NO PLACE FOR DENIAL

11/14 Bedford Minuteman: ADL debate continues

2007-11-14T21:10:00.000-08:00

ADL debate continues

By Patrick Ball, Staff Writer

Wed Nov 14, 2007, 02:26 PM EST

Bedford, Mass. - The “No Place For Hate” debate resumed last week, when the Violence Prevention Coalition unanimously voted last Tuesday to recommend to selectmen that Bedford suspend participation in the No Place For Hate program.

This decision came in the wake of The National Commission of the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) annual meeting, during which the ADL decided “to take no further action on the issue of Armenian Genociade,” according to a statement released Nov. 2.

“We are hoping that eventually something will change. We feel that this is a position that the ADL has taken that is contrary to their own mission statement and contrary to their values,” said Cathy Cordes, the selectmen’s liaison to the VPC. “This is not taking sides in a political issue – this is being true to our own mission.”

There was no discussion during the meeting about complete withdrawal from or severing ties from the program, according Cordes. “They asked for action. They didn’t ask for specific action. At the end of the meeting, they thanked us, and told us that they were pleased that we had listened to them,” she said.

“We’re very happy [with the VPC’s forthcoming recommendation],” said Michael Bahtiarian, a Bedford resident of Armenian descent who attended the VPC meeting last Tuesday. “My perception was that when they saw the nature of the ADL’s response, that it was time to take action.

“I was very proud that the town took such an apolitical solution. There was no ‘Let’s ask more questions. Let’s wait,’ Bahtiarian said. “I’m very happy, and I think it’s a great message.”

This issue is not new to Bedford, nor is it unique to the town.

Between 1915 and 1918, 1.5 million Armenians were systematically slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks. Much of the world has come to recognize this tragedy as genocide, but some, including the Anti-Defamation League, have not.

Communities throughout the state have withdrawn from or suspended participation in the ADL-sponsored No Place For Hate program. They oppose the ADL’s national stance that the systematic slaughter was “tantamount to genocide,” and the league’s opposition to a congressional resolution on the issue. In Bedford, residents of Armenian descent claim these actions are contrary to the mission of the No Place for Hate program.

On a national scale, however, the momentum built up earlier this year of the movement to gain recognition WWI massacre of Armenians came to a halt when the ADL on Nov. 2 issued a statement saying, “The National Commission of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today, at its annual meeting, decided to take no further action on the issue of Armenian Genocide.” Also, House Resolution 106, cited as the “Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution,” has been tabled.

Al Gordon, a spokesman for the New England Region of the ADL, said, “Since the national commission met, the ADL is having ongoing talks with officials in many communities.”

While the conversations proceed, Gordon said, the ADL will not comment publicly. “When there’s something to announce we’ll announce it,” he said.

Source: http://www.wickedlocal.com/bedford/homepage/x1149886250

11/13 Medford Transcript: Human Rights Commission removes ADL signs across city

2007-11-13T21:09:00.000-08:00

Human Rights Commission removes ADL signs across city

By Sharon Tosto Esker/medford@cnc.com

Tue Nov 13, 2007, 06:57 PM EST

Medford - With a turn of a wrench, Medford’s affiliation with the Anti-Defamation League ended last week when the Human Rights Commission ceremonially removed the “No Place for Hate” street sign on Forest Street.

“We’re saddened that we’ve had to suspend our membership to the ADL, but we’re hopeful that the organization will take its place nationally in its fight against hate by recognizing the Armenian genocide,” said David Harris, chairman of the commission.

Upon the recommendation of the HRC, the City Council voted last week to suspend the city’s membership to the Anti-Defamation League’s “No Place for Hate” program. The decision was a result of the ADL’s failure to support national recognition of the Armenian genocide in which more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed in Turkey at the end of the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1917.

“We feel a commitment to all of our citizens and residents of Medford,” said Harris. “We owe it to the Armenian population to protect them and recognize them too.”

Six members of the HRC, including Diane McLeod, executive director of the Office of Human Diversity, and City Councilor Robert Penta convened at one of the city’s “No Place for Hate” signs near Roosevelt Circle the morning after the municipal election.

Harris reached up to the sign and gently turned the two bolts holding it to the grey metal light pole. The sign was down in less than five minutes.

“I think that it’s an appropriate action to take,” said Lois Bronnenkant, a member of the HRC. “Over the last few months we’ve had several Armenians, young and old, who have told us stories of how the Armenian genocide has affected their families. We’ve had a good relationship with the ADL in the past, but we don’t approve of the way they’ve handled the Armenian genocide issue.”

On Nov. 2, the ADL once again took a hard line in defending its position on recognizing the Armenian genocide. The organization released a statement indicating that it would not take any further action in recognizing the genocide.

The city plans to re-evaluate its relationship with the ADL in three months to consider whether Medford will extend the membership suspension or withdraw completely.

“No Place for Hate was a great program,” said Penta. “The intent behind it is great. Nobody wants hate in their community. The principles behind No Place for Hate will go on in Medford though.”

Source: http://www.wickedlocal.com/medford/homepage/x1855990610

11/13 IHT: Former officials to recommend how U.S. can prevent genocide

2007-11-13T21:07:00.000-08:00

Former officials to recommend how U.S. can prevent genocide

The Associated Press

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

WASHINGTON: A group of former U.S. officials and lawmakers has started a task force to develop recommendations on how the U.S. government can prevent genocide.

The group is headed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Defense Secretary William Cohen, who served under President Bill Clinton, in an administration that grappled with genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.

In a news conference Tuesday, Albright and Cohen said that they would consider the lessons learned from these events in making recommendations.

"Our challenge is to match words to deeds and stop allowing the unacceptable. That task, simple on the surface, is in fact one of the most persistent puzzles of our times," Albright said. "We have a duty to find the answer before the vow of 'never again' is once again betrayed."

The task force, which was formed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy and the United State Institute of Peace, will issue its recommendations in December 2008.

During the news conference, Armenian-American activists asked pointed questions about Albright's recent signature of a letter along with every living former secretary of state urging the U.S. Congress not to pass a resolution declaring the World War I-era killings of Armenians by the Ottoman empire a genocide.

"The task force's worthwhile efforts to build consensus for an unconditional stand against genocide as a core U.S. foreign policy priority are undermined right out of the box," Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America said in a statement.

Albright and Cohen said that the letter was written out of concern that anger by the Turkish government about the resolution could undermine Turkish cooperation with U.S. military operations in Iraq.

"Every former secretary of state, as secretary of state recognized that terrible things happened to the Armenians, tragedies," Albright said. "The letter was about whether this was an appropriate time to raise the issue."

Cohen said the task force would focus on the future.

"How do we marshal public opinion, how do we marshal political action, how do we generate the will to take action in a society that has been reluctant to do so in the past?" he said. "These are issues that this task force is going to examine at length, call upon our best minds to lay out some of the options and then see if we can implement this blue print in a way that would preclude things that have taken place in the past from taking place in the future."

Other members of the task force include former Republican Senator and Ambassador to the United Nations John Danforth, former Democratic Senator Tom Daschle and former head of U.S. Central Command, Ret. General Anthony Zinni.

Source: http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=8315947

11/13 CCR: If Our Friends Do It, It Is Not Genocide

2007-11-13T21:06:00.000-08:00

CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER

If Our Friends Do It, It Is Not Genocide

21 Corporate Crime Reporter 45, November 13, 2007

The Genocide Prevention Task Force was unveiled at the National Press Club this morning.

The task force is being co-chair by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen.

It’s being convened by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute of Peace.

In addition to Cohen and Albright, its members include: John Danforth, Tom Daschle, Stuart Eizenstat, Michael Gerson, Dan Glickman, Jack Kemp, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, Tom Pickering, Julia Taft, Vin Weber, and Anthony Zinni.

“The world agrees that genocide is unacceptable and yet genocide and mass killings continue,” Albright said. “Our challenge is to match words to deeds and stop allowing the unacceptable. That task – simple on the surface – is in fact one of the most persistent puzzles of our times. We have a duty to find the answer before the vow of ‘never again’ is once again betrayed.”

“We are convinced that the U.S. government can and must do better in preventing genocide – a crime that threatens not only our values but our national interests,” Cohen said.

But after the opening remarks, Cohen and Albright hit a buzz saw of skeptical questioning from reporters in the First Amendment Room.

“How do you reconcile your work in trying to build a moral American consensus against genocide when just very recently each of you signed letters urging America not to recognize the Armenian genocide?” a reporter asked Cohen and Albright.

“This mission is about the future,” Albright answered. “We want to look at ways to try and prevent genocide and mass killing. That is the purpose of this task force. The former Secretaries of State recognized that terrible things happened to the Armenians and tragedies. The letter was primarily about whether this was the appropriate time to raise the issue.”

“The fact is that all of us who signed were concerned about the level of killings and the human suffering that took place between 1915 and 1923,” Cohen said. “There was also a very deliberate decision to say that we are engaged in warfare at the moment. We have our sons and daughters who are at risk. And we felt that to have the resolution brought might result in reactions on the part of the Turkish government that could place our sons and daughters in greater jeopardy. It was a very practical decision that was made. This was not to say that we overlooked what took place in the past. We are saying – at this point forward, what do we do? How do we marshal public opinion? How do we marshal political action? How do we generate the will to take action in a society that has been reluctant to do so in the past? It involves multiple levels of complexity.”

“If we are saying that this isn’t the right time to acknowledge this genocide, does that mean that you are arguing that for political expedience purposes, we are not going to be taking action on nor should we take action on future genocides because of what are perceived to be U.S. interests?” another reporter asked.

“We are saying there are no absolutes in this,” Cohen answered. “We are going to try and set forth a set of principles that will serve as a guide. And hopefully that guide will allow political leadership in this country and elsewhere. This is not something where the United States is advocating unilateral action. We are talking about the United States taking a lead to help shape public opinion – certainly domestically but also internationally. And this will involve multiple considerations, multiple political factors that have to be taken into account. We hope this endeavor will be successful in pursuing mass killings and genocide in the future.”

“I also do think that it is important to recognize that even if terrible things happened in the past, they do not need to happen in the future,” Albright said. “And that is what this is about. In no way does it put the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on anybody’s behavior. On the contrary. It is to examine people’s behavior. It is very important for us to move forward.”

“It sounds as if you are both saying – if our friends do it, it is not genocide,” said another reporter. “And if our enemies do it, it is genocide. A professor at the University of Haifa, Ilan Pappe, has written recently that he believes there is genocide ongoing in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. But you folks wouldn’t agree with that because Israel is our friend and we couldn’t say that about Israel. Secretary Cohen, you say – we can’t say that about Turkey and the Armenian genocide because our boys and girls are in harm’s way. If you are going to define genocide by who does it, not by what it is, your task force is in trouble.”

“I don’t know that even the UN has declared that genocide occurred in the Armenian situation,” Cohen said. “We are trying to look forward rather than backwards. On the issue of whether genocide is taking place in the West Bank and Gaza – certainly that will be part of [what] the task force [is] looking at.”

“Yes, there is an element of pragmatism,” Cohen said. “If someone else’s son or daughter is in harm’s way, that is a factor that I as an American citizen and as a former Secretary of Defense would have to take into account. And would. And I think anyone serving public office necessarily has to have a set factors to take into account. It is not absolute. This will not be a document that says – this is when the line is crossed, this is the action that will be taken. These are going to be guidelines. They themselves will serve a valuable purpose. It will help to at least raise the issue to a level of both domestic and international concern – hopefully stirring action. That is our goal.”

“When you are in the government, and you have to make very tough decisions, you have to look at the overall picture,” Albright said. “Otherwise, we are not going to get off the ground. These are very, very hard issues. I would definitely not accept your definition – if friends do it, it’s okay, and if enemies do it, it is not. I find that just an unacceptable premise. This task force is going to set forth guidelines for practical action by the United States government. Which is why we want to present this by the end of next year.”

“You can have all kinds of emotional arguments why something is wrong and then you never get it off the ground,” she said. “You ultimately have to take practical action. That is what is happening in the United States. We are not going to get ourselves into emotional appeals. Because that is not going to work. We are interested in practical steps.”

“The experience of the Armenians does indeed conform with the UN Convention,” another reporter shot back at Cohen. “In fact, Elie Wiesel has said that the denial of the genocide is the final stage of the genocide. The two of you have personally worked toward ascertaining that the United States government does not take a stand recognizing the Armenian genocide. This is of course based on real, practical political considerations, that you mentioned. However, taking on this new role, how can you reconcile your positions and the U.S. foreign policy? How can you provide credibility that your recommendations will be of use to the United States in its foreign policy and will not be words on a piece of paper that will be acceptable but the US will not follow up on?”

“You talk about political expediency,” Cohen responded. “As Secretary of Defense, I had responsibility for every man and woman who was serving in our armed forces. And yes, I would have to take into account whether or not I was placing them in greater jeopardy in order to make a declaration for something that happened back between 1915 and 1923. I would have to weigh that. And frankly, I think the former Secretaries of Defense – Republicans and Democrats alike – all came to the same conclusion. We could not put our men and women in greater danger under these circumstances. Does that mean that we are not in a position to look forward and say – here are some of the things that happened in the past, here are some of the things we did not do in the past, here is something that needs to be done in the future? There is no absolute right or wrong. It’s not all black and white. We are going to have to take these into account. You as a private citizen will be in a position to say – here is a document issued by this esteemed group. What do you Mr. President, what do you Mr. Secretary, intend to do about the atrocities currently taking place in x-country? Are your abdicating your moral leadership, abdicating the U.S. responsibility to lead? To gather and galvanize international support to do something – disinvestment in that particular country, condemning the leadership of that country? Having dealt with ethnic cleansing in the past, to take that experience, as well as what took place in Armenia, as well as what took place in Rwanda, now in Darfur, and say – this is how we have to lead on this issue.”

“It’s important to recognize what we said in the letter,” Albright said. “While we were secretaries, we recognized that mass killings and forced exile had taken place, and we also said that the U.S. policy has been all along for reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia on this particular issue. I do think that one of the things that this task force will ultimately recommend is that the parties to the problem have to acknowledge what happened. That is part of the issue. There is not one answer to fit all. This task force is about the future – about preventing genocide.”

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Source: http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/genocide111307.htm

11/12 JPost: Peres, Gul at odds over Iran nuke threat

2007-11-12T21:05:00.000-08:00

Peres, Gul at odds over Iran nuke threat

Yaakov Katz , THE JERUSALEM POST Nov. 12, 2007

Differences over the gravity of the Iranian nuclear program were at the heart of talks on Monday between President Shimon Peres and his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul.

Peres met with Gul for several hours at the Presidential Palace in Ankara and the two discussed a wide range of issues, including the Iranian nuclear threat, the fate of Israel's captured soldiers - Gilad Schalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev - as well as the upcoming Annapolis peace parley scheduled for later this month.

Peres told Gul that Israel could not accept a nuclear Iran. In response, Gul said that while Turkey was against the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, it did believe that countries had the right to develop alternative sources of energy. On Friday, Turkey's parliament passed a bill paving the way for the construction of three nuclear reactors, planned to be operational by 2015.

In what officials said was an odd break in the rules of international diplomacy, Peres spoke frankly at a press conference following the meeting and told reporters that he disagreed with Gul. He said he told the Turkish leader that Israel was not willing to accept Ankara's line of thinking and that Iran, which has vast resources of oil and natural gas, was not in need of an alternative source of energy.

"Iran does not need nuclear energy," said Peres. "I know the president has a different assessment, but we feel threatened."

Israeli officials here explained that while Turkey's stance on Iran was slightly at odds with Israel's, both countries were mutually concerned with the possibility that Iran would one day obtain nuclear weapons.

"Iran is a neighbor of Turkey and they are well aware of the negative consequences to the entire world if Iran gets nuclear weapons," an official explained. "They just are not certain, as we are, that Iran's program is for military purposes."

Another sensitive issue raised during the talks focused on the US Congress initiative to formally recognize the Armenian genocide of 1915. Gul told Peres that Turkey would not tolerate this issue being raisedevery few months.

"It is not worth ruining today's good relations over an event of the past," Gul told Peres.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was recently in Washington for talks with the Bush administration about the congressional initiative.
Peres said that Israel supported Turkey's initiative to set up a team of Armenian and Turkish historians to examine the events of 1915-17. Gul thanked Peres for his efforts in working to thwart the US bill.

Peres and Gul also discussed at length the Annapolis conference, and particularly the participation of other countries in the parley. Gul said that Turkey was in discussion with Syria, Iran and Iraq regarding the differences between various Middle Eastern countries.

"As a country that is a party to the problem, it is important that Syria participates," Gul said.
In addition Gul said that Syrian President Bashar Assad told him in Ankara several weeks ago that Damascus was interested in renewing negotiations with Israel and that it believed in lasting peace. Peres welcomed the participation of all "moderate countries," saying "the voice of peace will be stronger and louder" with more participants attending. But he accused Syria of not taking steps for peace.

Peres expressed cautious optimism regarding the peace process with the Palestinians. He said that while the two to four weeks remaining before Annapolis was not enough time to solve the remaining problems, "Annapolis is a station on the way to peace, and afterwards, real negotiations will begin."

Gul also warned Israel against taking any unilateral steps vis à vis the Palestinians ahead of the parley and that Israel needed to stick to a two-state solution.

In response, Peres said that he wasn't aware of any unilateral steps Israel planned to take and added that Hamas was the "only entity taking unilateral steps."

Gul declared that Turkey would work to secure the release of the captured IDF soldiers and said that he viewed the issue first and foremost as a humanitarian matter.

Peres also asked Gul for permission to borrow Israel-related artifacts from Turkish museums for Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations.

On Tuesday, Peres, Gul and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will discuss plans to set up an industrial park in the West Bank. The industrial zone is expected to create jobs for thousands of Palestinians. Turkey is waiting for Abbas's government to decide how much land can be allocated for the project.

Also Tuesday, Peres will become the first Israeli president to speak before the legislature of a Muslim country. Abbas will separately address the Turkish Parliament on Tuesday.

Source: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380797463&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

11/10 Milford Daily News: Anti-Defamation League reaches beyond purpose

2007-11-10T21:02:00.000-08:00

Meltzer: Anti-Defamation League reaches beyond purpose

By Rob Meltzer, Local columnist

Sat Nov 10, 2007, 12:20 AM EST

There has been much criticism of late about the Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai Brith and its position as to whether the mass murders of Armenians by Ottoman Turks back in 1915 constitutes genocide.

The criticism is well deserved, but not for the reason usually espoused - that a Jewish-sponsored organization somehow has the moral obligation to speak out on this kind of issue. In reality, the ADL's problem is that it is should not be speaking out on this issue at all, as addressing this issue is not within the mandate of the ADL.

The ADL was never intended to be a truth and reconciliation organization, nor does it have the expertise to assess and declare historical truths. The ADL exists for the purpose of address current and actual discrimination aimed at American Jews. When the ADL drifts from its purpose, it invites the criticism it receives.

Here, in part, is what the Charter of the ADL said in 1913: "The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people." Back in 1913, and later, the ADL did not expand its purpose to include international relations, leaving thorny issues of global discrimination and genocide to other groups.

It is not hard to see how the ADL has wandered from its path, and it's not hard to see the trouble that its wandering has created. Notwithstanding that the ADL has always been able to wield political power through its resources in the Jewish community, the ADL became enmeshed in coalition politics. In true 1960s style, the ADL believed that there was safety in numbers, and that joining a coalition of oppressed peoples provided greater clout in overcoming discrimination.

As always happens with minority power politics, it is evident that coalition members don't always have synchronized agendas. Joining coalitions not only prevents you from addressing your own concerns, but it also compels you to support the concerns of others, with unforeseen consequences. When the ADL started the No Place for Hate campaign, and formed coalitions with cities and town to battle discrimination, by way of example, it climbed in to bed with some of the institutional anti-semites it should have been criticizing.

There are numerous examples of timidity that have been evident in our own community. When the Southern Poverty Law Center inadvertently distributed pro-Palestinian, anti-Jewish rhetoric to hundreds of elementary schools, including schools in Framingham, the ADL declined to get involved in criticizing a program of the SPLC. When a law suit was filed in federal court arising out of institutional anti-semitism, the ADL declined to support the Jewish plaintiffs who were litigating against a No Place for Hate Community. The ADL has declined to take a stand against blatant anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiments on NPR, and has declined to support the rights of Torah observant Jewish residents under assault from mainstream, left-wing Jewish groups.

A number of years ago, the ADL had a gala opening for its new, enlarged office space in Boston, missing the irony that larger office space was proof-positive that the ADL was not effective. A long time ago, and many miles from here, I applied for a legal position with the ADL. When I was asked the standard question, "what would be your first act if hired," I responded by stating that I would put mezuzahs on the conference room door. As I was informed, defending religious observance in the work place was not part of the ADL agenda.

Instead of acting according to its charter, the ADL tears itself to pieces trying to decide what happened in 1915, a historical debate that has badly tainted the reputation of the listing ADL, and which has demonstrated the need of the ADL to return to its core values, core objectives and core policies. At this point in its history, the ADL should distance itself from programs and policies that do not advance its Charter, and should reestablish its credibility not only with the community at large as a group to be respected and emulated, but also within the Jewish community, which no longer views the ADL as the watchdog at the door.

Until it does so, it deserves the criticism it is receiving, both nationally and in columns in this newspaper.

Rob Meltzer practices law in Framingham.

Source: http://www.milforddailynews.com/opinion/x1822649375

11/10 Independent: Robert Fisk: Holocaust denial in the White House

2007-11-10T21:01:00.000-08:00

Robert Fisk: Holocaust denial in the White House

The Turks say the Armenians died in a 'civil war', and Bush goes along with their lies

Published: 10 November 2007

How are the mighty fallen! President George Bush, the crusader king who would draw the sword against the forces of Darkness and Evil, he who said there was only "them or us", who would carry on, he claimed, an eternal conflict against "world terror" on our behalf; he turns out, well, to be a wimp. A clutch of Turkish generals and a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign on behalf of Turkish Holocaust deniers have transformed the lion into a lamb. No, not even a lamb – for this animal is, by its nature, a symbol of innocence – but into a household mouse, a little diminutive creature which, seen from afar, can even be confused with a rat. Am I going too far? I think not.

The "story so far" is familiar enough. In 1915, the Ottoman Turkish authorities carried out the systematic genocide of one and a half million Christian Armenians. There are photographs, diplomatic reports, original Ottoman documentation, the process of an entire post-First World War Ottoman trial, Winston Churchill and Lloyd George and a massive report by the British Foreign Office in 1915 and 1916 to prove that it is all true. Even movie film is now emerging – real archive footage taken by Western military cameramen in the First World War – to show that the first Holocaust of the 20th century, perpetrated in front of German officers who would later perfect its methods in their extermination of six million Jews, was as real as its pitifully few Armenian survivors still claim.

But the Turks won't let us say this. They have blackmailed the Western powers – including our own British Government, and now even the US – to kowtow to their shameless denials. These (and I weary that we must repeat them, because every news agency and government does just that through fear of Ankara's fury) include the canard that the Armenians died in a "civil war", that they were anyway collaborating with Turkey's Russian enemies, that fewer Armenians were killed than have been claimed, that as many Turkish Muslims were murdered as Armenians.

And now President Bush and the United States Congress have gone along with these lies. There was, briefly, a historic moment for Bush to walk tall after the US House Foreign Relations Committee voted last month to condemn the mass slaughter of Armenians as an act of genocide. Ancient Armenian-American survivors gathered at a House panel to listen to the debate. But as soon as Turkey's fossilised generals started to threaten Bush, I knew he would give in.

Listen, first, to General Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the Turkish armed forces, in an interview with the newspaper Milliyet. The passage of the House resolution, he whinged, was "sad and sorrowful" in view of the "strong links" Turkey maintained with its Nato partners. And if this resolution was passed by the full House of Representatives, then "our military relations with the US would never be as they were in the past... The US, in that respect, has shot itself in the foot".

Now listen to Mr Bush as he snaps to attention before the Turkish general staff. "We all deeply regret the tragic suffering (sic) of the Armenian people... But this resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings. Its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in Nato and in the global war on terror." I loved the last bit about the "global war on terror". Nobody – save for the Jews of Europe – has suffered "terror" more than the benighted Armenians of Turkey in 1915. But that Nato should matter more than the integrity of history – that Nato might one day prove to be so important that the Bushes of this world may have to equivocate over the Jewish Holocaust to placate a militarily resurgent Germany – beggars belief.

Among those men who should hold their heads in shame are those who claim they are winning the war in Iraq. They include the increasingly disoriented General David Petraeus, US commander in Iraq, and the increasingly delusional US ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, both of whom warned that full passage of the Armenian genocide bill would "harm the war effort in Iraq". And make no mistake, there are big bucks behind this disgusting piece of Holocaust denial.

Former Representative Robert L Livingston, a Louisiana Republican, has already picked up $12m from the Turks for his company, the Livingston Group, for two previously successful attempts to pervert the cause of moral justice and smother genocide congressional resolutions. He personally escorted Turkish officials to Capitol Hill to threaten US congressmen. They got the point. If the resolution went ahead, Turkey would bar US access to the Incirlik airbase through which passed much of the 70 per cent of American air supplies to Iraq which transit Turkey.

In the real world, this is called blackmail – which was why Bush was bound to cave in. Defence Secretary Robert Gates was even more pusillanimous – although he obviously cared nothing for the details of history. Petraeus and Crocker, he said, "believe clearly that access to the airfields and to the roads and so on in Turkey would be very much put at risk if this resolution passes...".

How terrible an irony did Gates utter. For it is these very "roads and so on" down which walked the hundreds of thousands of Armenians on their 1915 death marches. Many were forced aboard cattle trains which took them to their deaths. One of the railway lines on which they travelled ran due east of Adana – a great collection point for the doomed Christians of western Armenia – and the first station on the line was called Incirlik, the very same Incirlik which now houses the huge airbase that Mr Bush is so frightened of losing.

Had the genocide that Bush refuses to acknowledge not taken place – as the Turks claim – the Americans would be asking the Armenians for permission to use Incirlik. There is still alive – in Sussex if anyone cares to see her – an ageing Armenian survivor from that region who recalls the Ottoman Turkish gendarmes setting fire to a pile of living Armenian babies on the road close to Adana. These are the same "roads and so on" that so concern the gutless Mr Gates.

But fear not. If Turkey has frightened the boots off Bush, he's still ready to rattle the cage of the all-powerful Persians. People should be interested in preventing Iran from acquiring the knowledge to make nuclear weapons if they're "interested in preventing World War Three", Bush has warned us. What piffle. Bush can't even summon up the courage to tell the truth about World War One.

Who would have thought that the leader of the Western world – he who would protect us against "world terror" – would turn out to be the David Irving of the White House?

Source: http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3146418.ece

11/09 Jurist: US House must uphold truth and justice with Armenian genocide resolution

2007-11-09T21:00:00.000-08:00

US House must uphold truth and justice with Armenian genocide resolution

Frank V. Zerunyan, Esq. [Chairman, Board of Governors of the Armenian Bar Association; Mayor Pro Tem, City of Rolling Hills Estates]: "The People’s House of the United States of America must follow its tradition and uphold the truth above all else. The speaker of the House of Representatives must bring HR106 to a floor vote because the resolution is morally, intellectually, historically and legally consistent with our American values. We Americans must insist that our leaders promote truth, justice and the rule of law. We have a long tradition of accepting human dignity as an inalienable right and as the basis of our jurisprudence. No one could have described it better than Alexander Hamilton when he said “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among the old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of divinity itself; and can never be erased or obstructed by mortal power.”

“Never again” to Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Rwandans, Darfurians is not just a slogan in the context of the human rights debate in the world; it is a call to meaningful action to eradicate genocide from the world. Experts and scholars confirm that each perpetrator has used previous crimes against humanity with impunity. Indeed Adolph Hitler himself in 1939, before the invasion of Poland, reminded his commanding officers in a passionate speech “who still talks now days of the extermination of the Armenians?” Denial is part of and a completion of this crime against humanity. Our values simply do not permit us to be co-conspirators to the commission of or to the completion of the crime of genocide.

