still up for grabs. Dick Gephardt isn't the only lobbyist who has flip-flopped on the genocide (though he gets points for having his firm distribute "An Appeal to Reason," the genocide-denying pamphlet that offers a strangely postmodern assessment of the imprecise nature of history--a convenient stance if your forbears committed mass murder--including a quotation attributed to philosopher Karl Popper, contending that "our knowledge is always incomplete"). There's also former Democratic representative Steve Solarz of New York. Solarz was one of the first backers of a genocide resolution way back in 1975. By 2000, he was working with Livingston to defeat it, raking in $400,000 for his efforts.
It's not just the lobbyists whose stance on the genocide seems suspiciously malleable, however. Seven House members who have co-sponsored the resolution this year have already changed their positions. One is Louisiana Republican Bobby Jindal, who on January 31 added his name to the co-sponsor list--but then withdrew his support the same day. Lobbying records show that, also on January 31, Livingston called Jindal and spoke to him about the resolution.
(Jindal's office didn't respond to requests for comment.) Others have seemingly positioned themselves less on the basis of historical or moral considerations than on good old pork politics. Gunay Evinch, a representative of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, recalls how one House resolution supporter privately explained his position: "I don't believe it was technically genocide," the congressman said. "But I need highway funds."
Earning a special commendation for dubious behavior is Washington's Jewish-American lobby. In one of this tale's strangest twists, the Turks have convinced prominent Jewish groups, not typically indifferent to charges of genocide, to mute their opinions. In February, Turkey's foreign minister convened a meeting at a Washington hotel with more than a dozen leaders of major Jewish groups. Most prominent groups now take no official position on the resolution, including B'nai B'rith, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (aipac), and the American Jewish Committee. The issue "belongs to historians and not a resolution in Congress," explains Anti-Defamation League director Abe Foxman, who outright opposes the resolution. "It will resolve nothing." But it's also clear that Turkey's status as Israel's lone Muslim ally counts for a lot, too. "I think a lot of Israelis agree," Foxman told me. (One person involved in the fight offers a more cynical explanation: "Jewish groups don't want to give up their ownership of the term 'genocide.'")
The Turks have also conspicuously hired some lobbyists with strong Jewish ties. Their payroll includes a Washington firm called Southfive Strategies, which bills itself as "a Washington D.C.
consulting boutique with access to the White House, congressional leadership, and influential media organizations." Southfive is run by Jason Epstein, a former Capitol Hill lobbyist for B'nai B'rith, and Lenny Ben-David, an Israeli-born former deputy chief of mission at Israel's Washington embassy and a longtime aipac staffer whose previous firm, IsraelConsult, also worked for Turkey.
Some Jewish leaders, to be sure, find such realpolitik less than tasteful. "It is obscene for us, of all people, to quibble about definitions," one prominent California rabbi recently told the Jewish Journal. But, when I asked one Jewish-American aligned with the Turks whether he truly believes that genocide didn't take place, he stammered that "the verdict" is not in, before adding, "If you're asking do I sleep at night, I do."
Strange as it may be to find a World War I massacre on the 2007 Washington agenda, even more bizarre is the possibility that it may precipitate an international crisis. At one March House subcommittee hearing, Adam Schiff got a rare opportunity to grill Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Angry over the Bush administration's opposition to the Armenian genocide resolution, Schiff pressed Rice: "Is there any doubt in your mind that the murder of a million and a half Armenians between 1915 and 1923 constituted genocide?" Schiff even pointedly appealed to Rice's background in "academia." But the ever-disciplined Rice wouldn't bite. "Congressman, I come out of academia. But I'm secretary of state now. And I think that the best way to have this proceed is for ... the Turks and the Armenians to come to their own terms about this."
What Rice didn't say is that the Turks, should their lobbying firepower fail to stop the genocide bill from moving forward, have an even mightier weapon to brandish: the war in Iraq. As they did in 2000, the Turks are hinting they will shut down Incirlik, a far more dire threat now that Incirlik supplies U.S. forces occupying Iraq.
Administration officials also fear Turkey might close the Habur Gate, a border point through which U.S. supplies flow into northern Iraq.
In an April letter to congressional leaders, Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates bluntly warned that a House resolution "could harm American troops in the field [and] constrain our ability to supply our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan."
That prospect may even be dragging U.S. troops themselves into the Turkish counteroffensive. Or so says Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat and lead co-sponsor of the genocide resolution. "[The Turks] have had American soldiers call members of Congress and say, 'Don't vote for this, because I am going to be threatened in Iraq,'" Pallone says. (A Turkish embassy spokesman denied knowledge of this.)
The Turks also warn that branding them as Hitleresque is sure to enrage Turkish nationalists and heighten tensions on the closed Turkish-Armenian border. If the resolution is passed, "it's going to be a heavy, heavy blow," says Murat Lutem, a Turkish embassy official. "The upheaval will be so significant that the government won't be able to say, 'Let it be.'" That's one reason some Turkish newspapers, with their sudden interest in Capitol Hill politics, have recently read like Ottoman versions of Roll Call. The Turks are especially fixated on the Armenian ally Nancy Pelosi, whom one Turkish columnist disdained as "an uncompromising iron lady."
Faced with such intense Turkish opposition, however, Pelosi may prove less iron lady than diplomat. Democratic aides say the potential for geostrategic mayhem weighs heavily on her--never mind her 2005 declaration that "Turkey's strategic location is not a license to kill." And after she rebuffed earlier meeting requests from such Turkish dignitaries as Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, her recent willingness to meet the Turkish ambassador may be revealing.
Still, senior Democratic aides say Pelosi could press ahead--possibly in early fall. Meanwhile, a Senate counterpart to the House bill already has 30 co-sponsors, including Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton.
And so Dick Gephardt has his work cut out for him. But not without a growing toll on his reputation. Even in modern Washington, where it's taken for granted that everyone has their price, flip-flopping on genocide has the ability to shock. One person dismayed by Gephardt's reversal is Anna Eshoo. Eshoo says she was recently in an airport with former Connecticut Representative Sam Gejdenson, one of the three co-signers on Gephardt's 2000 pro-resolution letter to Hastert, when the pair spotted Gephardt. "Look who's here!" Eshoo mockingly exclaimed. "Hey Dick, the Kurds are looking for you!" Gejdenson sardonically chimed in--referring to another foe of Gephardt's Turkish client. Eshoo says it was just teasing among old friends.
But, she pointedly adds of the former House Democratic leader: "Clearly this is not a principle of his. This is business."
Source: http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=K_Street_Cashes_In_On_The_1915_Armenian_Genocide
07/19 Watertown Tab: Editorial: Watertown should keep ‘No Place for Hate’
WATERTOWN, MA -
It appears that the national head of the Anti-Defamation League lobbied against Congressional recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
And, understandably, this has stirred up some strong feelings right here in Watertown.
As you can see from a surge of letters to the editor, as seen on the opposite page, the action by the ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, has some residents so furious that they are calling for an end to the Watertown’s participation in the ADL-sponsored “No Place for Hate” program.
Town councilors recently reaffirmed Watertown’s participation in the program, which aims to “provide communities with a solid framework for promoting an inclusive environment while fighting all forms of hate and bigotry,” according to its Web site.
But now, some say Watertown must respond to Foxman’s action by pulling the town out of “No Place for Hate.”
More than 8 percent of Watertown residents trace their heritage back to Armenia, according to the Census. The actual number may be higher. Certainly Watertown became a sanctuary for Armenians fleeing the World War I-era attempt by the Turkish government to wipe them out.
Turkey’s government continues to deny that the mass deaths of Armenians were the result of government policy. To Turkey’s great shame, it is still a crime to “insult Turkishness” by calling it what is clearly was: genocide. More than a million ethnic Armenians died in what was without doubt a program by the Turkish government to eradicate Armenians. Hitler publicly admired Turkey’s methods.
The Armenian Genocide bill, House bill 106, is now in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. There’s a similar bill in the Senate. The new Democratically controlled Congress appears to offer the best chance in years of putting the U.S. government on record as calling Turkey to account for its systematic campaign to eliminate Armenians.