At stake today in Washington DC, of course, is the question of whether the United States House of Representatives should offend Turkey by voting on a resolution condemning the Armenian Genocide of 1915. All actors in this debate are playing the roles they have played for decades. Turkish generals and ministers are threatening our military ties, the closure of our bases, air space and logistics routes. Ironically however, even before any word of this resolution, those routes were already closed to our sons and daughters when our nation went to war to liberate Iraq. There is also a new threat by our own government; “radical Islam”. Most if not all credible experts will agree that this threat is simply not credible as the Republic of Turkey will never chose this form of a regime over the great and overwhelming legacy of its founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Moreover, such a threat completely undermines contemporary Turkish identity.

While the Republic of Turkey may react negatively in the short term (I think to their own detriment), recognition of the Armenian genocide is warranted for several reasons. First, the HR106 declares the truth; a truth that 23 other countries, 40 American States and countless Counties and Cities have already recognized. Second, no one discusses or even mentions our influence and the basis of our influence over the Republic of Turkey. The truth is that we brought Turkey into the NATO Alliance without which Turkey’s security could not be guaranteed. We support Turkey’s membership into the European Union; an economic “must” for the survival of Turkey into the 21st Century and beyond. We granted Turkey a most favored nation trading status resulting in more than $7 billion in annual trade and $2 billion in US investments in Turkey. Only Israel and Egypt outrank Turkey as recipients of US Foreign assistance. Third, it is inconceivable that even back in the days when the US prized West Germany as a buffer and deterrent against the Soviet Union, we Americans would have refrained from condemning The Shoah (the Holocaust) at Germany’s behest.

Finally and more importantly to this American of Armenian decent, it brings finality and closure, bringing back human dignity to humanity lost almost a century ago. I assume most of you know the eternal resting grounds of your great grand fathers and grand mothers; I don’t. My ancestors formed the first Christian nation in the world (301 A.D.) only to become the invisible Christians in unmarked graves in the early stages of the 20th Century.

I am the great-grand son of a victim and the grand son of a survivor. Ironically, I live today as the direct result of the kindness of a Turkish gentleman (Effendi) who had the humanity to shelter my grand father. I applaud his humanity and encourage our leaders to follow in his footsteps."

Source: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/hotline/2007/11/us-house-must-uphold-truth-and-justice.php

11/09 Haaretz: When politics trumps integrity

2007-11-09T20:58:00.000-08:00

When politics trumps integrity

By Jacob Victor

During Michael B. Mukasey's 18 years as a federal judge, his legal decisions were characterized by a nuanced, responsible approach to the law. He was tough on white-collar crime and terrorism, yet still demonstrated empathy for new immigrants and minors. Perhaps Judge Mukasey's strong sense of ethical resolve stems from his Judaism and perhaps not, but either way, many American Jews were proud when he was nominated for the post of United States Attorney General. After the corruption that characterized the reign of Alberto Gonzales, Judge Mukasey seemed like the ideal candidate to restore the reputation of the Justice Department.

Therefore, it was especially disheartening when Judge Mukasey refused to explicitly declare the form of torture known as waterboarding as illegal, after being repeatedly asked to do so during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee over the last few weeks.

Waterboarding involves simulating the feeling of drowning by holding a person on an incline, covering his face with a rag, and dousing his head with water. Almost all experts and many politicians at both ends of the political spectrum agree that the practice is a form of torture, which would make it illegal under the U.N. Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a signatory. Furthermore, the United States has prosecuted for waterboarding in the past. In 1947, a Japanese military officer was sent to jail for 15 years for using the practice on a U.S. civilian.
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Judge Mukasey surely knows these things; he was even willing to describe the practice as "repugnant." Why, then, would a person of his ethical conviction refuse to unequivocally condemn waterboarding and declare it illegal?

The answer is politics. According to some legal experts, if Judge Mukasey had explicitly denounced waterboarding during his confirmation hearings, he would have paved the way for criminal prosecution of U.S. soldiers and intelligence agents, not to mention higher-ups in the Bush administration, who have used or condoned the practice in recent years.

Mukasey seems to have recognized this sticky situation. Sadly, he seems willing to compromise ethical values in order to protect his new political associates.

Judge Mukasey is apparently the latest victim of the malaise currently afflicting American Jewish leadership. While Jewish leaders have often been known for their moral fortitude, many of today's Jewish public figures seem all too willing to compromise their values for the sake of political maneuvering. Jewish moral resolve has been replaced by expediency.

Another recent casualty of this sad state of affairs is Abe Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, who has long been a tireless opponent of anti-Semitism, racism and other forms of bigotry. Many were shocked when Foxman and the ADL recently opposed congressional legislation condemning the Armenian genocide, out of fear of alienating Turkey, which is one of Israel's most important allies. While Foxman acknowledged that the massacre of as many as 1.5 million Armenians by Turkey between 1915 and 1923 was "tantamount to genocide," he still refused to support the legislation. Turkey's relationship with Israel is indeed valuable, but on the subject of genocide there should be no room for equivocation, particularly from an organization claiming to represent Jewish values.

All this is not to say that American Jewish public figures should embrace blind idealism irrespective of the political consequences. On the contrary, responsible political leadership requires carefully considered compromise. But when political expediency trumps fundamental moral principles, or turns on its head undisputed historical events, the integrity of Jewish moral leadership begins to erode. The American Jewish community has long been known - with exceptions, of course - for producing leaders who could be counted on to defend their moral convictions to the very end. Leaders like Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, who paved the way for labor reform in America, and Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel, who devoted himself to the civil rights movement, understood that the preservation of moral principles was an essential component of the struggle for justice and equality.

Michael Mukasey and Abe Foxman are both good people; their records attest to that. But if they and other American Jewish public figures do not re-embrace a commitment to maintaining moral integrity, even at the expense of obtaining short-term political advantages, they risk undermining everything that Jewish leaders have long stood for.

Jacob Victor is a third-year student at Harvard College. He is the managing editor of New Society: The Harvard College Middle East Journal, and a member of the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson.

Source: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/922235.html

11/08 Watertown Tab: ADL to take no action on Armenian Genocide

2007-11-08T20:56:00.000-08:00

ADL to take no action on Armenian Genocide

By Jillian Fennimore, Staff Writer

Thu Nov 08, 2007, 12:08 PM EST

WATERTOWN - Last week the Anti-Defamation League decided to take no further action on the issue of the Armenian Genocide. But in Watertown, many are moving forward on educating and bringing light to the issue.

Former “No Place for Hate” Committee Co-Chairperson Will Twombly said there are no plans to rejoin with the regional or national “No Place for Hate” program, an umbrella organization under the ADL. The ADL has been under major public scrutiny for failing to unequivocally recognize the World War I-era deaths of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide.

Many local Armenians are airing their concerns about the national ADL’s decision, which was taken last week at a meeting in New York.

“It is disappointing,” said Sharistan Melkonian, chairperson of the Armenian National Committee of Eastern Massachusetts, which is based in Watertown. “Frankly, if the ADL didn’t purport to be a human rights organization whose mission is ‘to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike,’ they would be considered like any other narrowly defined advocacy organization. But they claim to be a human rights organization and as such, have come into our schools and towns. They teach our children. Yet they are certainly not securing justice and fair treatment for Armenian citizens.”

Since Watertown ended its ties with “No Place for Hate” in August, members of the former committee have joined forces with the World in Watertown — a local human rights group — to host a public forum on Nov. 28 called “Understanding Genocide and Its Impact.”

Twombly said the idea is to provide history, hear the words of survivors, realize the
effects of denial and discuss the current genocide crisis in Darfur.

“We want to give ideas of what people can do now,” he said.

The controversy over the ADL’s stance, which continues to have international repercussions, began in Watertown. In July, Newton’s David Boyajian wrote a letterto the Watertown TAB & Press about the ADL’s stance.

After much public debate and emotional outpouring from local Armenians and officials, ADL National Director Abraham Foxman changed the organization’s position in August by calling the consequences of the then-Ottoman Empire’s actions “tantamount to genocide.”

But Foxman enraged many Armenians by his organization’s continued opposition to a Congressional resolution making it the official U.S. view that the massacres of Armenians were genocide, that is to say a concerted government effort to annihilate an ethnic group.

Source: http://www.wickedlocal.com/watertown/homepage/x481179685

11/08 JTA: ADL calls for town official's resignation

2007-11-08T20:55:00.000-08:00

ADL calls for town official's resignation

Published: 11/08/2007

A Massachusetts town official who made disparaging remarks to a Jewish colleague should resign, the Anti-Defamation League said.

Maureen Kenney, a selectwoman and member of the school committee in Randolph, reportedly said of a request by the town's Jewish superintendent of schools for five days paid leave following a family death, "It is not the standard in industry. Besides, don't you Jews plant them within 24 hours?"

Richard Silverman, the superintendent, said that after protesting Kenney's remarks, she responded, "I don't see any side curls on your head, so what the hell do you need five days of bereavement leave for?"

In a statement Wednesday, the New England Anti-Defamation League office called for Kenney's resignation, saying her comments were "an insult to the entire community," according to news reports. "Bigotry against anyone is bigotry against everyone."

Randolph, a community 15 miles south of Boston, participates in ADL's No Place for Hate, an anti-bigotry program that has come under fire recently from activists opposed to the organization's position on the Armenian genocide.

A local civil rights leader, David Harris, and the Patriot Ledger, a local newspaper, also have called for Kenney to step down.

Source: http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/105184.html

11/08 Jewish Advocate: Jewish leaders hope to leave genocide controversy behind

2007-11-08T20:53:00.000-08:00

Jewish leaders hope to leave genocide controversy behind

By Rachel L. Axelbank - Thursday November 8 2007

'No further action' ruling disappoints Armenian community

Following last Friday’s much-anticipated annual meeting of the Anti-Defamation League’s National Commission, local leaders are looking to the future.

Those involved in the ongoing controversy regarding the ADL’s stance on the massacre of some 1.5 million Armenians in the early 1900s have been looking forward to the meeting as one that would definitively clarify National Director Abraham Foxman’s statement that the massacre was “tantamount to genocide.”

Following the meeting, the ADL National Commission issued a statement that it had “decided to take no further action on the issue of the Armenian genocide.”

New England Regional Board Chair James Rudolph said he is satisfied with the outcome of the meeting and the implications of the issued statement.

“It’s clear to us that there was always an intent to unequivocally recognize the Armenian genocide,” Rudolph said.

ADL New England Region Director Andrew Tarsy, who also attended the annual meeting, agreed with Rudolph.

“The commission thoroughly debated the issue, and I think it’s time to move on,” he said.
According to Khatchig Mouradian, editor of the Watertown-based Armenian Weekly, the local Armenian community had not expected ADL to reverse its position regarding a congressional resolution on the matter but had hoped that ADL New England delegates would at least make a clear statement in recognition of the genocide.

“It was an utter disappointment when the statement came out that even that minimal thing was not met, especially when it also turned out that the ADL commissioners from New England believed that the decision was fine,” he said.

House Resolution 106, which calls for the United States’ recognition of the Armenian genocide, was approved last month by the House Foreign Relations Committee and was, until recently, expected to reach the floor before Congress adjourned for the year.

However, a full house vote has been postponed indefinitely at the request of some of the bill’s sponsors, who Mouradian believes were motivated by fear that pressure from the Turkish government would cause the resolution to be voted down.

“Turkey resorted to blackmail, and actually it worked,” Mouradian said. “I’m not in favor of our government giving in to blackmail.”
While the ADL meeting produced no official verdict on HR 106 specifically, the Boston Globe reported that a New York ADL commissioner had asked other commissioners to sign a letter stating their strong disagreement with the resolution as well as the New England chapter’s position on the matter.

In recent months, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston has been a leader in encouraging ADL to recognize the genocide. And while JCRC has yet to take a position of its own regarding HR 106, Executive Director Nancy K. Kaufman speculated that it would emerge in support of the resolution.

“I think what we’re doing is taking our lead from the congressional delegation,” Kaufman said. “No one wants to spark an international conflict with Turkey right now, including the Armenian community.”

Kaufman also expressed regret over the controversy and its ramifications.

“I’ve been very sad that ‘No Place for Hate’ has been the target [of topical antagonism toward the ADL] because I think it’s a good program,” she said, referring to the ADL’s anti-prejudice program from which Massachusetts municipalities – among them Lexington, Newton and Watertown – have been withdrawing in the months since the controversy began.

Meanwhile, Foxman has been critical of Boston’s Jewish community leaders. In the published transcript of a September interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Foxman implicated Kaufman – as well as Combined Jewish Philanthropies President Barry Shrage – in his discussion of the rift created between the national ADL office and the Greater Boston area.

But the controversy has diverted attention from the important work that Jewish organizations do, including fighting hatred, promoting good interfaith and interethnic relations, and supporting Israel, according to Jonathan Sarna, Brandeis University professor of American Jewish History.

“This has been an enormous diversion, because I don’t think most people in the Jewish community have any doubt that terrible things were done to the Armenian community,” Sarna said. “My hope is that we can move away from that issue – which is not one to which so much community attention should be devoted – and focus on the issues that are important: Jewish continuity, Israel and community relations.”

But, according to Mouradian, the Armenian community is not prepared to consider the matter settled.

“The ADL is saying ‘We don’t care about your genocide,’” he said. “I believe it is a very insulting position, and I can’t see how the Armenian community is going to say ‘OK, let’s go home now.’”

Kaufman, though sympathetic to the Armenian community’s position, echoed Sarna’s call for the Jewish community to move forward.

“For the Armenian community obviously it’s not over,” she said. “I’d like to think in Boston it’s over because the ADL office here did a bold and unprecedented thing. I think we need to move on.”

Source: http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/news/?content_id=3959

11/08 Globe West: Community Briefing: Newton No Place for Hate

2007-11-08T20:50:00.000-08:00

Home / News / Local Globe West Community briefing

NEWTON

NO PLACE FOR HATE - With a recent decision by the Anti-Defamation League's national board to take no further action on a congressional resolution acknowledging an Armenian genocide, Newton Mayor David Cohen must decide whether to sever ties with the ADL's No Place for Hate Program permanently. Earlier this fall, Cohen dropped the program, saying it was a matter of conscience, and asked the group's national director, Abraham Foxman, to unequivocally acknowledge the Ottoman Empire's massacre of Armenians as a genocide by supporting the congressional resolution. Last summer, Foxman, under pressure from ADL members, issued a statement calling the forcible deportation and massacre of perhaps 1.5 million Armenians in 1915-17 as "tantamount to genocide." Many criticized his wording as unclear, and seven communities, including Newton, discontinued the No Place for Hate program awaiting a more concise statement by Foxman. Foxman has said he feared international repercussions by Turkey, which as the Ottoman Empire's successor denies the genocide label. Jeremy Solomon, Cohen's spokesman, said the mayor will discuss the national ADL's decision at the city's next Human Rights Commission meeting. A date had not yet been scheduled, he said. "We're going to evaluate the actions taken in their entirety," Solomon said. "Perhaps it is not as black and white as it was when we issued the demand."

- Megan Woolhouse

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/11/08/honors_for_stroke_treatments/

11/07 Arlington Advocate: Town confirms decision on No Place for Hate

2007-11-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

Town confirms decision on No Place for Hate

By Shauna Staveley

Arlington, Mass. - The Anti-Defamation League wouldn’t budge and the Arlington No Place for Hate Program Steering Committee refused to compromise.

On Tuesday, the committee chose to make permanent its withdraw from the national program because the ADL once again refused to acknowledge the death of more than 1 million Armenians from 1915 to 1923 as a genocide.

“The committee will continue to work, along with many other groups and citizens, to ensure that Arlington is a place that’s welcoming to all and where the diversity that each of us brings is celebrated and mutually respected,” said NPFH Chairwoman Cindy Friedman in an e-mail. “Over the next few months we will be looking at how we continue our work outside the umbrella of the No Place for Hate program, and how we ensure that anyone who wants to join us in this effort will feel welcome.”

The ADL sponsors the No Place for Hate organization.
Activists in Watertown, which has a large Armenian population, were among the first to speak out publicly when the ADL refused use of the word genocide. The Watertown Town Council rescinded its involvement with NPFH in August.

Several NPFH programs followed suit, pushing the issue into the public conscience. The outcry put pressure on the ADL’s national office to reconsider its stance on the issue.

Arlington’s NPFH program chose to suspend its association, a decision endorsed by the Human Rights Commission. Part of that decision set parameters for Arlington’s return to the program, which included the ADL changing its stance.

“I had no intention before, and I have no intention now of bringing that up for reconsideration,” said Human Rights Commission Chairman Joe Curro Jr. on Monday. “I think especially so in light of the failure of the ADL to act on the issue.”

The Arlington No Place for Hate program first took root in at the beginning of 2007 and was supported by many residents as well as Police Chief Frederick Ryan.

Project Director Myriam Zuber told attendees of a meeting Jan. 18 that more than 60 communities in the state are “officially part of the program,” with 35 of them joining in 2006.

“We are sorry we can no longer be part of the program,” Friedman said Tuesday.

Hilda Silverman, an Arlington resident and noted peace activist, was one of the individuals against the program from the start, and it was originally due to the ADL involvement.

“Our town deserves better,” said Silverman.
Silverman cites what she calls ADL’s “suppression of dissent” and “blacklisting” as reasons for her opposition to the group.

As of Tuesday, she felt the very premise of the NPFH program may have been the true problem.

“I think that notion of opposing hate is the wrong concept for an anti-bigotry program,” Silverman said. “Look at how upset people were at what the ADL did, but nobody claims ADL hates Armenians. It wasn’t about hate. It’s about interests. It’s about taking a position that ignored the suffering of a group of people because of certain other interests…if we want to educate people, especially young people, it’s not about hate, it’s about understanding the experience of the other.”

Source: http://www.wickedlocal.com/arlington/homepage/x1086970438

11/06 Metro West Daily: Letter: Denial of genocide is evil

2007-11-06T20:48:00.000-08:00

Denial of genocide is evil

It is discouraging, 62 years after my infantry division raced across Europe to save precious prisoners in the Nazi death camps, that I, as an old soldier, must again join a fight against genocide. However, this time the fight is against the most evil phase of genocide: its denial.

David Boyajian's article, ``The Greenway: No Place for the ADL'' (MetroWest Daily News, Oct. 28), is extremely sobering and I would normally be inclined to demand an immediate explanation from the ADL regarding its behind-the-scenes activities in the matter of obstructing the Armenian Heritage Park.

But recalling the recent stance taken by the ADL that the annihilation of the Armenians was not really a genocide but merely ``tantamount to genocide,'' a phrase now ridiculed around the world, I believe it would be prudent for me to ignore that misguided organization entirely.

However, because of Peter Meade's role as a senior Blue Cross-Blue Shield official, a competent company whose services I have enjoyed for over 40 years, and his stellar reputation as a civic-minded citizen, I take this opportunity to urge him to disassociate himself immediately from the ADL, which has morphed from a highly regarded human rights organization into an infamous one.

Unless and until the ADL unambiguously acknowledges the reality of the Armenian Genocide and re-establishes its moral base, it will continue to sink. Mr. Meade does not deserve the tarnish he will inherit by his continued association with the ADL.

CHARLES SAHAGIAN,
Needham

Source: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinions/x1375675765

11/05 Jewish Telegraphic Agency: ADL: no further action on genocide

2007-11-05T20:47:00.000-08:00

ADL: no further action on genocide

Published: 11/05/2007

The Anti-Defamation League has decided to take no further action on the Armenian genocide question.

At the league's national commission meeting in New York last week, ADL's New England leadership pushed for a more unambiguous statement recognizing the World War I killings of Armenians as genocide. The matter was discussed at a three-hour closed door session on Friday afternoon, after which the ADL's national commissioners voted overwhelmingly to endorse its current statement on the genocide. The New England leadership withdrew its resolution calling for a further statement.

In August, under mounting pressure from Boston-area communities, the ADL reversed longstanding policy and referred to the "consequences" of the killings as "tantamount to genocide." Critics said the statement was insufficient and a dodge, a charge the ADL has repeatedly denied.

ADL leaders from New England, who had initially pushed hard for a clearer statement, claimed to be satisfied with the outcome. James Rudolph, chairman of the New England regional board, told the Boston Globe that he had received assurances that the August statement was unequivocal.

"I feel comfortable with it," Rudolph said.

New England ADL leaders say they plan to try and mend fences with several Boston communities who broke ties with a popular anti-bigotry program sponsored by the ADL in protest of its position on the genocide. But local Armenian activists gave no indication that they would stop pressing for a change.

"I am very disappointed," said one Armenian leader who wished to remain anonymous because talks with the New England leadership are ongoing. "The current decision by the entire cadre of ADL commissioners from across the U.S. makes the entire organization complicit in Turkey's genocide denial campaign."

Source: http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/105104.html

11/04 San Francisco Chronicle: It's time to tell it like it is about Armenian genocide

2007-11-04T20:45:00.000-08:00

It's time to tell it like it is about Armenian genocide

Roxanne Makasdjian

Sunday, November 4, 2007

The Armenian genocide resolution pending in Congress (HR106) has prompted debate about whether it's the right time for the United States to officially recognize the systematic annihilation of the Armenian population in Turkey, perpetrated by the government of the Ottoman Empire in 1915. Against increasingly bold denials of history and unjustifiable intimidation by Turkey, now is the best time for our country to tell it like it is.

A wave of disinformation has been disseminated by the Turkish and U.S. administrations since the resolution passed the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Oct. 10. Turkey's threats have included cutting off the use of our air base, thus restricting our military shipments, and intervening in northern Iraq, destabilizing the only relatively quiet part of that country. The rationale for those threats is deceptive, the resolution being a convenient excuse to threaten to disrupt U.S. military actions in Iraq to advance Turkey's own interests.

The fact is that we needn't become hostage to blackmail. In 2003, without an Armenian genocide resolution up for a vote, Turkey refused to allow us to use our base at Incirlik to invade Iraq. We carried out the invasion successfully anyway. The United States has numerous military bases in the area - in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Bulgaria, the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan - from which we can operate.

The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Turkish Daily News have all quoted U.S. officials saying that if Turkey cut off our base or supply lines, it would not greatly affect our military operations. And, according to a recent article in Defense News, the Armenian genocide resolution wouldn't even "dent" U.S. arms sales to Turkey. Several years ago, when France passed a similar resolution, arms sales between France and Turkey were back to booming within months.

Turkey's strategic interests are much more dependent on good relations with the United States than vice versa. If we tolerate Turkey's blackmail, we actually weaken our position in the strategic relationship and embolden others in the region to blackmail us.

Turkey's threats against the Kurds in Iraq are also not new, nor a result of the pending resolution. Successive Turkish governments have had claims on the oil-rich, northern Iraqi region of Kirkuk and Mosul from as early as the 1930s. Turkish governments have also treated their 20 million Kurds worse than second-class citizens.

Anti-Americanism has reached new heights in Turkey not because of the Armenian genocide resolution, but because of opposition to the U.S. intervention in Iraq and the consequent formation of a Kurdish autonomous government controlling the oil revenue in northern Iraq. As Graham Fuller, former vice chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council, wrote recently, "Turkish-American relations have been deteriorating for years, and the root explanation is simple and harsh: Washington's policies are broadly and fundamentally incompatible with Turkish foreign policy interests in multiple arenas."

Despite all this, the United States has been enabling Turkey's denial of the genocide, damaging our reputation and giving a junior ally the upper hand in a relationship in which we should be leading. Last year, the U.S. government went as far as dismissing our ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, for discussing the Armenian genocide. President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have recently gone further, referring to the Armenian genocide as an open historical question needing more study.

This position contradicts the vast majority of historians and Holocaust and genocide studies that recognize this event as unambiguous genocide, as well as the abundant documentation in our own national archives, including the memoirs of the U.S. ambassador to Ottoman Turkey in 1915, Henry Morgenthau, who wrote of witnessing the "extermination of a whole race."

Turkey has even reached into our educational system by lobbying against inclusion of the Armenian genocide in our textbooks, and against local remembrances of the genocide, as was the case when Armenian Americans purchased San Francisco's Mount Davidson Cross in memory of their slain forefathers.

In Turkey today, discussion of the Armenian genocide is a crime carrying as many as 10 years in prison. Scores of writers, professors and community leaders are being prosecuted under this law, legitimizing the undemocratic, nationalist fervor of the Turkish masses. In this context, the government's call for a commission of Turkish and Armenian historians to study the "events of 1915" is simply a way to bury the truth.

Contrary to opponents' claims, House Resolution 106 does not condemn present-day Turkey for the crimes of its predecessor, nor does it demand that Turkey recognize the genocide. It simply reaffirms the historical record, a necessary affirmation when faced with massive denial. Congress has passed recent resolutions reaffirming the truth of the Holocaust as well as the genocides in Cambodia, Ukraine, Bosnia and Darfur.

Most recently, we watched Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi give the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama, despite China's warnings that such action would be detrimental to U.S.-China relations. Giving in to similar warnings from Turkey would highlight the hypocrisy in that action and signal to the world that we have a clear double standard when it comes to human rights. The longer the United States helps Turkey's denial, the longer the denial will continue, and the longer we'll be hostage to it. Instead, we should help steer Turkey toward democracy, for its own sake - and ours.

Roxanne Makasdjian is chair of the Bay Area Armenian National Committee. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/11/04/INTDT2UPH.DTL

11/03 Boston Globe: ADL officials say stance clear on genocide

2007-11-03T20:39:00.000-07:00

ADL officials say stance clear on genocide

Contend earlier remarks had been misinterpreted

By Megan Woolhouse, Globe Staff November 3, 2007

NEW YORK - The national Anti-Defamation League yesterday refused to act on calls from within its own ranks to acknowledge unequivocally the Armenian genocide, after its top officials insisted that earlier remarks calling the World War I-era massacre "tantamount to genocide" were misinterpreted.

"I was very clear," ADL head Abraham Foxman said in an interview last night, referring to his remarks in August. "People with other agendas tried to read into them."

In a statement issued last night, the National Commission of the Anti-Defamation League said it had "decided to take no further action on the issue of the Armenian genocide."

Before yesterday's meeting, Massachusetts-based members of the ADL had urged the national organization to support both a congressional resolution calling the massacre genocide and a separate, similar measure. Some critics from Massachusetts had contended that Foxman's earlier statement was carefully constructed to avoid a full acknowledgement of the massacre.

But after hearing a lengthy debate, Massachusetts representatives withdrew their resolution, saying they were satisfied with the outcome.

James Rudolph, chairman of the ADL's regional board for New England, said the league's national chairman, Glen Lewy, assured the group "that earlier statements were always intended to be an unequivocal acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide."

"I feel comfortable with it," Rudolph said of the decision.

Newton resident Lori Gans, also an ADL commissioner, said she was pleased.

"We were hoping to get a clearer, restated position," she said after the meeting. "We didn't get a formal statement, but we got clarity. Abe Foxman's statement of Aug. 21 was in fact the unequivocal statement we wanted it to be."

Armenian activists, however, disagreed.

Sharistan Melkonian, chief of the Armenian National Committee's Eastern Massachusetts office, said Foxman owes the Armenian community an apology.

"It's disappointing that they don't come out with a strong statement that would put an end to any concerns about its position once and for all. it's unfortunate and it's disappointing," she said by phone after the vote.

Since this summer's controversy, seven Massachusetts communities have severed or suspended relations with the ADL and dropped its No Place for Hate Program.

Rudolph said yesterday that he would try to bring those communities back into the program.

"I think the perception it was never intended to be unequivocal has hurt us," he said. "We left today's meeting recommitted to the mission of the ADL."

Between 1915 and 1923, Ottoman Turks massacred as many as 1.5 million Armenians in what the US ambassador at the time called "a campaign of race extermination." Historians and other nations, as well as Nobel Peace Prize recipient and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, have described the massacre as genocide. But the Turkish government has refused to accept the label; until August, neither did the ADL.

Leaders within the ADL, founded in 1913 to fight anti-Semitism, have long expressed concern that acknowledging the genocide would put Jews at risk in Turkey or damage Israel's relations with Turkey, a Muslim ally. The US government also relies on Turkey as an ally in the Iraq war.