So why in the world would the head of the ADL, an organization with a proud history of fighting anti-Semitism and racism, argue against U.S. government recognition of the Armenian Genocide?
Here’s what Foxman said, according to the L.A. Times:
“I don’t think a bill in Congress will help reconcile this issue. The resolution takes a position. It comes to a judgment. The Turks and Armenians need to revisit their past. The Jewish community shouldn’t be the arbiter of that history. And I don’t think the U.S. Congress should be the arbiter, either.”
It boggles the mind that the head of the ADL could actively work against recognition of a genocide, given the centrality of the Holocaust to the ADL’s work.
But Foxman’s line of thought isn’t different from that of other public figures from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to a wide range of members of Congress: As a moderate Muslim state, Turkey is an important U.S. ally. And Turkey may be the closest thing to an ally that Israel has among states with a Muslim majority. Pushing recognition of the Armenian Genocide could result in Turkey taking actions against U.S. and Israeli interests.
This “realpolitik” way of thinking envisions Turkish hardliners retaliating by, for instance, shutting down U.S. military bases in Turkey. The thinking goes: Israel still faces an existential threat from its neighbors, so keeping Turkey friendly is a greater good than righting a historical wrong.
But these considerations of geo-politics should be removed from the discussion about whether Watertown should participate in “No Place for Hate.”
While “No Place for Hate” has attracted a vocal minority of people who make the specious claim that it somehow muzzles free speech, the program itself is a good one. It’s a public statement that Watertown stands against bigotry and hate.
“No Place for Hate” was created by the ADL New England Region, in partnership with the Massachusetts Municipal Association. It has virtually nothing to do with Foxman’s national organization.
“The local ‘No Place for Hate’ is very committed to efforts to reinforce tolerance,” said Will Twombly, co-chairperson of the program’s Watertown committee. “We are not in any way part of efforts to deny the Armenian Genocide.”
Watertown shouldn’t pull out of “No Place to Hate” over Foxman’s hypocritical decision to work against governmental recognition of the Armenian Genocide. To do so would be “throwing the baby out with the bath water.”
The goals of “No Place for Hate” track well with the moral imperative to recognize the Armenian Genocide. Put another way, when our friends disappoint us, the solution isn’t to stop being friends. It’s to work to bring our friends around.
Putting pressure on Foxman to reverse his stance is a good thing.
Getting rid of “No Place for Hate” in Watertown isn’t.
And, understandably, this has stirred up some strong feelings right here in Watertown.
As you can see from a surge of letters to the editor, as seen on the opposite page, the action by the ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, has some residents so furious that they are calling for an end to the Watertown’s participation in the ADL-sponsored “No Place for Hate” program.
Town councilors recently reaffirmed Watertown’s participation in the program, which aims to “provide communities with a solid framework for promoting an inclusive environment while fighting all forms of hate and bigotry,” according to its Web site.
But now, some say Watertown must respond to Foxman’s action by pulling the town out of “No Place for Hate.”
More than 8 percent of Watertown residents trace their heritage back to Armenia, according to the Census. The actual number may be higher. Certainly Watertown became a sanctuary for Armenians fleeing the World War I-era attempt by the Turkish government to wipe them out.
Turkey’s government continues to deny that the mass deaths of Armenians were the result of government policy. To Turkey’s great shame, it is still a crime to “insult Turkishness” by calling it what is clearly was: genocide. More than a million ethnic Armenians died in what was without doubt a program by the Turkish government to eradicate Armenians. Hitler publicly admired Turkey’s methods.
The Armenian Genocide bill, House bill 106, is now in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. There’s a similar bill in the Senate. The new Democratically controlled Congress appears to offer the best chance in years of putting the U.S. government on record as calling Turkey to account for its systematic campaign to eliminate Armenians.
So why in the world would the head of the ADL, an organization with a proud history of fighting anti-Semitism and racism, argue against U.S. government recognition of the Armenian Genocide?
Here’s what Foxman said, according to the L.A. Times:
“I don’t think a bill in Congress will help reconcile this issue. The resolution takes a position. It comes to a judgment. The Turks and Armenians need to revisit their past. The Jewish community shouldn’t be the arbiter of that history. And I don’t think the U.S. Congress should be the arbiter, either.”