The controversy erupted in August after Watertown, which has a sizeable Armenian-American community, decided to pull out of the No Place For Hate Program to protest the ADL's refusal to acknowledge the genocide. Regional ADL members then challenged the national organization's stand. Andrew Tarsy, chapter director, spoke out publicly, saying he disagreed with the national position.

Foxman fired Tarsy. Board members, Jewish leaders, and Armenian-Americans rallied to support Tarsy, and Foxman reversed course. Within days, he called the massacre "tantamount to genocide" and rehired Tarsy.

Although he did not have a vote and is not a commissioner, Tarsy attended yesterday's conference. He did not return calls requesting comment last night.

About 200 ADL commissioners met behind closed doors for more than three hours at a Manhattan hotel to debate the matter during its annual convention. About 50 commissioners spoke on the issue.

According to a letter obtained by the Globe yesterday, New York ADL Commissioner Robert G. Sugarman asked other commissioners to sign a letter stating they did not support either the House resolution or the New England chapter's efforts. Members were asked to sign a letter that said they "strongly disagree" with the premise of both resolutions.

"We cannot understand why the issue of ADL's position on the massacres, atrocities, and genocide perpetrated against Armenians should be raised again at the National Commission meeting," the letter said. "It is inconceivable that anyone could reasonably interpret the statement in any way other than as an unambiguous and unequivocal declaration."

The letter referred to the massacre as genocide twice, adding that the ADL "did the right and moral thing by recognizing the Armenian genocide in August."

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/11/03/adl_officials_say_stance_clear_on_genocide/

11/03 Armenian Reporter Editorial: A Broken Moral Compass

2007-11-03T20:36:00.000-07:00

In an April 21 article, the Los Angeles Times quoted the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abe Foxman, speaking out against the Armenian Genocide resolutions in Congress. Mr. Foxman's open acknowledgement of his opposition to the resolutions started a firestorm of controversy in the Jewish-American community and beyond. Many prominent figures and newspapers criticized Mr. Foxman's position. The leadership of the ADL's New England Region took a firm position that the ADL should support the resolutions. Mr. Foxman promptly fired the ADL's New England regional director. Responding to the pressure, Mr. Foxman and the ADL's national chair, Glen S. Lewy, in an August 21 letter acknowledged that the destruction of the Armenian people in 1915 was "tantamount to genocide." But they persisted in opposing the congressional resolutions. The New England Region placed the matter on the agenda of the ADL's national policy-making body, which convened on November 1. The results of the body's deliberations were not available at press time.

Taking sides

What was available, however, was news of a disgraceful interview Mr. Foxman had given to the Jewish Telegraph Agency. In it, he attacked leaders of Boston's Jewish-American community – and the community itself – for allegedly siding with local Armenians over Israel in this matter. In doing so, Mr. Foxman once again showed that his moral compass is broken. The relations of Jewish-Americans and Armenian-Americans in New England and beyond are important and should not be discounted. But a person in Mr. Foxman's position should understand very well that much more is at stake. Jewish public intellectuals deserve the lion's share of the credit for making the world understand that the denial of evil – and particularly of genocide – is morally unforgivable and in practice leads to more evil. So how can Jewish-Americans become complicit in genocide denial? They cannot. Combined Jewish Philanthropies President Barry Shrage and Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston Executive Director Nancy K. Kaufman, who were singled out for attack name by Mr. Foxman, understand this moral imperative. Mr. Foxman does not. The tactics and motives of those that deny the Holocaust are much the same for those that deny the Armenian Genocide. If Turkey can successfully impose its will on the U.S. and Israel via threats and intimidation, then that tactic can and will be used against both countries again and again. We cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated. Over the last few weeks, Americans have been told, "You can stand either with the Genocide resolution or with American soldiers; take your choice." Now, Mr. Foxman says stand with the resolution or with Israel. It is a discouraging feature of our time that this kind of argument requires a firm and ready response. But as Armenians, we must be willing to make such responses. We must be prepared to speak out and write that if Turkey is unwilling to stand by the United States or Israel, the blame lies not with supporters of Genocide recognition, but with Turkey itself. Likewise, if American Jews feel a moral obligation, and have the moral backbone, to denounce the ADL's denial of the Genocide, the problem certainly has nothing to do with their "loyalty" to Israel. The problem lies with the ADL, and its unwillingness to grapple with the truth in this matter. One thing Armenians and Jews have shared historically is the attempt by others to impute "disloyalty" of one form or another to their efforts to achieve recognition and justice. That the imputation this time comes from the ADL's leadership is surprising, to be sure, but it is also instructive, both to Armenians and to our countless friends and supporters in the Jewish community. Mr. Foxman acknowledges that he is "shocked, upset, frightened" that his flawed policy on the Armenian Genocide has been subject to strong criticism. He feels he "got made fun of for it." So, inexplicably citing intermarriage rates, he claims that Jewish-Americans in Boston simply don't care about Israel. A responsible leader does not respond to challenges by flailing out at his critics. What Mr. Foxman's critics understand and he does not is that caring about Israel cannot mean abandoning one's core beliefs and values.

11/02 Boston Globe: Local members put pressure on ADL

2007-11-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

Local members put pressure on ADL

Seek more direct genocide wording

By Keith O'Brien, Globe Staff November 2, 2007

Local members of the Anti-Defamation League will push the organization's national leadership today to unequivocally acknowledge the Armenian genocide after months of controversy that has tarnished the image of the human rights organization in Massachusetts.

Already, across the state, seven communities have pulled out of a popular ADL antibigotry program, citing the organization's failure to clearly acknowledge the World War I-era genocide of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire and support a Congressional resolution to do the same.

Under pressure, the national ADL and its leader, Abraham H. Foxman, reversed decades of policy in August and acknowledged for the first time that the massacre of Armenians in modern-day Turkey between 1915 and 1918 was "tantamount to genocide."

But that carefully worded statement did little to appease ADL critics. Massachusetts towns - led by Watertown, home to 8,000 Armenian-Americans - continued to pull out of the ADL's "No Place For Hate" program, and regional ADL leaders decided to ask the organization's national commission to approve a more direct genocide statement.

"Addressing the issue of Armenian Genocide should not necessarily hinge upon the erosion it has caused to the New England Region's No Place for Hate program," regional ADL leaders wrote recently in a letter obtained by the Globe and sent to roughly 300 members of the organization's national commission. "Nor, should it rest upon the potential unraveling of other long-standing ADL efforts. . . . What is at stake here, at its core, is principle and the mission of our agency."

Local leaders in the Jewish and Armenian-American communities agree that the regional ADL must succeed in persuading the national organization to take a clear stand on this issue when they meet today. "This is a very significant moral issue," said Nancy K. Kaufman, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.

But not everyone attending today's national commission agrees that the ADL should approve a wording change, much less Congressional acknowledgement of Armenian genocide. Foxman, who did not return calls, has said for weeks that the ADL has gone far enough on this issue, and other people attending today's meeting share his point of view.

"I don't think revisiting the issue is necessary," said Dennis Kainen, chairman of the ADL's Florida regional board. "I believe the statement is clear and I think the ADL has gone a long way."

The item on today's ADL agenda asks members to vote whether or not to support House Resolution 106, a Congressional resolution that would acknowledge the mass killings of Armenians nearly a century ago as genocide.

The refusal by Turkey - an ally of Israel - to acknowledge the genocide makes the issue complicated for the United States, Israel, and the ADL. Last month, when the Armenian genocide resolution received the approval of a House committee, clearing the way for a vote of the full House, Turkey called home its ambassador in Washington and warned that the resolution would "jeopardize a strategic partnership" between Turkey and the United States.

The measure, which had enjoyed widespread approval, lost support. Last week, sponsors shelved the resolution indefinitely.

In their letter to the national commissioners, the regional ADL leaders in Boston say they are not urging people to consider the resolution, but to drop the phrase "tantamount to genocide" and acknowledge the genocide "in the clearest possible way."

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/11/02/local_members_put_pressure_on_adl/

11/02 Watertown Tab: Letter: Former House Speaker Keverian backs Devaney

2007-11-02T20:37:00.000-07:00

Letter: Former House Speaker Keverian backs Devaney

Fri Nov 02, 2007, 05:50 PM EDT

WATERTOWN - I have known and admired Marilyn Devaney for years.

We have cooperated on several public policy issues in the past.

But of more importance to me, as an Armenian-American, she has always demonstrated her strong support for our causes. Marilyn was quick to help when Armenia suffered a tragic earthquake. She has attended our Statehouse memorial services honoring the victims of the Armenian Genocide.

And most recently, Marilyn led the fight in the Watertown Town Council when they voted to withdraw from the Anti-Defamation League’s “No Place for Hate” program in response to that organization’s refusal to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Whenever we needed Marilyn Devaney, she was there! Now she needs you, and she has earned your support. I ask you to vote for Marilyn Devaney as she seeks reelection as your councilor-at-large.

George Keverian
Former Speaker of the House

Source: http://www.wickedlocal.com/watertown/news/opinions/x481175446

11/01 Jewish Advocate: Abe Foxman criticizes local approach on Armenian issue

2007-11-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

Abe Foxman criticizes local approach on Armenian issue

By Raphael Kohan - Thursday November 1 2007

Abe FoxmanADL national director calls out Boston's Jewish community leaders

In an interview published on Oct. 26 by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, criticized Boston’s Jewish leadership for its handling of this summer’s controversy surrounding recognition of the Armenian genocide. Foxman accused the local community of not giving proper priority to Israeli interests, singling out Combined Jewish Philanthropies President Barry Shrage and Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston Executive Director Nancy K. Kaufman.

In the interview, which was conducted last month, Foxman told the interviewer that he was “shocked, upset, frightened” that the Boston Jewish community had rallied so strongly against him, deciding to side with the local Armenian community rather than with the ADL.

“I got made fun of for it,” Foxman said of the ADL’s initial stance on the Armenian genocide. “[I] said we need unity now because Iran is a threat, Hamas is a threat, Hezbollah is a threat, anti-Semitism in Europe and Latin America. The last thing we need now is for Barry Shrage and Nancy Kaufman to be fighting us.”

Kaufman was the driving force on a petition signed by local groups that urged Foxman to recognize the Armenian massacres as genocide.

“We have nothing to apologize for,” said Alan Ronkin, deputy director of the JCRC. “We have never personally attacked Foxman. The fact that he personally attacked us is outrageous.”

ADL Regional Director Andrew H. Tarsy was not available for comment.

Yet Foxman defended his organization’s original position, saying that he only yielded to Boston-area Jews like Tarsy and Kaufman to preserve unity. Foxman maintained that while he has had Israel’s and Jewish interests in mind for the long-term, Boston leaders chose to champion current local relations, putting the Armenian issue ahead of the interests of the State of Israel.

“It was very clear that there are two moral issues, but one trumps the other. And it was clear to me that I cannot save one Armenian human being, not one,” said Foxman. “We need a strong unified Jewish community to help Israel … I gave for the greater purpose so that we can now sit and talk together. It almost destroyed our operation in Boston.”
And what the Boston community revealed about itself during the summer controversy was disturbing, according to Foxman.

“What I didn’t realize was to what extent the American Jewish community has reversed Hillel, or at least in Boston and Massachusetts,” Foxman said, referring to Hillel’s famous adage, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

Foxman attributed the Boston Jewish community’s diminished sense of self-preservation to the high instance of intermarriage and assimilation in the Boston area. According to Combined Jewish Philanthropy’s 2005 Community Study, 29 percent of all Jewish households in Greater Boston are intermarried.

Locally, CJP has made outreach to interfaith families a priority in maintaining a strong Jewish community, working closely with organizations like InterfaithFamily.com.
“I am very proud of our community,” said Shrage. “I understand Abe’s concerns, but he is wrong about the Boston Jewish community. I think he knows he is. We are allowed to disagree in our community, but he was wrong to characterize the Boston Jewish community in the way he did.”

Foxman and others predicted fallout in U.S. and Israel’s relationship with Turkey if a congressional resolution recognizing the genocide were passed. And those fears seemed to be realized when Turkey recalled its ambassador to the U.S. in October.

“This is simply a conflict between the more narrow or limited local idealistic interests which focused on local politics and acknowledging a past genocide, versus the broader and more pragmatic concerns of the national leadership which focused on support for preventing a future genocide,” said Grand Rabbi Y. A. Korff.

In perhaps his most biting criticism of the local community, Foxman asserted that area Jews no longer care about the fate of the Jewish state as much as they once did.

“Israel is no longer as significant,” Foxman said. “Some of this stuff I read and hear about in Boston was, ‘Why do we have to sacrifice our relationship with our Armenian friends and neighbors for Israel?’ I heard people say to me if the [Jews in Turkey] are in trouble, let them leave. That’s what I miscalculated.”

But according to Kaufman, Foxman’s information is misguided.

“He got it all wrong,” she said. “He does not understand the Boston Jewish community at all. We are absolutely, unequivocally, passionately, and universally supportive of Israel. The Boston Jewish community should be outraged by his comments.”

The national ADL office was not available for comment.

When asked if Foxman’s remarks – despite his assertion that unity is needed among Jews – would widen the divide between himself and the Boston Jewish community, Kaufman declined to comment.

Kaufman added: “While Abe has been an incredible Jewish leader nationally, he does not know how to behave locally.”

Source: http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/news/?content_id=3928

11/01 Haaretz: When Turkey threatens to jump

2007-11-01T20:34:00.000-07:00

Posted: November 01, 2007

When Turkey threatens to jump

"She's going to talk primarily about the U.S.-Turkey bilateral relationship and talk about the fact that it is a good, strong relationship," claimed State Department spokesman Sean McCormack in his daily briefing to the press Monday. "She" is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; the "talk" will happen on her trip to Turkey later this week; and that "strong relationship" is in trouble. The Turks have recently re-learned that they can influence America's decision-makers and policies, and they're going to use that power again.

Last month, the Turks and their friends in the administration defeated Nancy Pelosi, a determined, commanding speaker of the House. The passage of a resolution that would label the 1915 killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as "genocide" was postponed indefinitely. Pelosi's friends on the Democratic side of the House were kind enough to save her from even greater embarrassment: The sponsors asked her to delay the vote?and she agreed.

This was a political blunder. The speaker, as committed as anyone to passing the symbolic legislation, was humiliated by an even stronger and no less committed Turkish lobby. However - as often happens with acts of foolishness committed by Congress - the price will be paid by another branch of government, the executive. The check will be submitted later this week to its senior representative, Secretary Rice. A week later, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit an even higher authority, President George Bush, with the same purpose.

America lost twice in this congressional battle of political will?by losing the chance to gain the high moral ground by recognizing the Armenian tragedy and by angering an important ally. Turkey was able to benefit twice: It defeated the bill, but it was also handed an excuse to get angry by its earlier passage through the House foreign affairs committee. Now it can feel justified for its somewhat vindictive mood.

America, as a Pew Global Attitudes Survey showed just last week, is not the hottest political commodity in Ankara these days. "[N]egative views of the United States are indeed widespread and growing in Turkey," the study concluded. "Only 14% [of Turks] think the U.S. considers the interests of countries like Turkey when making foreign policy decisions," the study found. Ankara's demand that Washington increase its efforts to curb a wave of terror that originates in the Kurdish part of Iraq provides the U.S. administration with the perfect opportunity to show that it does "consider the interests of countries like Turkey."

The strategic relationship between Turkey and the United States has a long and complicated history. However, Turkey's importance to Washington can be easily, if somewhat simplistically, summed up in a slogan borrowed from the world of real estate: location, location, location.

But it now has a problem, which happens to come from an area controlled by the United States, namely Iraq. The PKK, a Kurdish terror group dedicated to a radically separatist cause, is harassing and killing Turkish soldiers and citizens, and Turkey wants it to stop. In the past couple of weeks, Turkey has muttered threats of invasion, while maintaining talks with American and Iraqi leaders. But talk will not be enough. Washington will have to do something about the PKK.

The problem is that the Iraqi government can make promises, but it can't deliver on them in the difficult northern terrain that's controlled by the Kurds. America might be able to do more, but it is reluctant to use its already strained forces, and it is reasonably afraid of destabilizing the only region in Iraq that has been relatively calm all along.

The Pentagon isn't happy with Turkey, which could have been far more helpful in 2003 and since. Diplomats are also worried, as they see the Islamist government moving away from the West and toward a more regionally focused strategy. Relations with Israel aren't as good as they used to be. Commerce with Syria is well-established. Discussions with Iran are frequent?though Turkey has no desire to hand Tehran a victory. Ankara can even maneuver between the United States and Russia?not that Turkey wants to help Russia, a longtime nemesis.

Turkey, it seems, has more leverage over the United States than the other way around. It can eliminate crucial supply lines for American forces in Iraq. It can invade Iraq. It can destabilize it. These threats were all used by the U.S. administration?backed up by high-ranking military commanders?to persuade Congress to back down on Armenian genocide. These same threats will be now used on the administration and, even more so, against reluctant CENTCOM officials, to make them invest more effort in solving the problem of the PKK attacks.

Iraq is your fault, anyway, the Turks say. They were better off with Saddam Hussein's regime?or, at least, that's what they now claim. Turkey was willing to stay on the sidelines while the United States was messing with the region, but they will not be the ones to pay the price. Not for a country that almost passed a bill condemning their actions nearly 100 years ago.

So, Turkey successfully used its leverage against Pelosi last month, and now?angrier but also more confident in its power to curb American will?it is embarking on another such journey. Presumably, it still needs the United States to deter its powerful neighbors against possible aggression. But if Turkey was threatened by Iran or pressured by Russia, does anyone believe that America would let it fall? Turkey knows that Washington can't afford such a scenario, and Washington knows that Turkey knows it. Through the Middle East and the world, the power of the weaker party is working against countries allied with the United States. It is the not-so-subtle threat of "do what I want or I will fall"?or, in the case of Turkey, jump.

Source: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=919437&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1

11/01 Boston Globe: Debate over ADL stance unleashes painful memories

2007-11-01T20:33:00.000-07:00

Hard to forget

Debate over ADL stance unleashes painful memories

By Penny Schwartz, Globe Correspondent November 1, 2007

On a Monday evening last month, 90-year-old Kevork Norian and his wife, Helen, left the comfort of their two-family home in Arlington Heights, walked down the hill to Massachusetts Avenue and boarded the MBTA bus to Arlington Town Hall to join the debate over whether their town should maintain its connection with the No Place for Hate program.

A few miles to the west, on the same evening, 58-year-old Rita Goldberg drove from her Lexington home to Carey Memorial Hall in the town's center to address her town's Board of Selectmen, which was considering the same issue.

The lives of Norian and Goldberg, who do not know each other, each have been touched by genocide, and so they both felt compelled to attend the public hearings, speaking from deep emotional reservoirs that stretch across generations.

Norian survived the Armenian genocide; Goldberg's mother, Hilde, is a Holocaust survivor. Hilde's parents died in a Nazi concentration camp.

For Norian and Goldberg, the debate over No Place for Hate is personal as well as political.

Both Arlington and Lexington have decided to pull out of the program that advocates tolerance because of the program's connection with the Anti-Defamation League, which created it. Armenian-Americans and others have argued that the ADL has not sufficiently recognized that the killing of millions of Armenians during and after World War I was a genocide committed by the Ottoman Turks.

Other local communities have also left the program as the national leadership of the ADL prepares to consider the issue this week.

For Norian and Goldberg, the debates in their local communities offered an opportunity to share their personal stories that shed light on why this issue is such an emotional touchstone for Armenians and Jews, who each look back on histories of suffering and fear.

Setting history straight

Sitting at his dining room table, Norian, who uses a hearing aid, said he went to the meeting to bring out the truth about the Armenian genocide. For him, the issue is not No Place for Hate but setting history straight.

"If history is not accurate, then it is fiction," he said.

"When you are ailing and people deny it and say, 'It's a fabrication. It is wrong,' it hurts. . . . I wanted people to know the truth," Norian said.

He said that although the genocide is a central topic among his family and friends, this is the first time he has told his story publicly. "Nobody asked me," he said.

The story Norian tells is woven together from his family's decades-long struggle for survival and from historical records recounted in books on the Armenian genocide he has read and reread and which he brought to the Arlington selectmen's meeting.

Born in Aintab, Turkey, in 1917, to an Armenian family, Norian was a baby at the close of World War I when the widespread massacre of 1.5 million Armenians began.

Norian's immediate family was initially exempt from deportation because his father was forced to manufacture wartime clothing for the Turkish military. During the political upheavals and turmoil that dominated Turkey after the end of the war, and over the next decade, Norian said, his family was subjected to harsh treatment and some, including his grandparents, cousins, and several uncles, died either from brutal mistreatment or from cholera, the result of poor living conditions.

"There are so many stories," Norian said, holding back tears.

Along with thousands of other Armenians, Norian's family was forcibly deported in 1924 to Syria, where Norian spent his youth. He met and married his wife there, and three of their children were born in Syria.

They joined some of her relatives in the United States in 1964, settling in Arlington, where a fourth child was born, and where they raised their families. Norian worked in several jobs, eventually retiring in 1981 from a company where he supervised the production of chemical instruments.

Coming to America changed his life, Norian said.

"When I came here I learned so many things. When you learn more and more, it gives you more satisfaction," he said.

The move allowed him to escape to a place where he could be free and prosper.

"I told them [the Arlington selectmen] 'Thank you, USA, for saving us from hell,' " Norian said.

Empowering

The experience of speaking out about the Armenian genocide is incredibly important and empowering for survivors and their children, said the Rev. Gregory V. Haroutunian, pastor of the First Armenian Church in Belmont, which Norian and his wife attend.

Many people are not able to overcome the pain and horror to speak publicly, as Norian did, Haroutunian said in a phone interview.

"It is literally unspeakable," he said.

"That the public would dignify this with a hearing and respond with appropriate outrage, that is so important," Haroutunian said. "It validates their suffering."

Advocate for tolerance

On an unseasonably warm day, Goldberg sat on her porch and said she believes that the ADL should be pressured to recognize unequivocally the Armenian genocide. But she came to the Lexington meeting to speak against ending No Place for Hate, because she sees it as a unique advocate for tolerance and a buffer against anti-Semitism.

"It seems very hasty," Goldberg said of the board's decision to leave the program, especially given that the national ADL will consider this issue this week.

Goldberg, who teaches writing at Harvard, has lived with her husband, Oliver Hart, in Lexington for nearly 25 years. Their two grown sons attended public schools. She credits the regional ADL with having a profound, positive impact on the town and its schools.

The call to recognize the Armenian genocide resonates powerfully with Goldberg, who learned about the massacres at an early age from her parents.

As a young girl, Goldberg's mother fled her native Germany with her parents in 1929. They settled in Amsterdam. Her mother's best friend was Margot Frank, the elder sister of Anne Frank, whose published diary exposed the world to the horrors of the Nazis from the point of view of a young girl.

As a teenager, Hilde Goldberg went into hiding and was separated from her parents, who were later killed by the Nazis in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

In 1945, she volunteered with the British Red Cross to help with displaced orphans at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It was there that she met her future husband, who had volunteered to work as a medic at the displaced persons camp. Hilde, Oliver, and Rita, who was only 2, came to the United States in 1950.

Goldberg was exposed to her family's history, and the horrors of the Holocaust, from an early age. Unlike Norian, whose personal family history has remained largely private, Goldberg's mother's history is part of the archival records at the US Holocaust Museum and has been featured in a documentary film. Goldberg herself has written a family memoir, not yet published.

"My background has been completely dominated by that and I have complete sympathy with the Armenians," Goldberg said, recalling that one of her closest childhood friends in New Jersey was an Armenian-American whose family held strong nationalist beliefs.

"I was totally outraged by the attitude of the ADL, but it is not the whole issue," Goldberg said in explaining why she urged the town not to cut its ties with the No Place for Hate program.

Goldberg said that she is concerned with a certain amount of prejudice and anti-Semitism embedded in the emotional rhetoric expressed in letters to local newspapers by some supporters of severing ties with the ADL.

"It pits two groups, each with a Holocaust, against each other," she said. "Groups which should be united always."

'We are all better for this'

Haroutunian said he was excited about the way the Jewish community has responded to the public debate and pleased that the local ADL has recognized the Armenian genocide. He is disappointed that the national ADL has not been as clear-cut in its support of recognition. The pastor said he is encouraged by cooperation between Armenian and Jewish Americans over issues such as the genocide in Darfur.

Meanwhile, Scott Martin Kosofsky of Lexington, a historian of American Judaism, said the local debates over the Armenian genocide and the ADL position on it have served as community adult education at the highest and deepest level.

"We are all better for this," he said. "It is seldom the case that big issues such as this affect us in our daily lives."

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/11/01/hard_to_forget/

10/31 JTA: Showdown over Armenian genocide question expected at ADL conference

2007-10-31T20:32:00.000-07:00

Armenia showdown set for ADL parley

Ben Harris

Top leaders of the Anti-Defamation League are strenuously fighting efforts to get the organization to adopt a more unambiguous position on the Armenian genocide at a national commission meeting.

Published: 10/31/2007

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Top leaders of the Anti-Defamation League are strenuously fighting efforts to get the organization to adopt a more unambiguous position on the Armenian genocide at a national commission meeting.

The ADL's New England leadership is pushing for a more clearly worded statement recognizing the World War I-era killings of Armenians as genocide.

In a bid to head off this effort at Thursday's meeting in New York, a letter was sent to dozens of the organization's national commissioners last week from 22 senior lay leaders opposing any change to the ADL's current position.

In August, under mounting pressure from its Boston-area constituency, the ADL reversed longstanding policy and called the "consequences" of the killings "tantamount to genocide." Some have called that formulation insufficient and a deliberate hedge, a claim the ADL denies.

Sources familiar with national ADL decision-making say the battle shaping up over the genocide question is virtually without precedent.

The ADL's national director, Abraham Foxman, is said to wield significant influence over the proceedings. A push for action from a particular region rather than from the ADL's various committees, and a powerful push back from the organization's top leadership is unusual.

In their letter, the senior ADL leaders defended the August statement as a clear recognition that the killings were genocide and caution that any reopening of the question could further jeopardize U.S. and Israeli relations with Turkey, which adamantly rejects the genocide label.

Turkey has lobbied intensively to defeat a congressional measure recognizing the massacres as genocide.

"A resolution by the National Commission, ADL's most important body, of the kind recommended by our Boston colleagues (even if ADL does not endorse H. Res. 106) would be viewed and reported on as an action against Turkey and would be used aggressively by those seeking to gain passage of H. Res. 106," the leaders wrote, referring to the U.S. House of Representatives resolution.

"At a time when support for H. Res. 106 seems to be losing impetus in Congress as more and more Representatives are beginning to recognize the consequences that would flow from adoption of the resolution, we do not believe ADL should step back into this political thicket and run the risk of being perceived as a catalyst in reviving the momentum on H. Res. 106."

The Armenia question has bedeviled the ADL for months, since a Boston suburb moved to sever its ties with No Place for Hate, a popular ADL anti-bigotry program, in protest of the organization's refusal to use the term genocide.

Amid the furor, the ADL reversed itself on Aug. 21, but the momentum against No Place for Hate has only increased. Four other Boston-area communities have since broken ties with the program.

Armenian activists in the area accuse the ADL of genocide denial and have launched a Web site, NoPlaceForDenial.com, which demands an unambiguous statement on the genocide and support for the congressional measure.

Once considered a sure thing, the congressional resolution has lost steam in recent weeks following intense opposition and ominous statements from Ankara, including signs that anger over the resolution could prompt Turkey to launch attacks into northern Iraq against Kurdish terrorists.

In Washington, the resolution has been criticized by Turkish lobbyists and former secretaries of state, eight of whom wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) urging her not to allow the issue to come to a floor vote.

Jewish groups also have expressed concern that passage could lead Turkey to downgrade its partnership with Israel and imperil the tiny Turkish Jewish community.

Few expect that the ADL will decide to endorse the congressional resolution. But Boston leaders have been pushing to have the organization issue a clearer statement on genocide in the hope of stanching the flow of communities defecting from No Place for Hate.

One Boston leader described the opposition coming from the top as "hand-to-hand combat."

Source: http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/20071031adlshowdown.html

10/31 JPost: Rattling the Cage: Jews of power, Jews of truth

2007-10-31T20:27:00.000-07:00

Rattling the Cage: Jews of power, Jews of truth

Larry Derfner , THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 31, 2007

How long are Israel and its lobby in Washington going to go on living this ridiculous, transparent lie? How long are they going to hock the world about the Holocaust while acting as Turkey's number two accomplice, number one being the White House, in denying the Armenian genocide? Again, Congress has demonstrated it won't recognize that the Ottoman Empire, Turkey's predecessor, deliberately wiped out about 1.5 million Armenians in 1915-17. Again, the president of the United States has scared Congress off with a big assist from the Anti-Defamation League and other American Jewish "defense" organizations. (Historically, the American Jewish Committee has led the Israel lobby's effort to shut Congress up about the genocide and the Ottoman Empire's culpability.)

This time, the main reason given was American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Without Turkey's good will and cooperation, it was argued, the US would not be able to get weapons and equipment to its soldiers in battle. This is obviously a serious concern - but the White House, Israel and the Israel lobby have been hushing up the Armenian genocide for decades, when there were no American troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. This is not the real reason.

The real reason is that in war and peace, Turkey is a critical strategic ally and economic partner of the US and Israel, and the US and Israel do not want to risk upsetting this ally, so, with help in Congress from the ADL, AJC and the like, they enforce the lie that there was no Armenian genocide. Or if there was a genocide, it is not clear who was responsible. Or if it is clear that the Ottoman Empire was responsible, it is not clear that Turkey should inherit the guilt.

"This is a matter for historians to decide," goes the Israeli and American Jewish establishment line.

The historians, however, decided a long time ago. More than 125 Holocaust scholars - including Elie Wiesel, the late Raul Hilberg, Deborah Lipstadt, Daniel Goldhagen and Yehuda Bauer - have signed ads in The New York Times demanding acknowledgment that the Ottoman Turks committed genocide against the Armenians.

Wiesel testified in Congress on behalf of such a resolution. The International Association of Genocide Scholars - which is studded with Jewish names - holds the same view as a matter of course.

SOMEWHERE around three reputable historians disagree. They are led by Bernard Lewis, who may be the world's foremost scholar of Islam, but who, among world scholars, is certainly the foremost enthusiast of Turkey.

There are probably fewer historians who doubt the Armenian genocide than there are scientists who doubt evolution. Maybe we should reserve judgment on evolution, too.

A key Jewish argument for continuing this policy of denial is that breaking it would endanger the 20,000 or so Jews of Turkey, whose leaders have warned against crossing their government on this matter. But if Israel and its lobby in Washington really believe this, then they've as much as sentenced the 25,000 Jews in Iran to death, haven't they? Is anyone in the Israeli government or AIPAC suggesting that they lower the volume on Iran for the sake of Iranian Jewry? So the Turkish Jewish community isn't a real reason for denying the Armenian genocide, it's another excuse.

The one and only genuine moral argument for public Jewish denial of the Armenian genocide is the Jewish people's historical debt to Turkey. For 500 years, up through the time of the Nazis, Turkey gave life-saving refuge to Jews running from persecution, and did so in a welcoming spirit.

This historical truth can't be denied, either. And it presents Jews with a heavy moral dilemma. For Jews to recognize the Armenian genocide is an undeniable act of disloyalty to Turkey, to which we owe an unpayable debt of gratitude.

But I don't think it's terminal disloyalty, I don't think it's unforgivable disloyalty. With time, it's not something that can't be made up for with other acts of Jewish or Israeli gratitude.

Denying the Armenian genocide, on the other hand, is an unforgivable, terminal betrayal not only of the Armenians, but of truth, of decency, of the legacy of the Holocaust, of ourselves as Jews, of ourselves as people.

What's more, the Jewish moral debt to Turkey is at best a secondary motive in Israel's and the Israel lobby's campaign of genocide denial. Their overriding concern is Israeli security and economics.

Which, of course, is a 100% legitimate concern. Security and economics are the primary concern of every nation, and Israel is part of the family of nations. But the thing is this: If Israel and the Israel lobby can pursue practical self-interest alone, they can't insist that the rest of the world act like Righteous Gentiles.

They can't go on intoning that "the world stood silent" during the Holocaust when they - the leaders of the Jewish world - act as front-line enforcers of silence on the Armenian genocide.

It's one or the other: morality or realpolitik. As a nation of the world, Israel, along with its lobby in Washington, have always chosen realpolitik. What they may not know, however, is that by now the world sees through them.

The world doesn't take seriously what an Israeli leader or an American Jewish macher has to say about the Six Million, not when it sees that same Israeli leader and American Jewish macher shushing everyone over the murders of 1.5 million other innocents.

Thankfully, those politicians are not the only Jewish voices on the Armenian genocide, or on the Holocaust. There is also Wiesel, Lipstadt, Goldhagen, Bauer, Congressman Adam Schiff, Yossi Sarid and many, many others.

Either you value truth first, or you value power first. Every Jew, every person, makes the choice.

Source: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380703974&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

10/30 Jewish Ledger: CCSU prof blasts candidacy of ADL staff person

2007-10-30T20:25:00.000-07:00

CCSU prof blasts candidacy of ADL staff person

By Judie Jacobson

Published: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 7:54 PM EDT

NEW BRITAIN-“What is your definition of anti-Semitism and can you provide examples of criticisms of Israel that are anti-Semitic?”

On the face of it, it seemed like an odd question for Dr. Jay Bergman, a history professor at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) to be asking of his colleague Dr. Sadanand Nanjundiah, a professor of physics who primarily teaches the introductory courses in physics, quantum mechanics and mathematical physics at the state-funded school located in New Britain.

But Bergman wasn’t discussing anything Nanjundiah had done in the classroom. Instead, his question came in response to a long e-mail Nanjundiah had sent to the CCSU faculty criticizing the inclusion of an Anti-Defamation League staff member on the short list for the position of Chief Diversity Officer at CCSU.

“It is very troubling to read that one of the candidates for the Executive Assistant to the President/Chief Diversity Officer position at CCSU is identified as ‘currently the Assistant Director for the A World of Difference Institute of the Anti-Defamation League in Hamden, CT,” wrote Nanjundiah, referring to Deborah Colucci, who in her current position helps to oversee a program within the ADL that provides anti-bias training to schools, campuses, workplaces, and communities. Colucci is one of three candidates for the CCSU position selected from among more than 150 applicants to visit the campus for an open forum, to which all faculty were welcome to come.

In an e-mail sent via the university’s list serve to the entire faculty, Nanjundiah “reminded all of the recent history of the ADL.”

“(The ADL’s) focus has become one of defending Israel’s ‘pristine’ image, come what may, and anyone (not even excluding ex-President Carter, Nobel Peace Prize winner and renowned for his humanitarian work) who dares to criticize the government of Israel for its harsh (apartheid-like) treatment of Palestinians in illegally occupied Palestine. Most recently, the ADL has engineered the cancellation of talks by well known scholars like Prof. Tony Judt of NYU, Profs. Walt and Mearsheimer (authors of the book “Israel Lobby”) at various institutions merely because they were critical of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians or because they maintained that the actions of the Lobby were inimical to the interests of the U.S…The ADL’s method…is simple: label anyone who dares criticize Israel or the influence of its Lobby in determining U.S. policies in the Middle East to be ‘anti-Semitic,’ thereby squelching legitimate debate on Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and of the Lobby’s influence in determining U.S. foreign policy.”

And don’t think the long arm of the ADL stops there, Nanjundiah continued.

In case you didn’t know, he wrote, “The ADL has also been involved in pressuring Congress not to pass a resolution that recognizes the Armenian genocide so as not to jeopardize the ties between Israel and Turkey.” Finally, as if for good measure, he added links to several web articles that “expose some of the actions of the ADL.”

In light of all that, wrote Nanjundiah, “…it would be utterly incongruous to consider anyone who comes from ADL for the position of ‘diversity officer’.”

Old habits

Not that this was the first time CCSU faculty had been briefed on the subject of Israel from their colleague. Nanjundiah, who received a degree in aeronautical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay and a PhD in physics from the University of Connecticut, has a well-known penchant for sharing his unflattering views of Israel and its supporters with other faculty via the school’s list-serv.

Likewise, he frequently speaks out on the subject online. For example, responding to what he called a “ludicrous article in defense of Israel” that appeared on the Media Monitors Network website in Oct. 2004, Nanjundiah wrote, “The reality is that Israel has been cleansing all of Palestine of its indigenous population, which is the real genocide in this region. But for die-hard Zionists, Israel can never do any wrong and any criticism or negative characterization of its belligerence or oppression is immediately called "anti-Semitic."

But while several of Nanjundiah’s colleagues have responded with criticism to his list-serv missives, most, including CCSU President Jack Miller, have preferred to sit quietly by and allow him the freedom to present his point of view.

Until now.

This time, Nanjundiah’s e-mail hit a nerve among those who saw it as a witch hunt of sorts.

“Substitute ‘Communist Party’ for the ADL and you are back to the blacklisting and suspicions of the 1950s,” wrote Paul Petterson, a political science professor. “If the organization a candidate worked for raises questions in your mind, go and speak with them directly at the interview process about your concerns. Treat them as we all should be treated n as individuals, with respect.”

Serafin Mendez-Mendez, a communications professor, announced his intention to evaluate all three candidates on their own merits. He also took aim at the anti-Semitic tone he detected in Nanjundiah’s note.

“I despite the potential anti-Semitic subtexts that I am seeing here lately,” he wrote. “The unfair targeting of ‘anything Jewish’ is making me every bit as angry as the Polydong cartoon,” he wrote, referring to a recent offensive cartoon in the school’s newspaper.

Bergman hammered Nanjundiah on his statement that the ADL “labels” those who criticize Israel as anti-Semitic.

“If you are going to criticize people and institutions for misusing the term, you really should indicate instances, hypothetical or real, in which the term is used correctly. Or is it your view that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist, and that it doesn’t exist because the term itself is meaningless?” he wrote.

Bergman was not surprised that Nanjundiah did not answer his query.

“I’ve asked him the same question before and he has never given me the courtesy of a response,” Bergman told the Ledger.

This time around, however, Bergman was pleased to hear from President Miller.

“It is wrong n indeed, grossly unfair n to label “Colucci’s candidacy as “inappropriate” because she works for a particular organization,” responded Miller in a list-serv e-mail to faculty. “Her education, training, and background make her a highly qualified candidate for the position.”

“Prof. Nanjundiah’s commentary, without even the professionalism and courtesy of posing questions to the candidate and allowing her to respond, is not what we should expect from a colleague.”

As the Ledger went to press, a decision on the selection of CCSU’s chief diversity officer had still not been announced.

Source: http://www.jewishledger.com/articles/2007/10/31/news/news05.txt

10/30 AAA: Diocese of The Armenian Church Sends Letter to ADL Chair

2007-10-30T20:24:00.000-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Karoon Panosyan
E-mail: kpanosyan@aaainc.org

Diocese of The Armenian Church Sends Letter to ADL Chair

Washington, DC -- The Armenian Assembly of America would like to call your attention to the following letter sent yesterday from Archbishop Khajag Barsamian of the Eastern Dioceses of the Armenian Church of America to the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Abraham Foxman, calling upon the ADL to condemn all genocide and crimes against humanity.

Below is the full text of the Archbishops letter to Foxman:

Dear Mr. Foxman,

I hope this letter finds you well. I know that you are preparing for a leadership meeting of the ADL so I wanted to follow-up on my letter of 28 August.

Again, I reiterate my appreciation for the ADL leadership taking up the issue of the Armenian Genocide. I know that organizational change, especially on sensitive, long-standing policy issues is difficult, yet a further clarification will be important for our two communities.

The Jewish ethic of Tikkun Olam, perfecting our broken world, requires us all to move out of our comfort zones, especially when matters of justice and human rights are at stake. While the ADL’s position on the recognition of the genocide has become clearer, I urge you and your colleagues to take the next, necessary step and make unequivocally clear the condemnation of the Armenian Genocide. Only by removing any language the does not fully express uniform recognition and condemnation in the most resolute terms possible, by the ADL and/or any other body, can the fullness of justice be achieved.

To acknowledge the Armenian Genocide only to speak against resolutions condemning it sets a terrible, moral precedent. Recognition leads to condemnation and without that, there can be no steps towards prevention. Recognition without condemnation does not promote justice. The last century, and sadly the first decade of this century, have seen man’s continued assault on the fundamental right to live, most notably in the Armenian Genocide, the Shoa, Cambodian Genocide, Rawandan Genocide, and sadly the Genocide that now rages on in Darfur. We cannot expect the protection of our own human rights if we are not courageous enough to speak out in favor of human rights for all. When the rights of our own human rights if we are not courageous enough to speak out in favor of human rights for all. When the rights of one are diminished, all are diminished.

As you know, in law, silence is tantamount to acquiescence, therefore we must not condone and therefore share in preferential selection of one race against another through our silence. We cannot allow the political considerations that whisper today to define our resolute condemnation of all crimes against humanity, for such a decision would resonate for eternity. We must give full and unwaivering voice to our commitment to humanity.

I urge you and all members of the ADL leadership, to join in removing all objections to the condemnation of any and every genocide and crime against humanity. Because of the good work the ADL has done throughout the decades you have a unique ability to speak out. Please use that voice resoundingly in this moral imperative.

With Prayers,

Archbishop Khajag Barsamian
Primate

Source: http://www.aaainc.org/index.php?id=486

10/30 Haaretz: Defining breach of trust

2007-10-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

Defining breach of trust By Shahar Ilan
(Extract)
Haaretz
Tue., October 30, 2007

Two and a half weeks ago the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee decided to recognize the Armenian genocide - that Turkey had perpetrated genocide against its Armenian population. The harsh Turkish response to this decision, and the pressure exerted by Turkey, resulted in the decision to not bring it before Congress for approval, and this worsened the crisis even more. The Knesset, it turns out, was a party to the pressure.

A week after the House Committee's decision, a meeting was held in Washington as part of the joint security dialogue between the U.S. Congress and the Knesset, led by Republican Senator John Kyle of Arizona and MK Yuval Steinitz (Likud). The MKs also met with the committee, and the representatives asked the Israelis what they thought of their decision; if they should continue with the process of recognizing the Armenian holocaust; and about the status of relations between Turkey and Israel.

Steinitz replied that cooperation between Israel and Turkey is very good. Regarding choosing between the issue of relations with Turkey and clarifying historical truth, Steinitz has no doubts as to which the Americans should favor.

"The massacres happened 90 years ago, during the Ottoman Period, but today there are only two Muslim countries that are partners in the war on terror, and who maintain joint efforts with the United States and Israel: Turkey and Jordan," Steinitz said. "Turkey deserves a commendation."

Steinitz added that Turkey made a suggestion that seems reasonable: to establish an international committee of historians, before whom both parties would open their archives.

Among the delegation of MKs was Meretz-Yahad Chair Yossi Beilin. When Beilin was deputy foreign minister in 1994, he told the Knesset plenum that what had happened was genocide; had aroused deep anger in Turkey; and had become the darling of the Armenians. Beilin also told the members of Congress that there is no doubt that there was a genocide. Still, he did not demand that they continue with the recognition process. Beilin noted that they have to consider the risk to relations with Turkey, as well as the fact that Israel has been drawn into this conflict.

The truth is that even before the Congressional committee's decision, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan met with Steinitz during a visit to Israel, and ask Steinitz's assistance in opposing the decision. Steinitz says that he mentioned this, of his own volition, to several congressmen. He believes that the Israeli position influenced the shelving of the committee's decision. The Armenian holocaust will have to wait for a time when Turkey's strategic importance declines.

source: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/918285.html

10/29 Slate: Christopher Hitchens: The US should be squeezing Turkey, not the other way around

2007-10-29T20:21:00.000-07:00

Divide and Conquer

The United States should be squeezing Turkey, not the other way around.

By Christopher Hitchens

Posted Monday, Oct. 29, 2007, at 11:36 AM ET

In the past century, the principal victims of genocide or attempted genocide have been, or
at least have prominently included, the Armenians, the Jews, and the Kurds. During most of the month of October, events and politicians both conspired to set these three peoples at one another's throats. What is there to be learned from this fiasco for humanity?

To recapitulate: At the very suggestion that the U.S. House of Representatives might finally pass a long-proposed resolution recognizing the 1915 massacres in Armenia as a planned act of "race murder" (that was U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau's term for it at a time when the word genocide had not yet been coined), the Turkish authorities redoubled their threat to invade the autonomous Kurdish-run provinces of northern Iraq. And many American Jews found themselves divided between their sympathy for the oppressed and the slaughtered and their commitment to the state interest of Israel, which maintains a strategic partnership with Turkey, and in particular with Turkey's highly politicized armed forces.

To illuminate this depressing picture, one might begin by offering a few distinctions. In 1991, in northern Iraq, where you could still see and smell the gassed and poisoned towns and villages of Kurdistan, I heard Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan say that Kurds ought to apologize to the Armenians for the role they had played as enforcers for the Ottomans during the time of the genocide. Talabani, who has often repeated that statement, is now president of Iraq. (I would regard his unforced statement as evidence in itself, by the way, in that proud peoples do not generally offer to apologize for revolting crimes that they did not, in fact, commit.) So, of course, it was upon him, both as an Iraqi and as a Kurd, that Turkish guns and missiles were trained last month.

And here, a further distinction: Many of us who are ardent supporters of Kurdish rights and aspirations have the gravest reservations about the so-called Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. This is a Stalinist cult organization, roughly akin to a Middle Eastern Shining Path group. (Its story, and the story of its bizarre leader Abdullah Öcalan, are well told in Aliza Marcus' new book Blood And Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence.) The attempt of this thuggish faction to exploit the new zone of freedom in Iraqi Kurdistan is highly irresponsible and plays directly into the hands of those forces in the Turkish military who want to resurrect Kemalist chauvinism as a weapon against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, which it sees as soft on Kurdish demands. There's a paradox here, in that the uniformed satraps who claim to defend Turkish secularism are often more reactionary than the recently re-elected and broadly Islamist Justice and Development Party. The generals vetoed a meeting earlier this year between Abdullah Gul—now president of Turkey and then foreign minister—and the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq. This alone shows that they are using the border question and the PKK as a wedge issue for domestic politics.

This is enough complexity to be going on with, but Congress and the executive branch have been handling it with appalling amateurishness. The Armenian resolution is an old story. I can remember when it was sponsored by Sen. Robert Dole and stonewalled by President Bill Clinton. What a shame that we didn't get it firmly on the record decades ago. But now a House and a White House that can barely bring themselves to utter the word Kurdish are both acting as if nothing mattered except Turkish amour-propre. And, as a consequence, the United States and its friends are being squeezed by Ankara instead of—to put it shortly—the other way around. This is disgracefully undignified.

In 2003, the Turkish authorities, who had been parasitic on American and NATO support for several decades, refused to allow our bases in Turkey to be employed for a "northern front" in the removal of Saddam Hussein unless their own forces were allowed to follow us into Iraqi Kurdistan. The Bush administration quite rightly refused this bargain. The damage done by Turkey's subsequent fit of pique was enormous—nobody ever mentions it, but if the coalition had come at Baghdad from two directions, a number of Sunni areas would have got the point (of irreversible regime change) a lot sooner than they did. The rogue PKK presence was not then a hot issue; Turkey simply wished to pre-empt the emergence of any form of Iraqi Kurdish self-government that could be an incitement or encouragement to its own huge Kurdish minority.

So, let us be clear on a few things. The European Union, to which Turkey has applied for membership with warm American support, has insisted on recognition of Kurdish language rights and political rights within Turkey. We can hardly ask for less. If the Turks wish to continue lying officially about what happened to the Armenians, then we cannot be expected to oblige them by doing the same (and should certainly resent and repudiate any threats against ourselves or our allies that would ensue from our Congress affirming the truth). Then there remains the question of Cyprus, where Turkey maintains an occupation force that has repeatedly been condemned by a thesaurus of U.N. resolutions ever since 1974. It is not our conduct that should be modified by Turkey's arrogance; we do a favor to the democratization and modernization of that country by insisting that it get its troops out of Cyprus, pull its forces back from the border with Iraq, face the historic truth about Armenia, and in other ways cease to act as if the Ottoman system were still in operation.

Source: http://www.slate.com/id/2176842

10/28 Philadelphia Jewish Voice: Interview with Elie Wiesel

2007-10-28T20:18:00.000-07:00

Interview with Elie Wiesel

-- Charles Smolover

Elie Wiesel is a Romanian-born French-Jewish novelist, political activist, Nobel Laureate, Holocaust survivor and outspoken advocate for justice. He is the author of over 40 books, the best known of which is Night, a memoir that describes his experiences during the Holocaust. He is attending the AIPAC Summit in Philadelphia at the end of October and spoke recently with the Philadelphia Jewish Voice.

PJV: You will be in Philadelphia next week for the AIPAC Summit and you are no doubt aware of The Israel Lobby, the critical book about AIPAC by Walt and Mearsheimer. Setting aside the many factual errors in the book, is it possible that there is a kernel of truth to their argument, that AIPAC’s power hinders United States politicians from offering legitimate criticisms of Israeli policies?

I have not read the book, but I have read about it and read some excepts. The people who have criticized it are responsible people and I have confidence in their judgment. Nevertheless, I cannot really comment having not read it myself. As to the general question you ask, as to AIPAC itself, I think AIPAC is a useful, important and vocal organization. I think the Jewish community needs it and I think Israel needs it. Does it mean that because of AIPAC some statesmen or politicians feel threatened? I don’t believe that. We live in a democracy. Nobody is afraid to speak up. This is not Stalinist Russia. AIPAC is good be cause it mobilizes all those Jews who love the Jewish state and the Jewish people, but I don’t think it represents a threat to those who disagree with the policies of the Israeli government.

PJV: The subject of the Armenian Genocide has been in the news. The U.S. Congress has been debating whether to officially recognize the events in question as genocide, and the Turks, to no one’s surprise, are not pleased. Some in the Jewish community are reluctant to touch this issue for fear of damaging Turkey’s relationship with Israel. What is your take on this issue?

I have been fighting for the right of the Armenian people to remember for years and years. How could I, who has fought all my life for Jewish remembrance, tell the Armenians they have no right to remember? But I understand the administration's view. Fortunately, as a private citizen I don’t have to worry about Turkey’s response. But I do feel that had there been the word “genocide” in those days, what happened to the Armenians would have been called genocide. Everyone agrees there was mass murder, but the word came later. I believe the Armenians are the victims and, as a Jew, I should be on their side.

PJV: If the Armenians have a right to remember, don’t the Turks have an obligation to take some responsibility?

No one is asking for the Turks to take responsibility. All the Armenians want is the right to remember. Seven generations separate us from the events that happened in World War I and nobody in his right mind would say that today's Turks are responsible for what happened. The Armenians don’t want reparations, they don’t even want an apology. They want the right to remember. The Turks would gain a lot if they simply acknowledged the reality of what happened. I have spoke with Turkish leaders at the highest level and their attitude about this issue is totally irrational except for one thing which I do understand. They don’t want to be compared to Hitler. But of course, nobody does.

PJV: Is anti-Semitism on the rise in Europe?

I am not sure I would characterize the situation in Europe in terms of whether there is a rise in anti-Semitism there. Europe clearly has an anti-Semitic past and there are clearly anti-Semites in Europe today. The question is whether they are part of a growing movement. I don’t think they are. But there is a trend, a trend of being anti-Israel, which you also see in American in certain circles. This anti-Israel feeling, when taken to an extreme, becomes anti-Semitic.

PJV: What about in France? And what is the impact of the election of Nicolas Sarkozy?

This anti-Israel trend is certainly true in France. But I have a feeling that Sarkozy and his government will take steps to contain it, to mute it.

PJV: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will soon convene yet another U.S.- sponsored conference to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Absent some fundamental change in the status quo, do you expect this conference to have a different result than the many that have preceded it?

You now how dangerous prophesy is. As a French poet once said, the future isn't what it used to be. But I can tell you that the current situation in the Middle East cannot go on indefinitely. People are tired. I organized the first meeting between Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert. They fell into each other’s arms. It was quite moving. They sat around the table, they ate breakfast and they discussed a range of issues – scientific cooperation, economics, education. Everything looked great. Three weeks later, Hamas and Hezbollah ignite new violence and the process ground to a halt. But we cannot stop trying to make peace. We cannot stop. Are we justified in feeling more hopeful about these new talks? I don’t know. There is no telling how terrorism can effect the situation. That is the evil power of terror.

PJV: Much has been written lately about Israel entering a so called post-Zionist period that is marked by some disturbing trends, including a rise in draft dodging, increased tension between secular and religious Israelis and a growing disparity between the wealthiest and poorest levels of Israeli society. As a frequent visitor to Israel, what is your sense of the zeitgeist?

I go to Israel at least three or four times a year. I hear about these trends and it is depressing. But I believe it is a passing phase and that Israel’s citizenry has the resources to overcome it.

PJV: One last little question: What is the single greatest challenge facing the Jewish people today?

Years ago when I was a journalist, David Ben-Gurion asked me to go to America and meet with various leaders and explore the question of who is a Jew. That was a big concern of his. Today I think the challenge is understanding what it means to be a Jew in today’s world. Of course, various communities of Jews have answers. Zionists will say that being a Jew is about making aliyah. Orthodox Jews may tell you it’s about performing mitzvot. But I think we need a deeper understanding, especially today when we are threatened around the world by the rise of fanaticism. It would like to see a high level conference of intellectuals, thinkers, moralists and philosophers convened to address this question.

Source: http://www.pjvoice.com/v29/29301wiesel.aspx

10/28 Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Armenian groups slam Ahmadinejad honors

2007-10-28T20:17:00.000-07:00

Armenians slam Ahmadinejad honors

Ben Harris

Armenian Americans slammed the decision by a university in the Armenian capital of Yerevan to honor Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Published: 10/28/2007

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Armenian Americans slammed the decision by a university in the Armenian capital of Yerevan to honor Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad during a state visit to Armenia last week was presented with a gold medal and an honorary doctorate Monday from Yerevan State University.

An editorial in the Armenian weekly, the house organ of the Armenian National Committee of America, condemned the university, noting that Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier who has disregarded historical research.

"The university's decision to bestow an honorary doctorate is simply unacceptable," the editorial said. "We are surprised that as the officials in charge of the alma mater of a nation that rose from the ashes of another genocide, they did not take this fact into consideration before deciding to award the honorary degree."

Ahmadinejad's visit came as Armenian Americans and their supporters continued to press for a resolution in Congress recognizing the World War I-era killings of Armenians by Turkey as genocide.

Part of their campaign has focused on the Anti-Defamation League, which initially refused to use the word genocide to describe the killings but backtracked amid opposition from its leadership in the Boston area -- home to one of the highest concentrations of Armenians in the country.

The ADL called the massacre of Armenians "tantamount to genocide."

Despite the shift the ADL, along with other major U.S. Jewish groups, continue to oppose a congressional resolution out of concern for its impact on Turkish ties with Israel and the United States.

Consequently, the Armenian activists' campaign against the ADL has not eased.

A Web site, No Place For Denial, continues to accuse the ADL of genocide denial, alleging that its statements on the subject have been ambiguous, a charge the ADL denies. The continuing momentum has led several communities in the Boston area to end their partnerships with a highly regarded anti-bigotry program sponsored by the ADL.

Dikran Kaligian, chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America's Eastern Region, rejected the suggestion to mount a similar campaign against Yerevan State University, asserting that such a comparison was "apples and oranges."

The proper analogue to the ADL, Kaligian said, is not Yerevan State but ANCA, which is the largest Armenian grass-roots organization in the United States. The organization is an affiliate of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, an international political party founded in 1890.

Kaligian said ANCA has never taken an ambiguous position on the Holocaust. The ADL, by contrast, has endorsed a proposal for Armenia and Turkey to form a joint commission to arrive at a resolution of the issue, a step Armenians adamantly reject.

"The ANCA has never called for further study of the Holocaust," Kaligian said. "That's the analogy you have to make, and I think we've been very clear on it."