It boggles the mind that the head of the ADL could actively work against recognition of a genocide, given the centrality of the Holocaust to the ADL’s work.
But Foxman’s line of thought isn’t different from that of other public figures from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to a wide range of members of Congress: As a moderate Muslim state, Turkey is an important U.S. ally. And Turkey may be the closest thing to an ally that Israel has among states with a Muslim majority. Pushing recognition of the Armenian Genocide could result in Turkey taking actions against U.S. and Israeli interests.
This “realpolitik” way of thinking envisions Turkish hardliners retaliating by, for instance, shutting down U.S. military bases in Turkey. The thinking goes: Israel still faces an existential threat from its neighbors, so keeping Turkey friendly is a greater good than righting a historical wrong.
But these considerations of geo-politics should be removed from the discussion about whether Watertown should participate in “No Place for Hate.”
While “No Place for Hate” has attracted a vocal minority of people who make the specious claim that it somehow muzzles free speech, the program itself is a good one. It’s a public statement that Watertown stands against bigotry and hate.
“No Place for Hate” was created by the ADL New England Region, in partnership with the Massachusetts Municipal Association. It has virtually nothing to do with Foxman’s national organization.
“The local ‘No Place for Hate’ is very committed to efforts to reinforce tolerance,” said Will Twombly, co-chairperson of the program’s Watertown committee. “We are not in any way part of efforts to deny the Armenian Genocide.”
Watertown shouldn’t pull out of “No Place to Hate” over Foxman’s hypocritical decision to work against governmental recognition of the Armenian Genocide. To do so would be “throwing the baby out with the bath water.”
The goals of “No Place for Hate” track well with the moral imperative to recognize the Armenian Genocide. Put another way, when our friends disappoint us, the solution isn’t to stop being friends. It’s to work to bring our friends around.
Putting pressure on Foxman to reverse his stance is a good thing.
Getting rid of “No Place for Hate” in Watertown isn’t.
Fire Foxman
| Denying the Armenian Genocide should be the last atrocity perpetrated by the ADL chief. | |
 by Joey Kurtzman, July 8, 2007 | |
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20080105200002/http://www.jewcy.com/feature/2007-07-09/fire_foxman
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.
What’s surprising is how unabashedly forthright Abraham Foxman has become about what motivates him and his institution. In October of 2005, Foxman addressed a classroom of Jewish students at New York University. Young heads nodded and brows furrowed as Foxman riled them with his customary rhetoric: Isn’t it antisemitic for pro-Palestinian groups to seek divestment only from Israel, ignoring the far greater crimes of regimes like Sudan or North Korea? How do we describe this sort of selective flagellation of the world's only Jewish state, if not as antisemitism?
"What if the campus Free Tibet club campaigned for divestment from China? Would that be anti-Chinese bigotry?" asked Asaf Shtull-Trauring, a 20-year-old student and conscientious objector from the Israeli army.
Of course not, answered Foxman, but it was preposterous to compare the two conflicts, what with the Jews' experience of two millennia of murderous persecution. Shtull-Trauring responded with two questions: Did Foxman mean that selective treatment is okay so long as it's not directed at Jews? And where did the Anti-Defamation League get off telling Jewish university students which opinions about Israel were acceptable and which verboten?
The dialogue spiraled into a confrontation. Shtull-Trauring says Foxman, frustrated and under attack, placed his cards on the table, angrily retorting: “I don’t represent you nor the Jewish community! I represent the donors.”
Foxman’s outburst was surprising not because of its content, but because of its candor. Foxman needn’t bother himself with the trifling concerns of American Jews who happen not to be multimillionaire philanthropists. If he makes the Jewish community less appealing to young Jews, if his theatrics turn us off and turn us away, that’s all beside the point. Foxman’s job is to keep the millionaire benefactors happy: the rest of us can go jump in the Kinneret.