Both Kaligian and Sevag Arzoumanian, who runs No Place for Denial, agree that it was appropriate for Ahmadinejad to be invited to Armenia, a landlocked country that depends on good relations with its neighbors for trade and energy. But they said bestowing an academic honor was one step too far.

In an e-mail to JTA, Arzoumanian wrote, "How can Yerevan State University give an academic degree, however symbolic, to someone who takes the intellectually dishonest position that there needs to be further research and academic conferences to determine if the Holocaust occurred? What were they thinking? I think the YSU made a terrible error of judgment, both academically and morally."

Source: http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/20071028Yerevanahmadinejad.html

10/28 Christian Science Monitor: 'Genocide' talk tests Israel-Turkey ties

2007-10-28T20:15:00.000-07:00

'Genocide' talk tests Israel-Turkey ties

Jewish support for Congress to call an Armenian massacre 'genocide' has strained relations between the longtime allies.

By Ilene R. Prusher Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

JERUSALEM

It's not that often that one finds an archbishop in long black vestments making his way down the hill from Jerusalem's Old City for a political protest at Israel's Foreign Ministry.

But for Archbishop Aris Shirvanian, these are not ordinary times, and matters of conscience are at hand. They begin with the stories that his father told him about the atrocities he witnessed as a 9-year-old, which ended in the death of his father's parents and uncles. The year was 1915, and Mr. Shirvanian's father escaped, like many others, to the Holy Land, which has a prominent Armenian community.

They ended in Washington, where a congressional resolution recognizing the mass killing of Armenians in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire as a genocide was tabled late last week amid intense domestic and international pressure.

Much of that pressure came not just from Turkey but from Israel. While some American Jewish groups had taken up the cause of the Armenian genocide, the Jewish State was busy lobbying on behalf of their Turkish allies, rare friends in the Muslim world who maintain both military and economic ties with Israel. Turkey, the first Muslim country to recognize Israel, has long rejected the idea that the killings of Armenians should be called a genocide. They say that many Turks, as well as Armenians, were killed at the time.

The Israeli stance – following an Oct. 10 House committee vote in favor of passing a genocide resolution – prompted the first protest of its kind by this country's usually apolitical Armenian Orthodox community, which numbers about 5,000, not including approximately 20,000 Jewish Armenians who have immigrated here over the years.

With Israel's strategic relationship with Turkey in mind, the Armenian question has become an untouchable topic. The protest went virtually uncovered by most of the local media and got noticed by foreign papers only.

To Shirvanian, who was born in pre-state Haifa and spent 30 years in the US before returning to Jerusalem, this is no reason to give up now.

"This was the first genocide in the 20th century, and the Jewish one followed. Passing this is as important as recognition of the Jewish Holocaust by the whole world," he says.

"If there's no recognition of such heinous acts, then the crime may be repeated," Shirvanian says. "We want this because Turkish leaders have never expressed any remorse for what happened to the Armenian people. Secondly, most Armenians hope there will be some kind of reparation, like there was to the Jewish people."

Turkey made its viewpoint clear during the visit here earlier this month of its foreign minister, Ali Babacan, who told several Israeli media outlets that Turks believe the resolution amounts to a Jewish and Armenian cabal to besmirch Turkey, and that he hoped Israel would intervene.

"All of a sudden the perception in Turkey right now is that the Jewish people ... and the Armenian lobbies are now hand in hand trying to defame Turkey, and trying to condemn Turkey and the Turkish people," Mr. Babacan told The Jerusalem Post.

Turkey's ambassador to Israel, Namik Tan, explained in an interview last week that it's natural for Turkey to ask Israel for help in Washington.

Mr. Tan says that one major reason the genocide resolution got as far as it did was the decision of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) – a major Jewish-American organization dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism and bigotry worldwide – to come out in support of the Armenian genocide resolution.

"We cannot deny the fact the Israel is the heart of the Jewish communities worldwide, and there is a very strong and effective interaction between Israel and the Jewish community. We have a right to ask our Israeli friends to talk to their friends in the US," he says.

"There is another fact, that eight of the sitting members of the foreign relations committee are of Jewish descent and they are ardent supporters of this resolution, and all voted in favor of it, which encouraged and bolstered the ambitions of the Armenians and the ADL statement," Tan adds. The ADL, he says, "has confused the hearts and minds of so many Jewish institutions."

He warned that the resolution's passage would do additional damage to Israel's image in Turkey.

"When something like this resolution passes, it really offends the Turkish people, and it becomes impossible to explain to the rank-and-file people that it is not related to Israel," he says.

An Israeli government official, who asked not to be named, says that Turkey's conception of Israel's influence over Jews abroad is distorted.

"The whole idea that Israel can control the American Jewish community is obviously a bit of a misunderstanding of reality," the official says.

Tan says there is no proof to support the genocide claims and reiterated what he says is a longstanding offer to bring Turkish and Armenian historians together to study the issue.

That, says George Hintlian, historian of the Armenian community of Jerusalem, is not an option.

"For us," he says, "it's like sitting with David Irving," a self-styled British historian famous for questioning facts surrounding the Holocaust. "Do you sit with deniers? Modest deniers?"

Mr. Hintlian says his father was 17 years old during a famous death march in which his grandfather died. He believes it's only a matter of time, perhaps 10 or 15 years, before the US and others recognize the events of 1915 as a genocide.

In the meantime, he brings along a copy of the grim "map of the Armenian genocide," copies of which paper the alleyways of the Armenian quarter of the Old City, for anyone interested in the issue. The posters often get ripped down or defaced; activists in the community soon replace them.

"I think the totality of the Israeli public and the press sympathizes with us, but this double-standard is so embarrassing for Israeli intellectuals that it's hard for anyone here to speak about it," he says. "We have a psychological burden for the next generation. The American-Jewish community is saying that this stain should be taken away from the people of the Holocaust, but Israel is acting pragmatically."

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev says, "The process in the House of Representatives is an internal American affair and we're not involved in that. Our position on the Armenian tragedy is well known and has not changed." The Foreign Ministry issued a statement a few months ago noting the "tragedy" that occurred in 1915, which included "mass killings."

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1029/p07s03-wome.html?page=1

10/27 The Independent: Survivors protest at Israel's stance on Armenian genocide

2007-10-27T20:13:00.000-07:00

Survivors protest at Israel's stance on Armenian genocide

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

Published: 27 October 2007

She has no memory of her father or mother. She was abandoned as an infant –it almost certainly saved her life because she was found on the side of the road by an American missionary – on one of the death marches in 1915 from Gurun, in central Anatolia. Even her name was given to her by the Near East Relief orphanage in Lebanon where she grew up. Sadly, she says, most of her fellow survivors in Jerusalem of the Armenian genocide have died.

But Mary Kevorkian, a sprightly widow of 93, is proud of the independent life she leads – including the daily shopping and cleaning of her home in Jerusalem's Old City. "I do all my own work," she says cheerfully. "I don't need anybody."

This week she joined more than 100 other, rather younger, demonstrators –about 10 per cent of a once much larger Jerusalem Armenian community dating back to Roman times – outside the Foreign Ministry. They were protesting against what they believe is the Israeli government's use of its considerable lobbying influence on Capitol Hill to try to thwart the bill which would mean US recognition of the genocide in which 1.5 million Armenians, including Mrs Kevorkian's parents, died.

Turkey, which is infuriated by the Democrat-sponsored bill and which enjoys better relations with Israel than any other Muslim country, has made it clear it expects its ally to help halt its progress. Israel, like Britain, has in the past expressed sympathy for what it accepts were massacres but stopped short of calling them genocide.

Mrs Kevorkian, who has lived in Jerusalem since 1939, came to the protest on a hot October day even though she dislikes thinking about the subject. She says that when she sees banners commemorating the terrible events between 1915 and 1923, "I remember why I did not have my father and mother. When I read about the genocide I start to cry."

This week, however, the banners were focused on Turkey's concerted efforts to ensure the bill, having been approved this month by the US Congress Foreign Affairs Committee, is not passed by the full House of Representatives. As protesters, including a choir of uniformed schoolgirls, sang the Armenian national anthem and the Lord's Prayer in Armenian they brandished placards aimed at the Israeli public, including: "Today's denial is tomorrow's genocide/holocaust".

On Thursday, the bill's sponsors, led by the California congressman Adam Schiff, agreed to postpone the debate, bowing to fears that it could precipitate a full-blown crisis in US-Turkish relations at exactly the time when the US is trying to persuade Turkey not to launch an invasion of northern Iraq against the Kurdish PKK.

Turkey, a main conduit of supplies to American forces in Iraq, has also warned passage of the bill could hamper the US war effort. But Mr Schiff, who is Jewish and has a significant Armenian constituency, and his co-sponsors have made it clear they will bring it back for debate in the coming months.

The organisers of this week's demonstration here accuse the Israeli government of having already twice – in 1989 and 2000 – "openly interfered" in similar Congressional votes despite opinion polls suggesting that most Israelis favour the recognition sought in the bill. In urging it not to do so again, the demonstrators were joined by two prominent Israeli politicians, the Meretz Party Knesset member Haim Oron and a former minister in the government of Yizthak Rabin, Yair Tsaban.

Mr Oron said there was a natural Knesset majority for recognition, including the right-wing Likud, but it needed to overcome pressure from a government determined to maintain close ties with Turkey.

Mr Tsaban said he was supporting the protest "as a member of humanity born in the 20th century which witnessed all kinds of genocides, of which the worst was the Holocaust, and of course as a Jew". Mr Tsaban, two of whose grandparents were exterminated in Auschwitz, added: "I feel that is their will that I should support this campaign against denial of the genocide."

George Hintlian, an Armenian community spokesman, said the refusal of a modern country such as Turkey to take responsibility for the genocide was unique, as it was that a "nation that has gone through the Holocaust should be helping the denial".

Mark Regev, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said the Congressional bill was an "internal US affair" and the Israeli view of the "tragic events" that engulfed the Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire was well known.

Source: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3101947.ece

10/26 Watertown Tab: Boyajian: The Greenway is No Place for the Anti-Defamation League

2007-10-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

Boyajian: The Greenway is No Place for the Anti-Defamation League

By David Boyajian

Fri Oct 26, 2007, 06:43 AM EDT

WATERTOWN - The magnificent New Center for Arts and Culture, sponsored by the Combined Jewish Philanthropies and the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston, will probably soon rise on Boston’s new Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.

But suppose — hypothetically — that the chairperson of the Greenway Conservancy, which is charged with the future maintenance of the Greenway, had been impeding final approval of the New Center’s construction. Suppose, too, that he or she was a leading member of a Holocaust-denying organization that also opposed Holocaust resolutions in Congress. Impossible, you say?

Probably, but the Armenian Heritage Park is actually undergoing just such an ordeal. The Mass. Pike, which owns the Greenway, approved the Armenian Park in 2005, but construction has been held up, mostly by Greenway Conservancy Chairperson Peter Meade.

Meade sits on the board of the New England Anti-Defamation League. As the national and international media have reported, ADL has worked with Turkey to deny the Armenian genocide of 1915-23 and to defeat Armenian Genocide affirmation by Congress.

It is a conflict of interest, therefore, for a person with strong ADL ties to sit in judgment of anything Armenian.

Peter Meade — he’s Catholic, not Jewish — is a longtime vice president of Blue Cross Blue Shield and travels in Boston’s elite corporate and political circles. He is an outspoken supporter of Israel, whose government has long aligned itself with Turkey in refusing to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Interestingly, Meade was instrumental in getting Blue Cross to fund ADL’s “No Place for Hate” anti-bias programs, which are now mired in scandal because of ADL’s genocide denials. Blue Cross was the first company that ADL certified as “No Place for Hate.”

Why does Meade oppose the Armenian Park? He says that Conservancy policy bans “memorials” on the Greenway. Part of the Armenian Park will, indeed, commemorate both the Armenian Genocide and all genocides.

However, the alleged “no-memorials” policy has never been written down or formalized, and the Mass. Pike itself has no such policy. Indeed, there are or will be many memorials on, next to and near the Greenway.

For example, the Greenway’s Chinatown Park contains the Tiananmen Square Massacre memorial. A memorial for community leader Mary Sou Hou is in the works.

The Greenway’s North End Park has a lengthy Memorial Railing that will honor the neighborhood’s past Irish, Italian, Jewish and other immigrants. Conservancy Executive Director Nancy Brennan is promoting a Mother’s Memorial Walkway with named bricks in the Wharf District Parks.

The Greenway itself memorializes the venerated Kennedy matriarch, while underneath runs the Tip O’Neill tunnel.

Christopher Columbus Park, which abuts the Greenway, contains the Beirut U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, the Frank S. Christian Memorial and the Rose Kennedy Memorial Garden honoring the Gold Star Mothers of WW II.

It looks like the Conservancy’s “no memorials” policy may be a “no Armenians” policy.

Steps from the Greenway are the Holocaust Memorial’s six towers of glass 54 feet high with steam rising from subterranean chambers named after concentration camps. The memorial also commemorates Poles and other victims of Nazi Germany. It is impressive, somber and moving.

Nearby are the 1956 Hungarian Freedom Fighters Memorial, the Irish Famine Memorial, and other memorials too numerous to mention.

The Armenian Park and a wide-ranging human rights lecture series at Fanueil Hall are permanently endowed by the Massachusetts Armenian community and endorsed by the North End/Waterfront Residents Association.

It has been alleged that the Armenian Park would be out of place as too ethnic. Yet the Greenway’s Chinatown Park will, quite properly, feature various Asian cultural elements, including waterfalls and streams based on Feng Shui.

The New Center, “rooted in Jewish culture,” was designed and funded by Jews. Its director and board are Jewish. Every event it has held thus far, in non-Greenway venues, has centered on a Jewish theme, such as the 1933 Nazi Book Burning. The New Center will surely also be commemorating the Holocaust in many ways, and rightly so.

Thus the Greenway does have ethnic projects.
We forgot to mention that Peter Meade was instrumental in having the world-famous bridge near the northern end of the Greenway named after Lenny Zakim, the late, respected regional ADL director. He also co-chaired its Dedication Committee and is an adviser to the Lenny Zakim Fund. Not surprisingly, Meade has won ADL’s prestigious Chairperson’s Award.

We should also add that national ADL’s recent alleged acknowledgment of the genocide, which implied that Turkey did not intend to kill Armenians, knowingly contravened the UN’s official 1948 definition of genocide.

Peter Meade is an accomplished and generous man, and I am not accusing him or anyone of impropriety. However, a top ADL leader must recuse himself from any matter relating to Armenians. This is unfortunate but necessary.

Meanwhile, the ADL and kindred organizations need to halt their Turkish-organized proxy war against the Armenian people.

David Boyajian lives in Newton.

Source: http://www.wickedlocal.com/watertown/news/opinions/x357268519

10/26 NYTimes: U.S. and Turkey Thwart Armenian Genocide Bill

2007-10-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

October 26, 2007

U.S. and Turkey Thwart Armenian Genocide Bill

By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 — With backing from more than half of the House this summer, proponents of a resolution condemning the Armenian genocide were confident that they would finally prevail in their quest for Congressional recognition.

Adding to their optimism, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was a longtime backer of the resolution, which had been pushed mainly by her fellow Californians, and was committed to bringing it to a House vote.

But supporters of the measure were not prepared for the vehement opposition of two powerful governments — Turkey, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, which historians say conducted the genocide, and the United States, which needs Turkey’s help in Iraq. Their combined resistance caused the resolution to falter, embarrassing the speaker on a high-profile foreign policy front.

On Thursday, supporters surrendered, at least for now, telling Ms. Pelosi they were willing to wait until next year. “We believe that a large majority of our colleagues want to support a resolution recognizing the genocide on the House floor and that they will do so, provided the timing is more favorable,” the four chief sponsors said in a letter to Ms. Pelosi.

The faltering of the push to denounce the genocide illustrates what can happen when domestic politics collide with international affairs and how treacherous that can be for Congressional leaders like Ms. Pelosi, who came under criticism this year for a trip to Syria. It also turned a near triumph into a disappointment for those who believe Congress has a responsibility to send a message on past inhumanities to prevent future ones.

“We certainly thought it would be a very tough fight, but it was a much more lopsided one than we expected,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, a California Democrat and a main sponsor of the bill. Once Democrats gained control of Congress in January, supporters of the measure mobilized, seeing a way clear to the final vote that had eluded them because of opposition first from the Clinton administration and then from the Bush White House.

Ms. Pelosi as well as Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the new majority leader, were dedicated proponents of the resolution that would put the House on record as defining the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 as genocide. The crisis in Darfur, in Sudan, had raised public consciousness about genocide as well.

“This issue had a constituency, and there was a lot of momentum due to the switch in leadership and Darfur,” said Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America.

It did not hurt that Armenians are an influential bloc in California, Ms. Pelosi’s home, and that the resolution was a top priority of California House members of both parties, including Mr. Schiff and two other Democrats, Brad Sherman and Anna G. Eshoo. Ms. Eshoo is a lawmaker of Armenian heritage who is a close friend of Ms. Pelosi’s.

Mr. Sherman said the speaker’s decision to pledge a vote by the full House was not about personal relationships but about principle. “You don’t have to have a special relationship with this speaker to get her to be in favor of recognizing genocide,” he said.

While the backers of the resolution pressed ahead, the Turkish government also went to work, hiring a lobbying team to raise concerns about the potential backlash in Turkey if the resolution was approved, particularly when Turkey is a staging ground for the Iraq war.

The Turkish government has resisted the characterization of a genocide, seeing the deaths as among the many tragic losses in a time of brutal conflict. But most of the lobbying against the resolution centered on the need not to antagonize Turkey at a time when it was of crucial strategic value.

Among those carrying that message was Representative John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and a close ally of Ms. Pelosi’s, who began warning her in February against the bill.

“I explained what the ramifications were from a military standpoint, but she said she felt compelled to do it,” said Mr. Murtha, who welcomed Thursday’s decision. By midsummer, the advocates had 225 sponsors, more than the minimum of 218 needed to assure passage. But they refrained from pushing for a vote because Turkey was having its own national elections. Instead, they aimed for the fall.

Encouraged to consider the bill, the Foreign Affairs Committee approved it on Oct. 10, but by a relatively narrow 27-to-21 vote, because lawmakers were well aware that the measure could reach the floor this year.

Mr. Bush and the Turkish government intensified their opposition and within days, co-sponsors of both parties began abandoning the resolution.

Ms. Pelosi said it was the responsibility of its backers to secure the needed votes. “This is the legislative process,” she told reporters last week when asked about the furor. Its backers began reassessing their strategy and one result was the letter to the speaker on Thursday.

Even some of Ms. Pelosi’s allies said the bill’s withdrawal, while an embarrassment, may well have averted a larger problem for her had the proposal been approved, setting off problems with Turkey. Advocates of the bill predicted that Congress would eventually regret backing off in the face of a threatened backlash from an ally. “This sets a terrible example,” Mr. Hamparian said.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/washington/26cong.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

10/26 North Shore: The right time for the wrong decision

2007-10-26T20:09:00.000-07:00

The right time for the wrong decision

By Shimon Soferr
GateHouse News Service
Fri Oct 26, 2007, 12:22 PM EDT

Some things in our political culture are destined to never go away. Issues like healthcare, education, social security, abortion, casinos, or the business of other countries are always going to be with us, to alleviate national boredom and at the same time to provide occupational therapy for our otherwise unemployable politicians.

One of these issues is the eternal question of what happened to the Armenians and who did it to them, with emphasis on whether the word “genocide” is politically applicable to the Armenian holocaust as it is to other holocausts. The latest aspect of this question has recently re-emerged in the dispute over how the Anti Defamation League (ADL) ought to relate to the “Armenian Question.” From there the question has found its way to the top level of making decisions for the world. The president himself found it “necessary” to discourage his “fellow Americans” from recognizing as genocide what was done to fellow Armenians.

The beautiful thing about politics, domestic and foreign, national and international, is that truth, though always venerated, is always secondary to “interests,” and always humbly yields to political “reality.” In truth, Armenians were slaughtered en mass by Turks, in 1915. In reality, Armenians were slaughtered en mass by the Turks already in the 1860s and earlier. In other words the Turkish hateful animosity toward the Armenians did not start during or as a result of World War I.

Theodore Herzl, the visionary founder of Zionism, was a talented and influential journalist in Europe. In his diaries he tells of promises made to him in the turn of last century. Turkish business and secret agents approached him, he tells, and offered to intervene with the Sultan, Abdul Hamid, II, in favor of the early Zionists. They were trying to purchase lands for their new country in Palestine. The Sultan, the agents told him, would look at the request sympathetically if he, Herzl, would persuade major newspapers in Europe not to tell their readers about Turkish massacres of Armenians in the 1860s. That is perhaps the Turkey-Armenian-Herzl-Zionism-Jews-ADL-America connection. Quite interestingly, America and Israel both welcomed Armenian refugees and provided them with sanctuaries where no one else would. Just as interestingly, Israel and America are experiencing the same sort of moral hardship in the face of self-imposed diplomatic difficulties to deal truthfully with the truth.

Herzl was not the only one who knew. The Germans, Turkey’s traditional allies, knew. The man who coined the word “genocide” in the 1930, knew. Franz Werfel, who wrote “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh” to tell the world, was a German who knew. Armenians who managed to escape the Turkish atrocities told the French, the British, and the Italians, including the Pope. Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador to Turkey (appointed 1913), who was also chairman of the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission, knew too.

In the political reality of today, however, Turkey still denies its initiation of and contribution to the exercise of genocide they practiced on the Armenians who lived in their midst. We, who know the truth but have “interests,” help them by denying it with them at worst, or by calling it something else at best.

The debate whether to condemn the practice of female circumcision in the Middle East and Africa is very similar to the debate whether to condemn Turkey for the genocide they visited on the Armenians, because world politics is similar to domestic politics. In both, truth, though always extolled, is the eternal subordinate of “interests.” The politicians who worry about condemning Turkey today for the 1915 genocide are the same politicians who were afraid to condemn, in 1980, the practice of female “circumcision,” a condemnation that might have caused our friends and allies in the Middle East and Africa to reflect unfavorably on us.

If we are fighting in Iraq and in Afghanistan for freedom, liberty, democracy and justice, why are we so afraid to show the Turks that these values are, at least to us, practically above and beyond political interests and are thus “uncompromisable?” Where does Turkey, no longer the gigantic empire it used to be, take the initiative and find the courage to threaten Israel and the USA with “serious consequences” that might follow our noncompliance with their wishes? How does it come about that Turkey, our ally, talks “diplomatically” to us but treats us with the tyrannous autonomy of the Ottomans? Are we Turkey’s ottoman? How did it come about that in all the years of diplomacy and alliance and mutual interests we still haven’t convinced the Turks that they need us at least as much as we need them, if not more?

Indeed, as our righteous politicians are “forced by reality” to change their votes because of issues of “timing,” the Turks, in front of our eyes, are again picking on another nation of undesirables, this time the Kurds, believed by the Turks to be inferior to them. In other words, the Turks are retaliating by going after another minority group, moving from what was Armenia to what was Kurdistan.

There are those who cite Hitler as having modeled his genocide of the Gypsies and the Jews and the Gays after the example of the world’s reaction to what the Turks did to the Armenians. The world, he said allegedly, did not, or did not care to, remember what the Turks did to the Armenians. We are now 92 years after the Ottomans and Hitler were decisively defeated. And yet, in 2007, we’re still trying to appease countries and leaders who are still thirsty for the blood of others.

We in America elect our officials not only because they know all there is to know about right and wrong, but also because they know precisely the right time for wrong to be right or for right to be wrong. Apparently they have decided not to decide on this issue “at this time.” The Turkish Parliament, at precisely this time, on the other hand, applauds the Turkish legislation to gang on the Kurds who dwell not in Turkey but across Turkish borders in Northern Iraq. The Iraqis now seem to promise the Turks that, in lieu of Turkish invasion of Iraq, the Iraqis will take care for them of the “Kurdish Problem.” Who knows, perhaps there are “right” decisions that can still be made for a wrong war or for a war that has gone wrong.

The ADL is about Anti Defamation, not about Anti Denial and, therefore, its organizational dilemma concerning the genocide of Armenians is understandable. They do not want to defame Turkey, the “indisputable ally” of Israel and America. At the same time they know the truth, but wish not to make too much of it, so their chosen phrase is “tantamount to genocide.”

America, on the other hand, should be able to do a little better, with a little more courage. If we could find that little more courage, we could actually be as decent as we claim we are.

Source: http://www.townonline.com/northshoresunday/opinions/x1909899560

10/26 LATimes: Sponsors delay Armenian genocide vote

2007-10-26T20:08:00.000-07:00

Sponsors delay Armenian genocide vote

They bow to fears the resolution could harm the U.S. war effort in
Iraq by angering Turkey.

By Richard Simon
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

October 26, 2007

WASHINGTON — Yielding to fierce diplomatic and political pressure,
congressional sponsors of an Armenian genocide resolution abruptly put
off a vote on the measure Thursday and defused a mounting
confrontation with Turkey that was threatening to hamper the U.S. war
effort in Iraq.

The decision, a swift reversal for the long-debated resolution,
disappointed supporters who two weeks ago were optimistic that the
House would approve it. "We're not going to bring it up until we're
confident we have the votes to pass it," said Rep. Adam B. Schiff
(D-Burbank), who introduced the measure. "It's going to take some
time."

The action extricated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco)
from the clash between a powerful constituency in California and an
important U.S. military ally.

As the measure approached a vote, the Turkish government warned that
the resolution's passage could lead to a rupture in relations and
disrupt U.S. military operations in Iraq. Most of the supplies headed
to U.S. forces in Iraq are flown through Turkey. The issue also came
up as the United States was imploring Turkey not to send forces into
northern Iraq to curb Kurdish rebel attacks.

Republican opponents welcomed the delay and blamed Pelosi for a
miscalculation on an important foreign policy matter. "Fortunately,
the right decision was made before this debacle turned into a
full-blown national security crisis," said Minority Leader John A.
Boehner (R-Ohio).

The resolution's backers once counted a majority of the House as
sponsors. When it cleared the House Foreign Affairs Committee two
weeks ago, Pelosi pledged to bring it to the floor.

"When it passed out of Foreign Affairs, I thought it was finally going
to happen," said Rep. George Radanovich (R-Mariposa), a sponsor of the
resolution, which calls on the president to "accurately characterize
the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as
genocide."

But support began to ebb as President Bush and Turkey escalated their
warnings and the situation in northern Iraq deteriorated. Two dozen
representatives have withdrawn their support, raising doubts about
whether it could pass.

Supporters said that Pelosi remained committed to the measure and that
they had no choice but to bow to political reality. "If this were to
come up to the floor today, it would be too close to call," said Rep.
Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks).

The resolution's backers stressed that they delayed the vote only to
buy time to rebuild political support.

Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-Mich.), a co-chairman of the Congressional
Caucus on Armenian Issues, who has pressed the resolution for more
than a decade, said he was hopeful. "We have never been anywhere near
this close. Never. I don't think we're going to give up."

In a letter to Pelosi sent Thursday, four of the measure's sponsors
said they would press for passage later this year or next year. "We
believe that a large majority of our colleagues want to support a
resolution recognizing the genocide on the House floor and that they
will do so, provided the timing is more favorable," wrote Reps.
Schiff, Sherman, Anna G. Eshoo (D-Menlo Park) and Frank Pallone Jr.
(D-N.J.).

Aram S. Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National
Committee of America, faxed a letter to every House member,
criticizing Turkey and expressing "disappointment, even anger, that an
ally is so brazenly threatening the security of our troops."

"We are confident that, as the confusion over these threats lifts, an
even stronger bipartisan majority will stand up against Turkey's
intimidation and vote to adopt this human rights resolution on its
merits," he wrote.

The Turkish government disputes that the World War I-era killings of
Armenians by the Ottoman Turks was a genocide, contending that both
Turks and Armenians were casualties of the war, famine and disease.
But historical evidence and authoritative research support the term,
and The Times' policy is to refer to the deaths as genocide.

Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy, who was recalled to Ankara in protest
of the House committee vote but returned last weekend, said in a
statement that he was pleased that the measure was not headed to a
floor vote. "This is a deeply complex and emotional issue that has
caused great anguish among the Turkish people," he said. "We do not
believe it is the role of the U.S. Congress -- or of any legislative
body -- to pass judgment on this historical matter."

Sensoy continued, "It is high time to use our energies to encourage
reconciliation between Turks and Armenians, and normalization between
Turkey and Armenia, something we Turks have been striving to achieve
for a long time."

Armenian American groups were not in a conciliatory mood.

"The true danger to America's interests comes from caving in to
foreign interference in American human rights policy," said Andrew
Kzirian, Western region executive director of Armenian National
Committee of America. "Turkey's threats and intimidation have caused
some members to take a second look. But as the initial fear over
Turkey's threats turns to anger, we're beginning to see a backlash."

Armenian American groups vowed to continue their grass-roots lobbying
campaign for the resolution. Jason P. Capizzi, executive director of
the Armenian-American Political Action Committee, said he understood
the political reality that bringing up the resolution at this time
would be difficult for Schiff and the other sponsors "given Turkey's
continued and desperate threats."

But he also said: "We remain encouraged and confident that this
Congress will reaffirm the U.S. record on the Armenian genocide."

A number of the resolution's supporters said its fate may depend on
circumstances in Turkey and Iraq.

"With Turkey's success to tying this thing to the war in Iraq, it's
going to be tough to disconnect those two," said Radanovich, one of
the resolution's lead sponsors. "But I think they're going to have to
be disconnected before we've got some hope of bringing it back."

The latest setback follows others.

Similar resolutions approved by the House in 1975 and 1984 did not
make it through the Senate. In 2000, a resolution was headed to the
House floor when then-Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) abruptly
called off the vote because President Clinton warned him that it could
damage national security.

Pelosi's office declined to comment on the decision other than to say
that she was deferring to the wishes of the sponsors.

Despite admonitions from top administration officials, the Turkish
prime minister and former secretaries of State, Pelosi, a longtime
supporter of the resolution, insisted a week and a half ago that she
would bring it to a vote.

Last week, however, as a number of Democratic colleagues urged her not
to, she sounded uncertain.

Radanovich said he supported delaying a vote, but he declined to sign
the letter. Asserting that Pelosi had decided on her own not to bring
the resolution to a vote, he said: "It's not in my interest to give
cover to the speaker."

John J. Pitney Jr., a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna
College, said Pelosi had pressed House members further than they
wanted to go, "so she had to back off. The episode is far from fatal,
but it suggests that she is still struggling to master the job."

The resolution has been strongly opposed by the Bush administration.

After the committee vote, the administration and Turkey, aided by
lobbyists, stepped up efforts to persuade the House to deep-six the
measure.

Bush and military leaders personally called lawmakers.

Turkey's top general said House passage of the resolution would
rupture U.S. relations with one of its most reliable allies in the
Islamic world.

At the same time, deadly cross-border raids by Kurdish rebels into
Turkey have inflamed public opinion in the country, which has accused
the United States and Iraq of not doing enough to stem the attacks.
The Turkish parliament overwhelmingly granted the government
permission to invade northern Iraq to pursue Kurdish insurgents.

Kurdish rebels ambushed a Turkish army patrol Sunday, killing at least
12 soldiers and raising the possibility of a Turkish incursion, which
could destabilize the safest region in Iraq.

Sherman said that the high-profile Turkish campaign to kill the
resolution gave its supporters a victory of sorts: "The purpose of the
resolution is to raise awareness of the Armenian genocide. Thanks to
the Turkish Embassy, we have been spectacularly successful."

richard.simon@latimes.com

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/valley/la-na-genocide26oct26,1,1437463.story?

10/26 JTA: Q & A with Abraham Foxman

2007-10-26T20:06:00.000-07:00

Q & A: Abraham Foxman

Ami Eden

Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, sits down with JTA's managing editor to discuss his new book, the 'mamzer' in Iran and other hot-button issues.

Published: 10/24/2007

The following is an edited transcript of an interview conducted last month with the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, about his new book, "The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and The Myth of Jewish Control." During the interview with JTA, Foxman discussed criticisms of Israel and Jewish groups put forth by former President Jimmy Carter and scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. He also addressed the controversy over his initial refusal to use the word genocide to describe the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I.

JTA: Why did you write the book?

FOXMAN: When Mearsheimer and Walt's article appeared, what I was very much concerned about was that it would give this whole issue of Jewish power, Jewish control, Jewish influence, Israel lobby, etc., a sense of credibility that it has never had in the U.S., except for maybe before World War II. My concern was that it would stimulate discussion in the mainstream -- which it did the moment the article appeared -- and that for the years to come it will become a resource for universities, primarily for every course in government, every course in foreign policy, to use as a point of departure, and that there was not much else out there.

So the motivation was that audience. It's not to convince the Jews but to convince others.

In Davos in January, there was a professor from MIT who I happened to be sitting next to. When he found out who I was, he said, "Do you mind, could we talk and you won't take this personally. I'm a professor of physics, I spent a lot of time studying science. I've been hearing all this stuff about this Israel lobby, this Jewish lobby. Is it true? How much of it is true?" So we spent about an hour-and-a-half in a coffee shop, and he said to me, "You could do us a service, there are a lot of people like me who aren't sure, we don't have time." So that reinforced in me the idea that there needs to be that kind of book.

Were you concerned that given the attacks on you in recent years, that people would take aim at the messenger and ignore the message?

Now it's my book, and I come with baggage. We all come with baggage. OK.

But the answer is no, not at all, no hesitancy whatsoever. I still believe I have credibility. I think the book adds credibility. It's not hysterical; it's rational, reasonable. I didn't hesitate for a moment. I wish others would do it, still plenty of time for others to do it.

I've been asked am I not making it more of an issue by writing a book, by confronting the issue. So I've asked journalists if I wasn't there, if I didn't write it, would you still cover it. And they said yes.

Before the ADL adopted its position in support of U.S. action in Iraq, were you lobbied by the administration? What were the forces at work as your organization was trying to figure out its position?

It's primarily an internal discussion. When we interact on the Middle East with the administration, there is a give-and-take on issues, policies, priorities. And it's not a secret that the administration would come and try to explain how it all fits in. All you have to do is read the public statements, the president's speeches, the secretary of state's speeches, the national security adviser's speeches, where they saw it as part of the struggle against terrorism, on which certainly the Jewish community saw eye to eye with the administration and continues to see eye to eye. Whether it's the best way to fight terrorism or the second best way, that's their decision, but certainly there was a commonality of interest that America needs to stand up, as Israel has stood up. So it was more in the context of terrorism rather than in the specifics of war.

In your book you write that "in the American tradition, we hold that the best remedy for 'bad' speech is not cencorship but more speech," and denied that you pressured the Polish Consulate in New York to cancel a lecture by New York University Professor Tony Judt. At the same time, you did not criticize the American Jewish Committee for doing just that, and you defended the right of Jewish groups to take such steps. Are you trying to have it both ways?

They're not wrong. It's their expression of freedom of speech. When Mearsheimer and Walt now say its censorship when groups cancel them -- my foot. Groups have a right to do it, we have a right to say we don't want to hear you. The fact that a place does not select them or changes its mind does not mean it's a restriction of freedom of speech. I have also said time and time again that we don't engage in boycotts, we don't support boycotts, we do not encourage boycotts, we think boycotts are contrary not only to freedom of speech but to our own tradition. We Jews have been subject to boycotts and continue to be subject to boycotts, but does that mean that I have to go out and chastise people who are out there expressing their freedom of speech?

From a strategic perspective, is it a mistake to lobby for the cancellation of objectionable speakers? You write that you would not have told the Polish Consulate to cancel the talk, so by implication was it wrong for David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, to do so?

I didn't criticize Committee, I defended myself. I got a rap of being accused of what I didn't do. By the way, there were people who were critical, asking why didn't I do it. David Harris is entitled. I would not do it. I think it is wrong. He has a different relationship with the Polish government; one needs to take a look at that. From his perspective, I think he was trying to do them a favor. He had just gotten an award from the Polish government, they have a representative in Poland, they have a lot invested in the Polish-Jewish relationship, a lot more than we do, and what he saw was this would embarrass them, undermine Polish-Jewish relations, undermine Committee-Polish relations. I understand where he went; I wouldn't do it. I didn't have that investment. I'm Polish born, that's enough for me.

Had the consul general called me and asked me what to do, I would have given him advice. Had he called me originally I would have said set up another speaker, either at the same event or at another time. I wouldn't have told him to cancel. I would have told him to announce that a week or two weeks from now you will host somebody with the other point of view.

In countering Mearsheimer and Walt with your own book, you took the exact approach that critics of the Jewish community would want. Yet when The New York Times first wrote about the issue in August, the story wasn't about your book versus their book, it was about Jewish institutions being pressured into canceling events with Mearsheimer and Walt. So didn't the approach of trying to keep them out backfire?

But that's not accurate. They're hyping their book. This is the oldest trick in the book, to buzz a book before it even comes out. They want to sell a book, they don't want to debate it. They're entitled, but don't complain.

I am concerned about intimidation. Jews were not that vocal on Iraq because they didn't think it was their issue. I think we were pleased, pleased that there is no Saddam Hussein who was sending checks to suicide bombers, who politically, if not militarily, was supporting the worst in the Palestinian movement. But we were not out in front.

Iran was the much greater concern to Israel. Iraq was not an existential threat to Israel. Iran is an existential threat. My concern is that this whole effort is to stifle us, to shut us up on this issue. That is of concern because I think we should speak up on Iran. We didn't speak up on Iraq because it really wasn't our issue. But they're trying to put the blame on us, which I think is very detrimental because I worry that the Jewish community will now be hesitant to speak out where it is imperative that we speak out. Yes, Iran is a threat to the globe. Yes, Iran is a threat to the Gulf. Yes, Iran is a threat to Europe. But first and foremost that mamzer [Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] says, "I will destroy the State of Israel, I will wipe the Jewish state off of the face of the map."

At the end of the book you encourage Jews who disagree with Israel-related issues to engage the community, to weigh in with their opinions. But if you, the director of the ADL, can get attacked for inviting Thomas Friedman to speak, doesn't the average left-wing Jew have a point when he complains that communal leaders just don't want to hear any criticism of Israel?

There is still an effort out there to shut me up, and if they can shut me up, they can shut the Jewish community up. The New York Times tried to do it by calling me hysterical, by calling me an Al Sharpton. They tried to intimidate me to the extent that I do stand up on behalf on the Jewish community, and that's very, very serious.

But two problems can exist at the same time. If people in the general society are trying to silence the Jewish community, that doesn't change the fact that some elements of the Jewish community are trying to silence others.

Absolutely. We have to fight both. One doesn't justify the other.

Do groups need to do a better job of defending the ability of people to express criticisms?

I fought a fight against extremism in the Jewish community, whether it was Meir Kahane or my rabbi [who issued harsh condemnations of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin prior to his assassination], and I did it alone. I did it not only because I believed that it was right, but if we don't do it, we have no credibility. We're not immune to being extreme. And we woke up very tragically to how non-immune we are when Rabin was killed. When I spoke about it before, it's because I understand that when we say words can kill, we're not exempt, we don't have a vaccine that words only kill if they're from someone else but not from us. But the truth is there weren't many people standing up.

How do you go about criticizing President Jimmy Carter of Mel Gibson -- and if it's the case, suggest that they are in danger of engaging in anti-Semitism -- without alienating the tens of millions of fair-minded people who identify with them? Is there an effective way to address such issues in a way that would seem less confrontational?

That's not a luxury that we have. Here again it's that thin line. When you say Mr. X engaged in anti-Semitism, the first time that they do it you can say it's ignorance, it's insensitivity. But when you say to them that they are engaging in anti-Semitism when they say the Jews control the media and the Jews control universities, and when they repeat it the second time, the third time and the fourth time, are you or are you not an anti-Semite?

By raising the specter of anti-Semitism, do you end up turning people against you?

There is no choice. There is no choice. There is no choice. We can't euphemize it. We have to understand that they are using it as a weapon against us to keep us quiet. Why is it you can call somebody a racist, no one says you are stifling debate? You can call somebody a homophobe, you can call somebody anti-Hispanic and no one says you're stifling debate.

It's not an exact science. If we controlled the media, it would be much easier.

Critics say you helped Mel Gibson with your criticisms of him and "The Passion." Could you have taken a different approach?

Those who are honest on this issue will know that I didn't make the issue, he made the issue. He made the issue. Anybody who really cares will examine where I was and where we were. Read my first letter to him. Read what happened when somebody sent us the script. We didn't say "we got it, we got it."

Is there any lesson that you take away from the controversy?

I know I did everything that I could to avoid a public confrontation. I'm not a fool, I know who he is, I know the celebrity image that he has, but so did he. He knew exactly what he was doing. Do I want to confront Jimmy Carter? No, but he's a former president of the United States, he's not any jerk who calls Israel apartheid. He's a former president of the United States. You can't ignore what he says about Jews.

People would say to me, '"Why you worried about Imus? Why are you bothering?" And I said excuse me, presidents go on Imus, senators, every intellectual in this country goes on Imus, he has a credibility, and when he says something anti-Semitic we can't just roll over and say it's Imus, you can't. Did he attack me? Sure. But I don't have the luxury. I have to see it in terms of who they are, what influence they have.

In the same respect, people say why are you challenging Billy Graham? Well, because Billy Graham had the ear of presidents for 40 years, and he was an anti-Semite, no longer an anti-Semite, but he was all those years, and he had presidents' ears. So we don't have this luxury to say, "Well, you know, it's going to turn some people off." It will. It may. It's not a perfect world.

During the past year The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine published several stories, including a profile of you, that could be read as suggesting that Jewish groups are not credible.

It's not just a New York Times problem. When my son came back from Harvard for the first time, he said, "Dad, you have a real job ahead of you." I asked why. He said, "I was in the room with seven other first years, all non-Jews. Any time there is a question about yiddishkeit, Judaism, they turn to me and I'm the Gospel. But when the subject of Israel comes up, I have no credibility because I'm Jewish."

So what do you do about that?

You worry about your credibility. You don't get intimidated, and everyday you make this '"cheshbon" [you take stock]. And to me, the one thing that haunts me is my credibility because that's all we got.

At the end of the day, though, The New York Times Magazine runs a major profile of you suggesting that you exaggerate the threats against Israel and the Jewish people. Even though you've been harshly criticized by conservatives for slamming the religious right, the magazine portrayed you as someone who believes evangelicals should get a free pass on domestic issues because of their support of Israel. Is there anything you can do about that?

It says something. The Anti-Defamation League is 94 years old; 94 years. I think we've done some things. The New York Times never did a profile; this is the first time. And when I got the phone call from [writer James Traub], I asked how come you're doing a profile. He said it's about Tony Judt. I said you're going to do a piece about me about something I didn't do. He said, "We'll see."

I don't think they destroyed my credibility. I think they tried, but I don't think they succeeded.

It is not just the writer. This is a newspaper that did not cover adequately the Holocaust because of a conscious decision that people not think that it was Jewish. This is a newspaper that consciously decided not to support the Jewish state so that people would not accuse them of double loyalty. And this is a newspaper that said to a managing editor, you want to be managing editor, you'd better not have a name "Abe," you'd better call yourself A.M. Rosenthal. So this is the newspaper that after 94 years of the Anti-Defamation League being in business, comes to write a piece about my pinky ring. So I'm sorry, it's not just an individual, it's a worldview.

Are you more worried about your credibility than you were 10 years ago?

I am more worried about what's going on out there. I am worried that whether Jews are loyal in America is today a mainstream debate. That worries me an awful lot. It worries me that a former president can get up there and say all over America that the Jews control the media. That's what worries me.

It's not Pat Buchanan and David Duke. We live with that, we can deal with that. It's when it crosses over. It's not ignoramuses. That's what's scary.

Is it my credibility? I know I weigh and measure every time I speak out because I woke up one day to realize that I've come to a certain stage with this organization that people listen to what I say. It's a very awesome realization, it's a very scary thing. The responsibility of knowing that people listen to your words is awesome. It's not for me, it's for the safety and security of the Jewish people. I do know one thing -- that before I do speak, I do a very serious "cheshbon hanefesh" [personal accounting]. That doesn't mean my judgment is always correct. So frequently when you speak, you are only responding to what you know at that moment.

I had this situation with "60 Minutes" many years ago. I'll never forget it. This was the rock-throwing incident at Har Habayit [the Temple Mount]. "60 Minutes" did a reportage which was so ugly, so disgusting in my view, I wrote a public letter, chastised Don Hewitt and "60 Minutes." Six months later an Israeli investigative panel came to a conclusion that made "60 Minutes" correct. I wrote a letter to Don Hewitt and I said I apologize to you and Mike Wallace because we were wrong and you were right. And if you wish to use this letter publicly, you may. He called me and said are you for real? I said yeah. He said in 20 years no one ever apologized. I got clobbered by the Jewish community.

I don't believe that all my judgments are correct, and when I'm wrong I'm ready to get up there and say I'm wrong. Again, because it's about credibility. We have nothing else. And for the people who say I do this for the media, it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you have something to say and you're credible, they are going to come and ask you again.

In the book you write, "Criticism that condemns Israel simply for existing and implies that the only way Israel can satisfy its critics is by disappearing is not legitimate." So if opposing Israel's existence crosses the line, does it cross the line to oppose the creation of a Palestinian state?

Do I go after every Arab and Palestinian who says no to a Jewish existence? No, we talk about the concept. We've taken on racism in Israel, Jews who have expressed the thought that there is no room for Arabs. I criticized Jerry Falwell when he said horrendous things to Pat Robertson about Islam, just like I criticized Robertson when he said that Ariel Sharon was punished by God because he gave up Eretz Israel. I don't shy away from being critical of our own. On the other hand, the enemy is bigger out there than it is within.

Did you do anything wrong in the controversy over whether to describe as genocide the World War I-era killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks?

I didn't do anything wrong. I miscalculated. We said it is a massacre, an atrocity, we've said it for 40 years. The Armenians wanted us to say genocide. To me it was sufficient for us to say I'm not a historian, we don’t adjudicate all the issues. What I miscalculated was the Jewish community. I respect the Armenian community for wanting their memory, their pain, their suffering to be recognized globally in the most sensitive way or the most meaningful way. So we said it is an atrocity and it is massacre, but we just don't think that Congress should adjudicate it. What I did not suspect was where the Jewish community was.

I was shocked, upset, frightened by the fact that this was an issue where Jews were attacking us. It's one thing for the federation director or the CRC director or for Jewish pundits to support the Armenian position, but to criticize us, to organize against us, that shocked me.

I think there are two things going on out there. We are a community in transition. I believe in Hillel, I think this agency is an expression of the Hillel thesis [If I am only for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?] In fact, our founding fathers had this vision in 1915, to defend the Jewish people and to protect the right of all individuals. But there is one and two. To me it was very clear, there are moral imperatives here -- the moral imperative to feel somebody else's pain, to recognize their anguish, and the moral imperative which is the safety and the security of the Jewish community.

I don't believe that the Turkish government tomorrow will go and take it out on the Jews. But the Turkish Jewish community came to the United States, met with Jewish representatives and asked them to transmit a letter on this issue. It was very clear to me what the interests of the Jewish community in Turkey are. It was also very clear to me that after the United States, the most important ally Israel has is Turkey. It's a country that not only has promised to provide Israel with water until moshiach comes, but it's a country that permits Israel's pilots to do maneuvers over its land. And so, to me, it was very clear that there are two moral issues, but one trumps the other. And it was clear to me that I cannot save one Armenian human being, not one. But if I do what the Armenians want me to do, I will put in jeopardy the lives of Turkish Jews and Israeli Jews.

What I didn’t realize was to what extent the American Jewish community has reversed Hillel, or at least in Boston and Massachusetts. That comes out of a changed demography, sociology. When we talk about assimilation, when we talk about intermarriage -- you know what, that's what it is.

So that's one thing I misread. Two, I misread something else: Israel is no longer as significant. Some of this stuff I read and hear about in Boston was, "Why do we have to sacrifice our relationship with our Armenian friends and neighbors for Israel?" I heard people say to me if the [Jews in Turkey] are in trouble, let them leave. That's what I miscalculated.

Then I turned around and I got made fun of for it, and said we need unity now because Iran is a threat, Hamas is a threat, Hezbollah is a threat, anti-Semitism in Europe and Latin America. The last thing we need now is for [Boston Jewish leaders] Barry Shrage and Nancy Kaufman to be fighting us.

Given your concerns about Turkey, why did you reverse yourself on the use of the word genocide?

I need, you need, we need a strong unified Jewish community to help Israel. And if we begin splittering …

I gave for the greater purpose so that we can now sit and talk together. It almost destroyed our operation in Boston. And in the greater scheme of things, to go from massacres and atrocities to genocide, OK.

You know what, I've had sleepless nights about it.

Source: http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/20071024foxmaninterview.html

10/25 NYTimes: Letter: Armenians and Jews

2007-10-25T21:52:00.000-07:00

LETTER; Armenians and Jews

To the Editor:

Re ''Armenian Issue Presents Dilemma for U.S. Jews'' (news article, Oct. 19):

I was sorry to read of the Jewish equivocating over recognizing the fact of the Armenian genocide.

When we Jews cry out ''Never Again!'' about genocide, it applies to awareness, education or in this case denial, no matter when or to whom such a crime is perpetrated.

Right is right, whatever the political cost. Robert Socolof

White Plains, Oct. 19, 2007

Source: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9503E5DC1E3EF936A15753C1A9619C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

10/25 LATimes: Lawmakers delay push for House vote on Armenian genocide measure

2007-10-25T21:51:00.000-07:00

Lawmakers delay push for House vote on Armenian genocide measure

By Richard Simon

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

11:37 AM PDT, October 25, 2007

WASHINGTON — Sponsors of a congressional resolution to recognize the
Armenian genocide said today that they would delay their drive to
bring the measure before the House for a vote, amid waning support for
the measure sparked by concerns that it could harm relations with
Turkey, a key U.S. ally.

The decision represents a swift reversal for the controversial
resolution, which only weeks ago appeared certain to pass the House.

The resolution's chief sponsors said in a letter today to House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) that they would still press for
passage of the long-debated measure.

"We believe that a large majority of our colleagues want to support a
resolution recognizing the genocide on the House floor and that they
will do so, provided the timing is more favorable," the sponsors,
Reps. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), Anna
G. Eshoo (D-Menlo Park) and Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) said in the
letter.

Supporters of the resolution, recently approved by the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, once counted more than half the members of the
House as sponsors. But many representatives have since withdrawn
support, raising doubts about whether it would pass.

The resolution has been strongly opposed by the Bush administration,
which warned it could offend Turkey. After the committee vote, the
administration and Turkey, aided by high-paid, well-connected
lobbyists, stepped up their efforts to persuade the House to shelve
the measure, which calls on the president to "accurately characterize
the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as
genocide."

Turkey withdrew its ambassador in protest, and its top general said
House passage of the resolution would rupture U.S. relations with one
of its most reliable allies in the Islamic world. U.S. military
supplies for the war in Iraq pass through a critical air base in
Turkey.

At the same time, deadly cross-border raids by Kurdish rebels into
Turkey have inflamed public opinion in the country, which has accused
the U.S. and Iraq of not doing enough to prevent the attacks. The
Turkish parliament overwhelmingly granted the government permission to
invade northern Iraq to pursue Kurdish insurgents.

Kurdish rebels ambushed a Turkish army patrol Sunday, killing at least
12 soldiers and raising the possibility of a Turkish incursion, which
could destabilize the safest region in Iraq.

The resolution's sponsors said they would continue to work for
consideration of the measure "sometime later this year, or in 2008."

richard.simon@latimes.com

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/valley/la-na-genocide26oct26,1,1437463.story?ctrack=3&cset=true

10/25 Jewish Light: Congress Iffy on Genocide Vote

2007-10-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

EDITORIAL

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Congress Iffy on Genocide Vote

Just two weeks ago, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee voted out a resolution declaring the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians from 1915-1917 in the Turkish Ottoman Empire to be a "genocide." The resolution has been long sought by the Armenian-American community to officially express horror at one of the early 20th century's most notorious examples of the mass murder of an entire population. The Armenian massacre, which has been fully and amply documented, provided a horrific precedent for later humanitarian calamities, including the Holocuast and the infamous "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Kosovo, among others.

While the non-binding resolution seemed assured of passage with the support of leaders of both major parties, sudden and increased pressure on Congress by representatives of the current Turkish government have caused several of the initial supporters of the resolution to withdraw their support.

Because of current geo-political realities in the Middle East, Turkey is in a strong position to use its leverage against the resolution, which it regards as interference in Turkey's internal affairs, event though the Armenian massacre took place nearly a century ago under the Ottoman Sultans who preceeded modern Turkey. Turkey shares a long border with Iraq, and the Turkish military has threatened to intervene directly to attack members of the Kurdish community in northern Iraq. Turkey, like Iraq, has a large Kurdish community, and its regime fears that an independent Kurdish state in Iraq could inspire the Kurds in Turkey to attempt to secede and join the new state.

Because of the above realities, it is perhaps politically unwise to press for adoption of the Armenian genocide resolution at this time, but from a moral point of view the resolution fully deserves to be passed. Suppose 50 years or more from now a German government attempts to pressure the U.S. Congress not to pass a resolution referring to the Shoah as a "genocide," event though the term genocide was coined by a Polish Jewish attorney who himself survived the Holocaust?

It is also sad to note that while the arguments over definitions drag on for decades or even close to a century, the mass killings in Darfur in Sudan go on unabated. When will they ever learn?

Source: http://www.stljewishlight.com/commentaries/290133876895995.php

10/25 Jewish Exponent: Turkey's Blame Game

2007-10-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

Turkey's Blame Game

October 25, 2007

Is it possible to condemn genocide without helping to lay the foundation for another catastrophe? That's the difficulty faced by those who are debating the wisdom of a congressional resolution condemning the massacre of Armenians by Turkey during World War I.
Jews are sensitive to the grief that Armenians feel over the mass murder of their people, as well as the ongoing need to condemn genocide whenever and wherever it happens. At the same time, American Jewry has celebrated Turkey's stance as a Muslim country that has good relations with Israel, and which, by and large, supports America's initiatives on Islamist terror.

Turkey should not feel threatened by an acknowledgment of what happened to Armenians 90 years ago. But for nationalist reasons, the Turks consider any measure that speaks of genocide to be an insult that will destroy their alliance with the United States and their relationship with Israel.

Unfortunately, organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League have found themselves in the crossfire on this issue. And though most of organized Jewry still opposes the congressional resolution, the Turks seem to be blaming Jewish influence for its passage last week in committee. But by trying to force those who value Turkey and its unique role in the region to oppose the resolution, they are putting us in a position where it can be argued that we are denying genocide or at least downplaying it. That is clearly too much to ask. The genocide of the Armenians is a fact.

Those who say that friendship with Turkey is unimportant also remain in a state of denial. The country is at a delicate stage of its history as Islamist political forces are edging ever closer to tilting the country away from its secular traditions. Should Turkey move from being a force for stability in the region to one that is aggressively seeking to exploit tensions (as is the case with its battle with Kurdish nationalists in northern Iraq), that would be a disaster.

Turkey's stance opposing the remembrance of Armenian suffering is not reasonable, but neither is a position that heedlessly chucks a vital alliance into the trash can. Choosing this particular moment in history to pick a fight with Turkey makes no sense. The bad judgment of those who have pushed this resolution forward has created a situation where it may not be possible to avoid choosing between remembering murder and keeping Turkey as a friend. If so, it should be clearly understood that, no matter which side prevails in Congress, both options are unacceptable.

Source: http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/14382/

10/24 Chicago Sun Times: I am ashamed for America

2007-10-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

Why those who love America are feeling brokenhearted

October 24, 2007
ANDREW GREELEY agreel@aol.com

I am ashamed for America. Note carefully that I do not say I am ashamed of America. Despite all its inherent flaws and all its tragic mistakes, the United States stands, however incompletely and with whatever imperfections, for the highest standards of freedom and democracy that the world has yet known.

I am ashamed for America because all the evil done in the nation's name in recent years is turning off the light on the mountaintop.