Without a meaningful mission to pursue, the ADL has resorted to scaremongering to fill its coffers and justify its existence. These efforts have grown increasingly bizarre and damaging. For example, the ADL website surveys the vast changes in Jewish-American life over the past century and offers the grandiose judgment that they “are due, in large measure, to the efforts of the League and its allies.” Yet Foxman also claims that today the Jewish people face as great a threat to their safety and security as they did in the 1930s. In other words, the ADL takes credit for the vast improvements in the circumstances of American Jewry, and then denies that those changes have taken place. It is still 1939. It will always be 1939.
When the ADL was born, in the early 20th century, institutional discrimination against American Jews was commonplace at every level of society. Populist politicians employed the most vulgar antisemitic language, and “restricted” hotels and country clubs reassured patrons that Jews would be stopped at the front door. In 1915, 31-year-old factory manager Leo Frank was lynched in Marietta, Georgia after he was accused of raping a Christian girl. But today, American Jews are successful and well-integrated. And unlike in Weimar Germany, where we were accepted only so long as we obscured our Jewishness behind the accoutrements of gentile culture, in America we are accepted even as we celebrate what sets us apart.
Such a reality, however, doesn’t serve the fundraising interests of the ADL. The ADL’s jihad against Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ was typical of the organization’s destructive, self-interested efforts. Foxman, as you might remember, fanned fears it would inspire Chmielniki-style pogroms. Yet not a single documented act of violence against Jews resulted from the film, nor even a single verbal assault. A study conducted by Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles indicated some anger among Christians toward Jews—but because of the reaction to the film, rather than its contents. Thanks to the ADL, our strong and self-confident community was made to appear silly and paranoid before the world.
The Passion fiasco was hardly the ADL's only effort to alienate and insult American Christians. In November 2005, Foxman delivered a widely publicized speech in which he warned that American Christian organizations were engaged in an insidious campaign to “Christianize” America. It’s a shocking allegation: firstly, because Jewish interfaith groups have developed very strong ties with precisely such organizations in the past decade; and secondly, because conservative Jewish groups have been just as aggressive in their efforts to breach the wall between church and state. While Christian groups can’t get the ornaments of Christianity placed in government buildings, Chabad has succeeded in publicly erecting enormous, gaudy menorahs throughout the country.
In this environment, where the push for more religion in public life unites religious conservatives across all faiths, why would Foxman single out Christians? Again, the answer is simple: Fundraising. Such headline-grabbing proclamations add a historically evocative Christian dimension to the terrifying nightmare-world in which the ADL encourages its benefactors to live.
The ADL can libel American Christians in general without fear of legal consequence, but when it goes on to identify specific “antisemites” it leaves itself more vulnerable. Time after time, Americans who resented being named-and-shamed as antisemites have sued the ADL for libel. In 2000, Colorado residents Dorothy and William Quigley received a ten million dollar verdict against the ADL, which, according to Federal judge Edward Nottingham, “had labeled a…neighborhood feud as an antisemitic event.” Nottingham concluded that the ADL had not properly investigated the case nor considered the consequences of its accusations. But what the ADL lost in libel fees, it gained in bogus credibility. Baseless accusations of antisemitism contribute to a paranoid fundraising atmosphere that makes Foxman’s ADL seem utterly necessary; maybe the Quigleys weren’t antisemites, but that doesn’t mean your neighbors aren’t Hitlerists in disguise. Still, such bullying by the ADL has an inevitable chilling effect: Jewish community leaders, even those who take exception to the ADL's techniques, fear speaking out lest the ADL accuse them of some crime against the Jewish people. Like all bullies, the ADL is widely disliked, but less widely spoken out against.
Ultimately, it is the seductive appeal of the ADL's dark visions that most threaten us. American Jewry enjoys privileges undreamed of in Jewish history: we are a more accepted, more integral part of our country than any Jewish community ever has been. We have entered unprecedented territory in Jewish history, and the enticements and possibilities of this new era should be setting our souls alight.
Foxman’s ADL justifies its existence by beckoning us backward, encouraging us to hide from the ever-present Cossacks in a psychological shtetl. It's a dark vision that serves the ADL's interests, but not ours. So perhaps we should be grateful to Abraham Foxman for acting as he did after the April meeting with Abdullah Gul, and doing something to so publicly and incontrovertibly demonstrate how destructive he has become to his own organization, and to the Jewish community he claims to serve.
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