1. The president urges Congress in effect to accept the Turkish protest against the attribution of Armenian genocide because it might interfere with Turkish logistic cooperation in the ill-starred and foolish Iraq war. That's like silencing all congressional action on the Holocaust because we need Germany on our side. If Turks expect to become part of Europe and the West, they must acknowledge what their ancestors did. They could pass a resolution of their own accusing us of genocide against Native Americans if it would make them happy. How humiliating that the president wants us to ignore what happened to the Armenians so we can be victorious in the "global war on terror" (the current replacement for "weapons of mass destruction''). That's called appeasement, and it was appeasement when President Bill Clinton did the same thing.

2. The government kidnaps, tortures and murders the way the Gestapo did in Nazi Germany. The president blithely dismisses these charges. The United States, he says, does not torture. But that deception is based on a memo from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defining torture, which the White House won't let anyone else look at.

3. The government pays large salaries to 148,000 "individual contractors" in Iraq -- more than the total American military there. A third of these are toting guns. They are mercenaries -- often, it would seem, with very quick trigger fingers. Ironically, the most recent victims were two Armenian Christian women. These contractors are a kind of American Foreign Legion, like the notorious French and Spanish foreign legions. They may well be very brave people who do very tough jobs. They also compensate for Mr. Rumsfeld's criminal underestimate of the number of troops required. If, however, the country is going to have a Legion Etranger, it should make sure that it works under tight control. An unrestrained security force quickly becomes a mafia. Humphrey Bogart, where are you when we really need you?

4. At a remarkably frank meeting of middle-range officers (majors and colonels) at Fort Leavenworth, the soldiers debated not whether there should have been a war in Iraq, but who was to blame for losing it. Was it the senior officers or the joint chiefs or the civilian leaders? The war is not even over yet, and already the officers who fought it and will have to fight its continuation have already given up hope. Too bad for them, because the president has made up his mind that we are still going to win the war and the Democratic presidential candidates speak about a 10-year presence in Iraq. Whatever the political leadership is or will be in 2009, no candidate seems capable of saying, "We're getting out now!" And the rest of the world laughs at us because both parties are led by fools.

Anyone who cares about the United States and its legacies has to be brokenhearted at what has been done to our beloved country by the crazy people who are running it -- people who have become so skilled at deception they don't even realize anymore that they are deceiving. Just like the Democrats don't realize they are again stealing defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Source: http://www.suntimes.com/news/greeley/616721,CST-EDT-greel24.article#

10/23 Medford Transcript: City recognizes Armenian genocide, suspends ADL membership

2007-10-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

City recognizes Armenian genocide, suspends ADL membership

By Sharon Tosto Esker/medford@cnc.com
Tue Oct 23, 2007, 06:00 PM EDT

Medford -

Medford - While Medford may continue to be a welcoming place for those of different cultures and colors, the city is considering no longer being formally called “No Place for Hate.”

During the Oct. 16 City Council meeting, Councilor Robert M. Penta proposed rescinding the city’s membership to the Anti-Defamation League’s “No Place for Hate” program as a result of the organization’s failure to recognize the Armenian genocide.

More than 1.5 million Armenians were killed in Turkey at the end of the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1917. While several nations, like France and Germany, have formally classified that these killings as a genocide, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has stopped short of supporting a national program that condemns the event.

“I felt that at this point in time it was important to address this issue with the council,” said Penta. “Sometimes you have to get involved with issues that may not be popular. We do have an Armenian population in Medford and all they want is recognition.”

Penta originally received additional details about the Armenian genocide as a member of the Massachusetts Municipal Association. The issue was presented as an agenda item at a recent meeting to discuss whether or not the MMA would recognize the actions against the Armenians as genocide.

Other cities and towns, such as Arlington, Belmont, Newburyport, Newton and Watertown, have chosen to formally recognize the genocide and either rescind or suspend their ADL membership as a result of the organization’s lack of action.

Medford has been a member of the ADL since December 2004.
“When you have situations going on in places like Darfur, which the ADL has taken a position against the genocide there, and you don’t recognize the Armenian genocide, the ADL is becoming discriminatory,” said Penta. “How do you choose to recognize that atrocity, but not the Armenian genocide?”

Rather than decide immediately to rescind the city’s ADL membership, the City Council voted to wait for a recommendation from Medford’s Human Rights Commission. At last week’s HRC meeting, members developed a proposal to send back to the council to suspend the city’s membership rather than rescind it outright.

“There’s no conversation if we withdraw our membership to the ADL,” said Diane McLeod, executive director of the Office of Human Diversity. “We wanted to leave room for dialogue. There’s been a mistake made by the ADL, and we’d like more evidence that they sincerely are recognizing the genocide.”

In August, leaders of the ADL announced that what happened in Armenia was “tantamount to genocide.” However, many cities and towns in Massachusetts, including Medford, now believe the ADL’s statement was not genuine enough.

“We have listed two types of evidence that would show that the ADL is sincere about this recognition,” said McLeod. “One would be to sponsor a national or local program about the Armenian genocide or the other would be to support national recognition of the genocide. But we are also asking the community about what they would like to see as evidence of the ADL’s commitment.”

McLeod encouraged members of the community e-mail the HRC with recommendations. While the HRC cannot guarantee that all suggestions would be included in its proposal to the City Council, the HRC would like to give the community an opportunity to voice its opinions.

McLeod and Penta both emphasized that, even though it will no longer be a member of the “No Place for Hate” program, the city will continue to sponsor programming that encourages diversity appreciation and respect among differences in the community. Most importantly, diversity training will continue in the city’s elementary, middle and high schools.

“We will continue to respect the principles of the ‘No Place for Hate’ program, but the bottom line is a simple component,” said Penta. “The Armenians are not asking for reparations. They just want acknowledgement.”

— To discuss the Armerian genocide, Medford’s Human Rights Commission can be reached at humandiversity@medford.orgor 781-393-2501.

Source: http://www.wickedlocal.com/medford/homepage/x96464381

10/23 TNR: Forget Turkey

2007-10-23T21:41:00.000-07:00

Forget Turkey

by Irshad Manji

What the Armenian Genocide Resolution Is Really About

Post Date Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Now playing on Capitol Hill: a political drama over whether Turkey deserves denunciation for its mass deportation and murder of Armenians starting in 1915, otherwise known as genocide.

Initiated by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, this symbolic vote has sparked more than symbolic anger from at the White House--and from the Turkish government itself. The Bush administration insists that now is the not the time to be offending Turkey, which borders Iraq and provides the United States with key access routes in its war on terror.

Then there are ordinary people like my sister. More accustomed to condemning President Bush, she too frowns on the anti-genocide resolution. "How would it benefit the U.S.?" she asked me bluntly in an e-mail last week. Her question was not that of an American wanting to protect her country's best interests, but that of a Canadian who does not trust the motives of her narcissistic neighbor. I told my sister I would get back to her.

The timing of this resolution should raise questions--all the more so because of who initiated it: Democrats in Congress. They are the gang for whom success in today's Iraq, not slaughter in yesterday's Turkey, is the signal issue in America. HBO's Bill Maher nailed that point when he quipped, "This is why the voters gave control of the House to the Democrats. To send a stern message to the Ottoman Empire."

Still, there is at least one important reason to recognize the Armenian genocide now, and it relates directly to America's implosion in Iraq: Democracy has been redefined not just in the Middle East, but also in the United States. These days, American politicians must pay attention to "voters" who live well beyond their shores.

As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has put it, "Some of the things that are harmful to our troops relate to values--Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture.... Our troops are well-served when we declare who we are as a country and increase the respect that people have for us as a nation."

Hers is a subtle argument about the need for the United States to reclaim the moral high ground on human rights. It might be too subtle for most Americans who, let us face it, have little concern for what may or may not have happened countless miles away more than three generations ago--especially if the debate harms U.S. troops right now.

But Ms. Pelosi's argument is not meant for Americans. It is intended for an international audience.

America remains the only country in the world with a universal constituency. Domestic politics in the United States often have a profound effect in every corner of the earth, from determining immigration flows and investment patterns to handing leaders and their heirs the excuses they crave to blur the lines between God and government.

The same cannot be said of domestic politics in modern, multicultural entrepots such as India, Britain, or China. Nor do domestic politics in feisty, fiery states like Iran and Israel set precedents for the rest of us. Not yet, anyway.

No wonder so much of the world seethes that only Americans can vote for the next president of the United States. I hear it from young Muslims whenever I travel to Europe. And it is not just Muslims who express a sense of disenfranchisement. In my home of Canada, a regular columnist for the newspaper of record recently suggested that Al Gore would be president if people outside of the United States could cast ballots.

How many countries enjoy a reach so long and far that non-citizens would care enough to want a say in its leader--or journalists would care enough to speculate how the rest of the world would vote?

America's universal constituency is what House Democrats are acknowledging in their Armenian genocide resolution.

Doubtless, I am about to be accused of naiveté. Left-wing critics will sniff that this condemnation is a pretext to milk campaign contributions from Armenian genocide survivors, who, like their Jewish counterparts, are dying off. And, bonus, worshipping at the altar of their potent lobbies has its rewards, after all. Right-wing detractors will sneer that this move is meant to undermine the war on terror by alienating a crucial ally, even if unintentionally. Indeed, many House Democrats have begun wavering on the anti-genocide measure because of Turkey's threat to block its borders to American war planners should any vote pass.

That threat may be moot: With tensions escalating between military conflict now looming between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the border that Washington desperately needs to be free and clear is not. Ankara has been moving tanks, troops, and choppers to the Turkey-Iraq border. America's priorities do not count nearly as much as they did a week ago, genocide resolution or no genocide resolution.

Which brings us back to the original case for pronouncing on the Armenian slaughter--a moral case.

The question for Americans ought to be: Since when is it wrong to speak out against genocide, however many years have elapsed? People of good conscience continued raising their voices against slavery in the United States well after abolition. Are they reckless or sinister for offending many Americans? In any event, is causing offense a reason to stop remembering?

Here is the question for Turks: Why should your history be immune to America's judgment when, according to surveys of global attitudes about the United States, you as a nation are among the most anti-American (read: judgmental) in all of the Muslim world?

Finally, a question for my sister in Vancouver who suspects American intentions: As a voter in that massive caucus called international public opinion, are you ready to credit some United States legislators for maturing?

I am not sure. Canadians take smug glee in the claim that only one-third of United States Congress members have passports. It is an old rumor that Democrats, at least, are striving to shed.

Will non-Americans meet them half way, or will we continue to charge them all with tribalism in order to appease a deeper insecurity within our own nations?

The campaign is on. Welcome to democracy.

IRSHAD MANJI, author of The Trouble with Islam Today and senior fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy, is writing a book about the need for moral courage in an age of self-censorship.

Source: http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=ab28264c-6839-4993-88a3-98b7c370fb05

10/23 JPost: Turkey blames US Jews for genocide bill

2007-10-23T21:39:00.000-07:00

Turkey blames US Jews for genocide bill

Yigal Schleifer/JTA , THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 23, 2007

When a US Congressional committee approved a resolution recognizing the World War I-era massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide, Turkey's reaction was swift and harsh: Blame the Jews.

In an interview with the liberal Islamic Zaman newspaper on the eve of the resolution's approval October 10 by the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said he had told American Jewish leaders that a genocide bill would strengthen the public perception in Turkey that "Armenian and Jewish lobbies unite forces against Turks." Babacan added, "We have told them that we cannot explain it to the public in Turkey if a road accident happens. We have told them that we cannot keep the Jewish people out of this."

The Turkish public seems to have absorbed that message.

An on-line survey by Zaman's English-language edition asking why Turks believed the bill succeeded showed that 22 percent of respondents chose "Jews' having legitimized the genocide claims" - second only to "Turkey's negligence."

US Jewish community leaders reject that argument and privately say Ankara has only itself to blame for its failure to muster the support necessary to derail the resolution, which is seen in Turkey as anti-Turkish.

Resentment lingers in Washington over the Turkish Parliament's failure to approve a March 2003 motion to allow US troops to use Turkish soil as a staging ground for an invasion of Iraq.

And an official visit to Ankara in early 2006 by Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal angered many of Israel's supporters on Capitol Hill, who have been among Turkey's most vocal proponents as part of a strategy of developing strong ties between Turkey and Israel.

"The Hamas thing was really serious," said an official from a large Jewish organization. "There is less sympathy for Turkey because of what some see as an anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Jewish policy that is there."

The official added, "I think there's a sense on the Hill that Turkey is less of an ally. There is a sense that it's a different Turkey."

Soner Cagaptay, coordinator of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, echoed that thinking.

"The lingering effects of 2003 resonate," Cagaptay said. "Some people are still angry with Turkey."

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said the Jews should not be blamed for the Armenia genocide bill, particularly not by Turkish officialdom.

"We regret that some officials there are trying to lay the onus of what's happened on the Jewish community," Hoenlein told JTA. "They shouldn't allow some people to manipulate this initiative in Congress to the detriment of this relationship, which is beneficial for both sides."

Hoenlein, who met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during last month's UN General Assembly, said, "There is the same commitment on the part of the organized community to support Turkey."

Observers in Turkey say the public perception of the Jews' outsized role in the resolution's passage is based on an element of fact mixed with a greater amount of fiction.

In August, the Jewish-run Anti-Defamation League, facing pressure from grassroots activists, reversed its long-held policy of not recognizing the Armenian genocide when ADL National Director Abraham Foxman declared that what happened to the Armenians was "indeed tantamount to genocide."

But Foxman maintained the ADL's position, opposing a congressional resolution on the matter. Such a resolution would strain US-Turkey ties and jeopardize ties between Israel and Turkey, Israel's main Middle Eastern ally.

Nevertheless, the ADL's reversal was seen in Turkey as a major blow to the country's diplomatic and public-relations campaign against Armenian efforts to get a genocide resolution passed in Washington.

"Obviously the ADL's switch was not good news," said Suat Kiniklioglu, a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party and spokesman for the Turkish Parliament's foreign affairs committee.

Mustafa Akyol, an Istanbul-based political commentator who frequently writes about religious issues, said the strong reaction to the ADL's policy switch and the perception that it somehow legitimized the Armenians' claims were based on an "inflated sense" of American Jewish power among the Turkish public.

"There is a belief that [the resolution] couldn't have happened without Jewish support," Akyol said.

The House bill passed the committee by a 27-21 vote, with seven of the committee's eight Jewish members voting in favor of Resolution 106. The full House of Representatives has yet to vote on the resolution.

Yet despite the vote, US Jewish groups said they lobbied against the bill - just as they have done in the past.

"Behind-the-scenes support [from US Jewish groups] has been quite powerful" in persuading congressmen to oppose the bill, said Cagaptay. It may yet help prevent the bill from being brought to a vote in the full House.

Turkish Jewish community leaders declined to be interviewed for this story, but Turkey's Jewish leaders published a full-page advertisement in the Washington Times on the day of the vote voicing their opposition to the House bill.

"We believe this issue should be decided first and foremost on the basis of evidence adduced by historians, not on the basis of judgments by parliamentarians or Congressmen, who naturally (and understandably) may be influenced by concerns other than historical facts," the statement said. "There have been insinuations that our security and well-being in Turkey is linked to the fate of Resolution 106. We are deeply perturbed by any such allegations."

According to Cagaptay, "there is a trilateral relationship, which is Turkey, Israel and the American Jews. The relationship is about good ties between Turkey and Israel, and good ties between Turkey and the American Jewish community, which makes up for the fact that Turkey has not had, historically, a strong presence on the Hill."

This time, however, it seems Jewish opposition to the bill was not enough to overcome support by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a longtime supporter of Armenian-American issues, who has vowed to bring the bill to a full House vote.

Source: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380634864&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

10/22 Oread: Marchers call on Israel to recognize Armenian Genocide

2007-10-22T21:36:00.001-07:00

Monday, October 22, 2007

MARCHERS CALL ON ISRAEL TO RECOGNIZE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Armenians in Israel are calling on a state that should understand their anguish to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Armenian-Israelis marched in Jerusalem's Justice Square singing and chanting Armenian songs and slogans. The protest was attended by two parliamentary officials, Yaeer Tsaban and Khayeem Oron, who both gave speeches castigating the denial of the genocide by the Israeli government.

Israel has acknowledged that massacres were perpetrated against the Armenians and expressed sympathy for their suffering. But the government has stopped short of calling it genocide.

So how can the Israeli government join the ranks of pragmatic deniers? Just like US leaders, they don't want to tick off the Turks.

But the Turks don't seem concerned with saying things that sure as hell ought to tick of the Israelis.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan on visit to Israel last week, told The Jerusalem Post,

"All of a sudden the perception in Turkey right now is that the Jewish people - or the Jewish organizations, let's say, and the Armenian diaspora, the Armenian lobbies, are now hand-in-hand trying to defame Turkey, and trying to condemn Turkey and the Turkish people. This is the unfortunate perception right now in Turkey. So if something goes wrong in Washington, DC, it inevitably will have some influence on relations between Turkey and the US, plus the relations between Turkey and Israel, as well."

The Turks have implied that this whole episode could put the Jewish community in Turkey at risk.

Tom Segev wrote recently in Haaretz:

"Israel has removed itself from the nations whose voice ought to be heard on all matters pertaining to the violation of human rights; its military and other interests in Turkey are even leading Israel to lend a hand to the concealment of the Armenian genocide. The Turks are putting the Jews, and Israel, at the center of this affair.

This galling threat is just as despicable as the denial of the Armenian genocide itself, and just goes to show why decent people need to demand that Turkey finally learn to look in the mirror."

Sergov continues:

"...The Turkish Foreign Ministry attributes the "lie" about the Armenian massacre to two Jews - Henry Morgenthau and Franz Werfel. Morgenthau was U.S. ambassador to Turkey, and much of what the world knows about the Armenian genocide it learned from a book the ambassador wrote after his return home. The Turkish Foreign Ministry is careful not to identify Morgenthau as a Jew; it just paints him as a foolish propagandist.

About Werfel, the Turkish Foreign Ministry writes that he published a book entitled "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh," but that was just a novel that can teach us nothing more than the film "Amadeus" might teach us about the composer Salieri. In this equation, the Armenians are Mozart and the Turks are Salieri, and just as Salieri didn't murder Mozart, the Turks didn't slaughter the Armenians."

It is shameful for the government of Israel, a nation born out of the Holocaust, to bow to political expediency and succumb to Turkish pressure, lies and slurs.

At the Holocaust Museum in Washington, these words from Adolph Hitler advising his general that the world would remain silent in the face of German atrocities are etched on one of the walls: "Who, after all, speaks today about the annihilation of the Armenians?,"

The following is from the Jerusalem Post.

Armenians: Call slaughter 'genocide'

Jerusalem's tiny Armenian community held banners and flags at a protest Monday to demand that Israel recognize the mass killings of ethnic Armenians in Turkey nearly a century ago as genocide.

About 100 people stood outside the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, singing songs in Armenian and holding banners. A group of teenage girls stood in school uniforms alongside an elderly woman holding a sign that read, "I am a survivor," in English and Hebrew, and others waved colorful flags.

The mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish troops took place between 1915 and 1917 as the 600-year-old empire collapsed. It was again thrown into focus over US congressional debates about whether to recognize those events as genocide.

Turkey says the killings were a result of widespread chaos and political upheaval.

Israel has become a player in the US debate. Armenians expect Israel to sympathize with their demands, because of the Jewish state was built in the shadow of the Nazi Holocaust of World War II. But Turkey has threatened to cool its ties with Israel if it doesn't use its influence in Washington to quell the campaign. Turkey is one of Israel's few Muslim allies.

Armenians say Israel is actively lobbying on behalf of Turkey in the US Congress, where Democrats have pulled back from their attempt to label the mass killing as genocide, under pressure from the White House.

"It's frustrating for us, and it's frustrating for Israelis," said George Hintlian, an Armenian historian, who attended the protest. Organizers of the protest said Israel "jeopardizing its claim to moral high ground on the Holocaust" by not taking Armenia's side.

Israel's government has said previously that massacres were perpetrated against Armenians and expressed sympathy for their suffering. But it has stopped short of calling them genocide.

Thousands of Armenians fled to nearby states during the mass killing, including to Jerusalem, where they established a neighborhood in the walled Old City. Their numbers have steadily shrunk as younger generations emigrate to the West, and now only about 1,000 Armenians live in Jerusalem.

Source: http://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/search?q=armenian

10/22 NYSun: Backtracking on 'Ally' Turkey Damages Credibility

2007-10-22T21:36:00.000-07:00

Backtracking on 'Ally' Turkey Damages Credibility

BY YOUSSEF IBRAHIM
October 22, 2007

Over the past three weeks Turkey has deployed 60,000 troops to its border with Iraq, the Turkish parliament has voted overwhelmingly to authorize an invasion of northern Iraq, and Turkish generals have threatened to block almost 75% of supplies to American forces in Iraq, which are transported through Turkey. Prime Minister Erdogan promised further hostilities if Congress did not back away from a nonbinding resolution labeling the Turkish massacre of 1.5 million Armenian Christians in 1915 as "genocide." For good measure, the most recent survey from the Pew Research Center shows that 80% of Turks profoundly dislike America.

That is true friendship for you. These savage reactions and dire threats come from a country that President Bush, along with five American presidents before him, firmly embraced as one of our country's closest allies. Turkey is a member of NATO and a nation of 71 million that aspires to join the European Union — which is led by France and Germany, two countries that passed much tougher measures condemning the Ottoman Empire's butchery at the turn of the 20th century.

Congress is playing its own shameful part in this foreign policy farce, backing down last week in the face of the Turkish onslaught. Prompted with money and donations by a collection of hired lobbyists, including a former speaker-designate of the House, who once promoted similar resolutions before a fistful of dollars from Ankara swayed his mind.

Led by such principled luminaries as the current House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Rep. John Murtha, a former Marine who last week was running around mumbling, "What genocide?" a majority of the co-sponsors of the Armenian genocide act melted away.

For his part, Mr. Bush — who as a presidential candidate in 2000 spoke of Turkey's "genocidal campaign" against the Armenians — told lawmakers last week they had better things to do than sort out the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Is it any surprise that in opinion polls, an overwhelming majority of the American public says it holds such representatives in low regard?

For Turkey, a secular democracy that has ruthlessly oppressed its Kurdish minority for the past 30 years, a mea culpa is not even on the charts.

By law, the mere mention of the Armenian genocide is an insult to "Turkishness," so taboo that people have been shot to death over it by nationalists or sent to jail by the government.

Perhaps typical of such a chauvinistic mind-set, Mr. Erdogan warned that the entire edifice of American-Turkish relations — which he amazingly described in an article in Friday's Wall Street Journal as being "like a spider web" — could collapse.

"Spider web" could only come from the mind of the leader of the ruling AKP Party, which millions of secular Turks accuse of conspiring to envelop Turkey in Islamic veils and ideology. Certainly, inveighing the powers of hell over a toothless commemoration of a historical massacre 90 years ago suggests an absence of peaceful intent.

Without a doubt, the dismantling of the resolution gives Turkey and Muslim Arab countries in the region a pass on ethnic intolerance. Armenians are neither the first nor the last. Nearly 50 million Middle Eastern minorities, including 20 million Kurds and another 20 million Arab Christians, along with the non-Muslim Sudanese, Druze, Yazidis, and Bahais continue to be crushed under the sway of a Turkish or Arab strain of chauvinistic Islam.

For all the grumbling about how the whole world hates America, much of it still follows in American footsteps. There isn't a place on earth that has not embraced versions of the American model, from the Internet to cinema to free business enterprise and creativity. Sadly, we have just given that world a very poor example by folding, and damaged in the process America's credibility in speaking out against brutality in Darfur and Burma.

But what takes the cake in this charade must be a statement by Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat of California, who asserted to the New York Times that the aborted resolution "split Jewish lawmakers." He argued that some of them believed that failing to support Turkey might "endanger Israel's security in the region."

Seriously, does the honorable representative think that it is possible to find American Jews, Jews anywhere, who would be "split" over condemning the genocide of a people because of their religion or national origin?

ymibrahim@gmail.com

Source: http://www.nysun.com/article/64973

10/22 JTA: Foxman takes center stage

2007-10-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

Book puts Foxman in 'lobby' fight

Ami Eden

Abraham Foxman may never have commanded more attention or attracted as much criticism. The ADL leader discusses whether he still commands enough credibility to take on critics of Israel and the pro-Israel lobby.

Published: 10/22/2007

NEW YORK (JTA) -- As patrons filed into Manhattan's 92nd Street Y to catch a sold-out appearance by Larry David, the scene outside was producing a punchline straight out of his HBO sitcom "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

David and one of his "Curb" co-stars, Susie Essman, were the main event on that recent evening. But protesters had gathered outside to jeer the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, who was slated to speak -- in another packed, albeit smaller, room -- about anti-Semitism and his new book, "The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and The Myth of Jewish Control."

The demonstrators were voicing outrage over Foxman's initial unwillingness to characterize the World War I-era Turkish massacres of Armenians as genocide and his continued opposition to a proposed congressional resolution that would put America on record as using the g-word.

"Larry David is in favor of genocide?" one confused visitor asked.

The mix-up could have served as the basis for a good "Curb" plot, to be sure, but in real life Foxman is the one who's been taking it from all sides of late. And while he certainly has suffered some self-inflicted public-relations wounds, he's also taken plenty of heat for things that he never said or did, including the misdeeds of others.

Legitimate or not, the barrage of criticism has had an impact: Foxman, who has worked at the ADL since 1965 and run the organization for the past 20 years, has become an increasingly polarizing figure for Jews and non-Jews on both sides of the political spectrum.

Despite, or perhaps because, he has become a walking flash point, Foxman remains the media's top go-to guy on Jewish affairs -- a status further cemented by his high-profile national book tour.

In short, he may have never commanded more attention or attracted as much criticism. It's a high-stakes dynamic as he takes the lead role in the Jewish community's fight against a growing list of vocal and respectable critics of Israel and the pro-Israel lobby, most notably former President Jimmy Carter and the academic duo of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

Foxman insists he has no second thoughts about jumping into the center of the debate over the pro-Israel lobby.

"I'm not nervous. No hesitation whatsoever," Foxman said during an interview last month in his ADL office at the start of his book tour.

Still, he conceded, "The one thing that haunts me is my credibility because that's all we got."

As it turns out, Foxman has written a reasoned, measured response to Carter's "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" and the articles that evolved into Mearsheimer and Walt's "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy."

Foxman's book breaks little new ground in its bid to debunk the most objectionable claims put forth by Carter, Mearsheimer and Walt, et al. But for those seeking a quick and accessible road map for understanding the weakest points in the attack on Israel and the pro-Israel lobby, "The Deadliest Lies" does the trick -- with a big boost from the foreword by former Secretary of State George Shultz.

The question is, will it be read by anyone who isn't already settled on the issue? Does Foxman still command the respect and credibility to make headway beyond his base, to reach, as he describes them, "the fair-minded people who may be wondering whether there is any truth in the claims promoted in 'The Israel Lobby' and are willing to hear the other side of the story?"

Foxman essentially touches on the issue in his book during his recounting of the outrage triggered last year by an inaccurate claim that he had pushed the Polish Consulate in New York to pull the plug on a lecture by New York University Professor Tony Judt.

The ADL had inquired about the event, which was being sponsored by an outside group that was renting space at the consulate, but it turned out to be David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, who had asked for the event to be canceled. Still, the furor eventually triggered a lengthy profile of Foxman in The New York Times Magazine last January.

Written by James Traub, the piece used the flap over Judt -- who caused an uproar with a 2003 essay arguing that the idea of a Jewish state was and is a mistake -- as a vehicle for examining claims that the Jewish community is guilty of trying to shut down debate over Israel.

Among other things, Traub's piece played into the left-wing's negative -- and often unfair -- attacks on Foxman by ignoring his efforts to line up American Jewish support for peace moves approved by the Israeli government. Traub also incorrectly lumped Foxman in with those who argue that the Jewish community should steer clear of criticizing Christian conservatives on domestic policy because of their support for Israel.

In fact, one of the biggest complaints of Foxman's right-wing critics -- Jewish and non-Jewish -- is his continued willingness to confront the religious right. For example, they point to his speaking out against the Mel Gibson film "The Passion of the Christ" and a 2005 speech Foxman gave in an attempt to rally the Jewish community against efforts to "Christianize America."

And of course they steam over his support for the Oslo process and the Gaza disengagement, which he framed as an issue of Israel's democratically elected government deserving deference on issues of peace and security.

In "The Deadliest Lies," Foxman argued that given the "preconceived notions" of his critics, it would be "almost impossible" for them "not to assume the worst about me." He was talking about Judt and his supporters in left-wing academic circles, but the same applies to Jewish and Christian conservatives who falsely claim that the ADL leader suggested "The Passion" would spark anti-Jewish pogroms in America and tagged Gibson as an anti-Semite during the controversy over the film.

Despite his growing ability to invite backlash from some liberal and conservative circles, Foxman insists he has no plans to listen to those who say he needs to tone down his approach.

"We don't have that luxury," he said during the interview at his office.

Foxman in his book seemed to make an effort at maintaining some appearance of balance, stopping well short of full-throated apologetics for Israeli policy: "As in most conflicts, there have been rights and wrongs on both sides," he wrote, "and there is plenty of room for open debate about how the blame should be apportioned -- and, more important, about the best way forward."

On the question of whether Jewish groups are in the censorship business, Foxman is guilty to some degree of wanting it both ways. He worked hard to clear his own name in the Judt episode, but defends the right of the AJCommittee and other Jewish entities to protest invitations to objectionable speakers. And if such efforts are successful, he argues, the blame rests solely with the institutions that comply, not the Jewish agitators.

"The fundamental truth remains that it was the Polish consulate alone that chose to cancel Tony Judt's speech," Foxman wrote. "To try to place the responsibility for that ill-advised decision on some cabal of pro-Israeli groups is fairly ludicrous."

In the interview, Foxman stood by the point: Jews who feel so inclined are "not wrong" to move against speakers to whom they object.

"It's their expression of freedom of speech," he said.

While some segments of the Jewish community might go too far, Foxman said, it is really the Jewish community that is the target of a campaign of "intimidation." The goal of Mearsheimer and Walt in arguing that the pro-Israel lobby and Israeli officials played a vital role in the U.S. decision to invade Iraq, Foxman said, is to scare American Jews from weighing in for a tough stand against Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"I think part of this is an attempt to intimate us," Foxman said.

Noting the attacks on himself, he added: "If they can succeed in shutting me up, then they can shut the Jewish community up."

One thing is clear, at least when it comes to Foxman: "They" aren't getting very far.

Source: http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/20071022foxmanbook.html

10/22 JPost: Armenian protesters demand Israel recognize genocide by Turks

2007-10-22T21:30:00.000-07:00

Armenian protesters demand Israel recognize genocide by Turks

Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 22, 2007

Jerusalem's tiny Armenian community held banners and flags at a protest Monday to demand that Israel recognize the mass killings of ethnic Armenians in Turkey nearly a century ago as genocide.

About 100 people stood outside the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, singing songs in Armenian and holding banners. A group of teenage girls stood in school uniforms alongside an elderly woman holding a sign that read, "I am a survivor," in English and Hebrew, and others waved colorful flags.

Israel has become a player in the US debate. Armenians expect Israel to sympathize with their demands, because of the Jewish state was built in the shadow of the Nazi Holocaust of World War II. But Turkey has threatened to cool its ties with Israel if it doesn't use its influence in Washington to quell the campaign. Turkey is one of Israel's few Muslim allies.

Source: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380625140&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

10/22 History News Network: Genocide Deniers

2007-10-22T21:22:00.000-07:00

Genocide Deniers

By Scott Jaschik

Mr. Jaschik is one of the three founders of Inside Higher Ed, where this piece first appeared. With Doug Lederman, he leads the editorial operations of Inside Higher Ed, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, resources, and interactive features. Scott is a leading voice on higher education issues, quoted regularly in publications nationwide, and publishing articles on colleges in publications such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Salon, and elsewhere.

In the buildup to the vote by a House of Representatives committee officially calling for U.S. foreign policy to recognize that a genocide of Armenians took place during World War I, at the behest of the “Young Turk” government of the Ottoman Empire, a flurry of advertising in American newspapers appeared from Turkey.

The ads discouraged the vote by House members, and called instead for historians to figure out what happened in 1915. The ads quoted such figures as Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, as saying: “These historical circumstances require a very detailed and sober look from historians.” And State Department officials made similar statements, saying as the vote was about to take place: “We think that the determination of whether the events that happened to ethnic Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire should be a matter for historical inquiry.”

Turkey’s government also has been quick to identify American scholars (there are only a handful, but Turkey knows them all) who back its view that the right approach to 1915 is not to call it genocide, but to figure out what to call it, and what actually took place.

Normally, you might expect historians to welcome the interest of governments in convening scholars to explore questions of scholarship. But in this case, scholars who study the period say that the leaders of Turkey and the United States — along with that handful of scholars — are engaged in a profoundly anti-historical mission: trying to pretend that the Armenian genocide remains a matter of debate instead of being a long settled question. Much of the public discussion of the Congressional resolution has focused on geopolitics: If the full House passes the resolution, will Turkey end its help for U.S. military activities in Iraq?

But there are also some questions about the role of history and historians in the debate. To those scholars of the period who accept the widely held view that a genocide did take place, it’s a matter of some frustration that top government officials suggest that these matters are open for debate and that this effort is wrapped around a value espoused by most historians: free and open debate.

“Ultimately this is politics, not scholarship,” said Simon Payaslian, who holds an endowed chair in Armenian history and literature at Boston University. Turkey’s strategy, which for the first 60-70 years after the mass slaughter was to pretend that it didn’t take place, “has become far more sophisticated than before” and is explicitly appealing to academic values, he said.

“They have focused on the idea of objectivity, the idea of ‘on the one hand and the other hand,’ ” he said. “That’s very attractive on campuses to say that you should hear both sides of the story.” While Payaslian is quick to add that he doesn’t favor censoring anyone or firing anyone for their views, he believes that it is irresponsible to pretend that the history of the period is uncertain. And he thinks it is important to expose “the collaboration between the Turkish Embassy and scholars cooperating to promote this denialist argument.”

To many scholars, an added irony is that all of these calls for debating whether a genocide took place are coming at a time when emerging new scholarship on the period — based on unprecedented access to Ottoman archives — provides even more solid evidence of the intent of the Turkish authorities to slaughter the Armenians. This new scholarship is seen as the ultimate smoking gun as it is based on the records of those who committed the genocide — which counters the arguments of Turkey over the years that the genocide view relies too much on the views of Armenian survivors.

Even further, some of the most significant new scholarship is being done by scholars who are Turkish, not Armenian, directly refuting the claim by some denial scholars that only Armenian professors believe a genocide took place. In some cases, these scholars have faced death threats as well as indictments by prosecutors in Turkey.

Those who question the genocide, however, say that what is taking place in American history departments is a form of political correctness. “There is no debate and that’s the real problem. We’re stuck and the reality is that we need a debate,” said David C. Cuthell, executive director of the Institute for Turkish Studies, a center created by Turkey’s government to award grants and fellowships to scholars in the United States. (The center is housed at Georgetown University, but run independently.)

The action in Congress is designed “to stifle debate,” Cuthell said, and so is anti-history. “There are reasonable doubts in terms of whether this is a genocide,” he said.

The term “genocide” was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish-Polish lawyer who was seeking to distinguish what Hitler was doing to the Jews from the sadly routine displacement and killing of civilians in wartime. He spoke of “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.” Others have defined the term in different ways, but common elements are generally an intentional attack on a specific group.

While the term was created well after 1915 and with the Holocaust in mind, scholars of genocide (many of them focused on the Holocaust) have broadly endorsed applying the term to what happened to Armenians in 1915, and many refer to that tragedy as the first genocide of the 20th century. When in 2005 Turkey started talking about the idea of convening historians to study whether a genocide took place, the International Association of Genocide Scholars issued a letter in which it said that the “overwhelming opinion” of hundreds of experts on genocide from countries around the world was that a genocide had taken place.

Specifically it referred to a consensus around this view: “On April 24, 1915, under cover of World War I, the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic genocide of its Armenian citizens — an unarmed Christian minority population. More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches. The rest of the Armenian population fled into permanent exile. Thus an ancient civilization was expunged from its homeland of 2,500 years.”

Turkey has put forward a number of arguments in recent years, since admitting that something terrible did happen to many Armenians. Among the explanations offered by the government and its supporters are that many people died, but not as many as the scholars say; that Armenians share responsibility for a civil war in which civilians were killed on both sides; and that the chaos of World War I and not any specific action by government authorities led to the mass deaths and exiles.

Beyond those arguments, many raise political arguments that don’t attempt to deny that a genocide took place, but say that given Turkey’s sensitivities it isn’t wise to talk about it as such. This was essentially the argument given by some House members last week who voted against the resolution, saying that they didn’t want to risk anything that could affect U.S. troops. Similarly, while Holocaust experts, many of them Jewish, have overwhelmingly backed the view that Armenians suffered a genocide, some supporters of Israel have not wanted to offend Turkey, a rare Middle Eastern nation to maintain decent relations with the Israel and a country that still has a significant Jewish population.

Dissenters or Deniers?

Probably the most prominent scholar in the United States to question that genocide took place is Bernard Lewis, an emeritus professor at Princeton University, whose work on the Middle East has made him a favorite of the Bush administration and neoconservative thinkers. In one of his early works, Lewis referred to the “terrible holocaust” that the Armenians faced in 1915, but he stopped using that language and was quoted questioning the use of the term “genocide.” Lewis did not respond to messages seeking comment for this article. The Armenian National Committee of America has called him “a known genocide denier” and an “academic mercenary.”

The two scholars who are most active on promoting the view that no genocide took place are Justin McCarthy, distinguished university scholar at the University of Louisville, and Guenter Lewy, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Both of them are cited favorably by the Turkish embassy and McCarthy serves on the board of the Institute of Turkish Studies.

McCarthy said in an interview that he is a historical demographer and that he came to his views through “the dull study of numbers.” He said that he was studying population trends in the Ottoman Empire during World War I and that while he believes that about 600,000 Armenians lost their lives, far more Muslims died. “There’s simply no question,” he said, that Armenians killed many of them.

The term genocide may mean something when talking about Hitler, McCarthy said, “where you have something unique in human history.” But he said it was “pretty meaningless” to use about the Armenians. He said that he believes that between the Russians, the Turks and the Armenians, everyone was killing everyone, just as is the case in many wars. He said that to call what happened to the Armenians genocide would be the equivalent of calling what happened to the South during the U.S. Civil War genocide.

So why do so many historians see what happened differently? McCarthy said the scholarship that has been produced to show genocide has been biased. “If you look at who these historians are, they are Armenians and they are advancing a national agenda,” he said. Cuthell of the Institute for Turkish Studies said that it goes beyond that: Because the Armenians who were killed or exiled were Christians (as are many of their descendants now in the United States), and those accused of the genocide were Muslims, the United States is more sympathetic to the Armenians.

Lewy said that before he started to study the issue, he too believed that a genocide had taken place. He said that intellectuals and journalist “simply echo the Armenian position,” which he said is wrong. He said that there is the “obvious fact” that large numbers of Armenians were killed and he blamed some of the skepticism of Turkey’s view (and his) on the fact that Turkey for so long denied that anything had taken place, and so lost credibility.

In 2005, the University of Utah Press published a book by Lewy that sums up his position, Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide. Lewy’s argument, he said in an interview, “is that the key issue is intent” and that there is “no evidence” that the Young Turks sought the attacks on the Armenians. “In my view, there were mass killings, but no intent.” Lewy’s argument can also be found in this article in The Middle East Forum, as can letters to the editor taking issue with his scholarship.

The Evidence for Genocide

Many scholars who believe that there was a genocide say that Lewy ignored or dismissed massive amounts of evidence, not only in accounts from Armenians, but from foreign diplomats who observed what was going on — evidence about the marshaling of resources and organizing of groups to attack the Armenians and kick them out of their homes, and the very fact of who was in control of the government at the time.

Rouben Adalian, director of the Armenian National Institute, called the Lewy book part of an “insidious way to influence Western scholarship and to create confusion.” He said it was “pretty outrageous” that the Utah press published the book, which he called “one of the more poisonous products” to come from “those trying to dispute the genocide.”

John Herbert, director of the University of Utah Press, is new in his job there and said he wasn’t familiar with the discussions that took place when Lewy submitted his book. But he said that “we want to encourage the debate and we’ve done that.”

Notably, other presses passed on the book. Lewy said he was turned down 11 times, at least 4 of them from university presses, before he found Utah. While critics say that shows the flaws in the book, Lewy said it was evidence of bias. “The issue was clearly the substance of my position,” he said.

Of course the problem with the “encouraging the debate” argument is that so many experts in the field say that the debate over genocide is settled, and that credible arguments against the idea of a genocide just don’t much exist. The problem, many say, is that the evidence the Turks say doesn’t exist does exist, so people have moved on.

Andras Riedlmayer, a librarian of Ottoman history at Harvard University and co-editor of the H-TURK e-mail list about Turkish history, said that in the ’80s, he could remember scholarly meetings “at which panels on this issue turned into shouting matches. One doesn’t see that any more.” At this point, he said, the Turkish government’s view “is very much the minority view” among scholars worldwide.

What’s happening now, he said, outside of those trying to deny what took place, “isn’t that the discussion has diminished, but that the discussion is more mature.” He said that there is more research going on about how and why the killings took place, and the historical context of the time. He also said that he thought there would be more research in the works on one of “the great undiscussed issues of why successive Turkish governments over recent decades have found it worthwhile to invest so much political capital and energy into promoting that historical narrative,” in which it had been “fudging” what really happened.

Among the scholars attracting the most attention for work on the genocide is Taner Akçam, a historian from Turkey who has been a professor at the University of Minnesota since 2001, when officials in Turkey stepped up criticism of his work. Akçam has faced death threats and has had legal charges brought against him in Turkey (since dropped) for his work, which directly focuses on the question of the culpability of Young Turk leaders in planning and executing the genocide. (Akçam’s Web site has details about his research and the Turkish campaigns against him.) Opposition to his work from Turkey has been particularly intense since the publication last year of A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility.

In an interview, Akçam said that his next book — planned for 2008 — may be “a turning point” in research on the genocide. He is finishing a book on what took place in 1915 based only on documents he has reviewed in Ottoman archives — no testimony from survivors, no documents from third parties. The documents, only some of which he has written about already, are so conclusive on the questions Turkey pretends are in dispute, he said, that the genocide should be impossible to deny.

To those like Lewy who have written books saying that there is no evidence, “I laugh at them,” Akçam said, because the documents he has already released rebut them, and the new book will do so even more. “There is no scholarly debate on this topic,” he said.

The difficulty, he said, is doing the scholarship. In the archives in Turkey, he said, the staff are extremely professional and helpful, even knowing his views and his work. But he said that he has received numerous death threats and does not feel safe in Turkey for more than a few days, and even then must keep a low profile. As to legal risks, he said that laws on the books that make it illegal to question the Turkish state on certain matters, are inconsistently enforced, so while he has faced legal harassment, he generally felt that everything would work out in the end. But Akçam is well known, has dual German-Turkish citizenship, and a job at an American university, and he said those are advantages others do not have.

He plans to publish his next book first in Turkey, in Turkish, and then to translate it for an American audience.

Another scholar from Turkey working on the Armenian genocide is Fatma Müge Göçek, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan. Until she came to Princeton to earn her Ph.D., Göçek said that she didn’t know about the Armenian genocide. For that matter, she said she didn’t know that Armenians lived in Turkey — “and I had the best education Turkey has to offer.”

Learning the full history was painful, she said, and started for her when Armenians she met at Princeton talked to her about it and she was shocked and angry. Upon reading the sorts of materials she never saw in Turkey, the evidence was clear, she said.

Göçek’s books to date have been about the Westernization of the Ottoman Empire, but she said she came to the view that she needed to deal with the genocide in her next book. “I have worked on how the Ottoman Empire negotiated modernity,” she said, and the killings of 1915 are part of “the dark side of modernity.”

So the book she is writing now is a sociological analysis of how Turkish officials at the time justified to themselves what they were doing. She is basing her book on the writings these officials made themselves in which they frame the issue as one of “the survival of the Turks or of the Armenians” to justify their actions. While Göçek will be focusing on the self-justification, she said that the diaries and memoirs she is citing also show that the Turkish leaders knew exactly what they were doing, and that this wasn’t just a case of chaos and civil war getting out of hand.

Göçek said she was aware of the harassment faced by Akçam and others from Turkey who have stated in public that a genocide took place. But she said scholars must go where their research leads them. “That is why one decides to become an academic — you want to search certain questions. If you do not want to, and you are not willing to, you should go do something else.”

Source: http://hnn.us/articles/43861.html

10/22 FPIF: U.S. Denial of the Armenian Genocide

2007-10-22T21:20:00.000-07:00

U.S. Denial of the Armenian Genocide

Stephen Zunes October 22, 2007

Editor: John Feffer

Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

It continues to boggle the mind what the Democratic leadership in Congress will do whenever the Republicans raise the specter of labeling them “soft on terrorism.” They approve wiretapping without a court order. They allow for indefinite detention of suspects without charge. They authorize the invasion and occupation of a country on the far side of the world that was no threat to us and then provide unconditional funding for the bloody and unwinnable counter-insurgency war that inevitably followed.

Now, it appears, the Democrats are also willing to deny history, even when it involves genocide.

The non-binding resolution commemorating the Armenian genocide attracted 226 co-sponsors and won passage through the House Foreign Relations Committee. Nevertheless, it appears that as of this writing that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – in response to pressure from the White House and Republican congressional leaders that it would harm the “Global War on Terrorism” – will prevent the resolution from coming up for vote in the full House.

Call It Genocide

Between 1915 and 1918, under orders of the leadership of the Ottoman Empire, an estimated two million Armenians were forcibly removed from their homes in a region that had been part of the Armenian nation for more than 2,500 years. Three-quarters of them died as a result of execution, starvation, and related reasons.

Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during that period, noted that, “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact...” While issuing a “death warrant to a whole race” would normally be considered genocide by any definition, it apparently does not in the view of the current administration and Congress of the government he was representing.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, signed and ratified by the United States, officially defines genocide as any effort “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Raphael Lemkin was the Polish Jewish lawyer who originally coined the term “genocide” in 1944. The earliest proponent of an international convention on its prevention and the punishment of its perpetrators, Lemkin identified the Armenian case as a definitive example.

Dozens of other governments – including Canada, France, Italy, and Russia – and several UN bodies have formally recognized the Armenian genocide, as have the governments of 40 U.S. states. Neither the Bush administration nor Congress appears willing to do so, however.

Ironically, Congress earlier this year overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for refusing to acknowledge the German genocide of the Jews. That same Congress, however, appears quite willing to refuse to acknowledge the Turkish genocide of the Armenians.

While awareness of anti-Semitism is fortunately widespread enough to dismiss those who refuse to acknowledge the Holocaust to the political fringe, it appears that tolerance for anti-Armenian bigotry is strong enough that it is still apparently politically acceptable to refuse to acknowledge their genocide.

The Turkey Factor

Opponents of the measure acknowledging the Armenian genocide claim argue that they are worried about harming relations with Turkey, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire and an important U.S. ally.

In reality, however, if the Bush administration and Congress were really concerned about hurting relations with Turkey, Bush would have never asked for and Congress would have never approved authorization for the United States to have invaded Iraq, which the Turks vehemently opposed. As a result of the U.S. war and occupation of Turkey’s southern neighbor, public opinion polls have shown that percentage of the Turkish population holding a positive view of the United States has declined from 52% to only 9%.

Turkish opposition was so strong that, despite the Bush administration offering Turkey $6 billion in grants and $20 billion in loan guarantees in return for allowing U.S. forces to use bases in Turkey to launch the invasion in 2003, the Turkish parliament refused to authorize the request. Soon thereafter, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, in an interview with CNN in Turkey, expressed his disappointment that the Turkish military had not taken its traditional “leadership role” in the matter, which – given its periodic military intervention in Turkish governance – many Turks took as advocacy for a military coup. Furthermore, in testimony on Capitol Hill, Wolfowitz further angered the Turks by claiming that the civilian government made a "big, big mistake” in failing to back U.S. military plans and claimed that the country’s democratically elected parliament “didn't quite know what it was doing.”

The United States has antagonized Turkey still further as a result of U.S. support for Kurdish nationalists in northern Iraq who, with the support of billions of dollars worth of U.S. aid and thousands of American troops, have created an autonomous enclave that has served as a based for KADEK (formerly known as the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK), which Turkey considers a terrorist group. KADEK forces, which had largely observed a cease fire prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the resulting consolidation of the quasi-independent Kurdish region, have since been emboldened to launch countless forays into Turkish territory at the cost of hundreds of lives.

Since almost all House members who oppose this non-binding resolution on the Armenian genocide were among the majority of Republicans and the minority of Democrats who voted to authorize the invasion, antagonizing Turkey is clearly not the real reason for their opposition. Anyone actually concerned about the future of U.S.-Turkish relations would never have rejected the Turkish government’s pleas for restraint and voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq nor would they vote to continue U.S. funding of the pro-KADEK separatist government in northern Iraq.

Why a Resolution Now?

Another bogus argument put forward by President Bush and his bipartisan supporters on Capitol Hill is that Congress should not bother passing resolutions regarding historical events. Yet these critics have not objected to other recent successful congressional resolutions on historic events: recognizing the 65th anniversary of the death of the Polish musician and political leader Ignacy Jan Paderewski, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the American Jewish Committee, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland, or commemorating the 150th anniversary of the first meeting of the Republican Party in Wisconsin, just to name a few.

These opponents of the resolution also claim that this is a “bad time” to upset the Turkish government, given that U.S. access to Turkish bases is part of the re-supply efforts to support the counter-insurgency war by U.S. occupation forces in Iraq. However, it was also considered a “bad time” when a similar resolution was put forward in 2000 because U.S. bases in Turkey were being used to patrol the “no fly zones” in northern Iraq. And it was also considered a “bad time” in 1985 and 1987 when similar resolutions were put forward because U.S. bases in Turkey were considered important listening posts for monitoring the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

For deniers of the Armenian genocide, it is always a “bad time.”

The Bush administration, like both Republican and Democratic administrations before it, has refused to acknowledge that the Armenian genocide even took place. For example, under the Reagan administration, the Bulletin of the Department of State claimed that, "Because the historical record of the 1915 events in Asia Minor is ambiguous, the Department of State does not endorse allegations that the Turkish Government committed genocide against the Armenian people."

Similarly, Paul Wolfowitz, who served as deputy secretary of defense in President Bush’s first term, stated in 2002 that “one of the things that impress me about Turkish history is the way Turkey treats its own minorities."

The operative clause of the resolution simply calls upon President Bush “to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian genocide, and for other purposes." Therefore, if President Bush really doesn’t want Congress to pass such a resolution, all he needs to do is make a statement acknowledging the genocide. Not surprisingly for someone with a notorious lack of knowledge of history, however, he has refused to do so. Bush has only gone as far as acknowledging that what happened to the Armenians was simply part of “a horrible tragedy” which reflects “a deep sorrow that continues to haunt them and their neighbors, the Turkish people,” even though Turkey has never expressed sorrow for their genocide.

Failure to pass a resolution calling on President Bush to acknowledge the genocide, then, amounts to an acceptance of his genocide denial.

Genocide Denial

Given the indisputable documentary record of the Armenian genocide, it would appear that at least some of those who refuse to go on record recognizing Turkey’s genocide of Armenians are, like those who refuse to recognize Germany’s genocide of European Jews, motivated by ignorance and bigotry. Claims that it would harm relations with Turkey or that the timing is wrong appear to be no more than desperate excuses to deny reality. If the Bush administration and members of Congress recognized that genocide took place, they should have no problem going on record saying so.

One problem may be that members of Congress, like President Bush, are themselves ignorant of history. For example, the Middle East scholar most often cited by both Republican and Democratic members of Congress as influencing their understanding of the region is the notorious genocide-denier Bernard Lewis, a fellow at Washington’s Institute of Turkish Studies. In France, where genocide denial is considered a criminal offense, he was convicted in 1996 following a statement in Le Monde in which the emeritus Princeton University professor dismissed the claim of genocide as nothing more than "the Armenian version of this story." The court noted how, typical of those who deny genocide, he reached his conclusion by “concealing elements contrary to his thesis” and “failed in his duties of objectivity and prudence.”

This is not to say that every single opponent of the resolution explicitly denies the genocide. Some have acknowledged that genocide indeed occurred, but have apparently been convinced that it is contrary to perceived U.S. national security interest to state this publicly. This is just as inexcusable, however. Such people are moral cowards who apparently would be just as willing to refuse to acknowledge the Holocaust if the Bush administration told them that it might also upset the German government enough to restrict access to U.S. bases.

Though it has been Democratic members of the House, led by California Congressman Adam Schiff, who have most vigorously led the effort this time to recognize the Armenian genocide, opposition to acknowledging history has been a bipartisan effort. In 2000, President Bill Clinton successfully persuaded House Speaker Dennis Hastert to suppress a similar bill after it passed the Republican-led Foreign Relations Committee by a vote of 40-7 and was on its way to easy passage before the full House. Currently, former Democratic House leader Dick Gephardt has joined in lobbying his former colleagues on behalf of the Turkish government. And now, the current Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, despite having earlier promised to place it before a vote of the full House, appears ready to pull the bill from consideration.

Not only is this a tragic affront to the remaining genocide survivors and their descendents, it is also a disservice to the many Turks who opposed their government’s policies at that time and tried to stop the genocide, as well as to contemporary Turks who face jail by their U.S.-backed regime for daring to acknowledge it. If the world’s one remaining superpower refuses to acknowledge the genocide, there is little chance that justice will ever be served.

Adolf Hitler, responding to concerns about the legacy of his crimes, once asked, “Who, after all, is today speaking of the destruction of the Armenians?” Failure to pass this resolution would send a message to future tyrants that they can commit genocide and not even have it acknowledged by the world’s most powerful countries.

Indeed, refusing to recognize genocide and those responsible for it in a historical context makes it easier to deny genocide today. In 1994, the Clinton administration – which consistently refused to fully acknowledge Armenia’s tragedy – also refused to use the word “genocide” in the midst of the Rwandan government’s massacres of over half that country’s Tutsi population, a decision that delayed the deployment of international peacekeeping forces until after 800,000 people had been slaughtered.

As a result, the fate of the resolution on the Armenian genocide is not simply about commemorating a tragedy that took place 90 years ago. It is about where we stand as a nation in facing up to the most horrible of crimes. It is about whether we are willing to stand up for the truth in the face of lies. It is about whether we see our nation’s glory based on appeasing our strategic allies or in upholding our longstanding principles.

Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus . He is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003.)

Source: http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4660

10/22 Asia Times: Why does Turkey hate America?

2007-10-22T21:17:00.000-07:00

Why does Turkey hate America?

By Spengler

With Turkish troops poised to invade the Kurdish sector of Iraq over Washington's protests, it seems helpful to understand why Turks hate America more than any other people in the world. This is surprising given the 60-year history of military alliance, a thriving Turkish economy and functioning democratic institutions.

In June 2007, the Pew Research Center polled citizens of 47 countries on their attitude toward the US. Turkey turned up at rock bottom, with 83% of respondents holding an unfavorable view of the United States and only 9% of Turks expressing a favorable view, compared to 21% of Egyptians and 29% of Indonesians. [1] In 2000, 52% of Turks expressed a favorable view of the United States. This is not a general result. Only 46% of Nigerians held a favorable view of the United States in 2000, for example, compared to 70% in 2007.

A national tantrum against the United States is in full flourish, expressed in popular culture through such things as the rabidly anti-American film Valley of the Wolves. Wildly successful, and hailed by most of Turkey's leading politicians, the film shows American soldiers shooting Iraqi civilians in order to harvest their organs for sale to Jewish doctors. From the American way of looking at things, the Turks seem to have gone barking mad.

There are many obvious reasons for Turkish discomfort about America, but the intensity of Turkish hatred had me puzzled - until I read a two-year-old paper by Omar Taspinar, the resident Turkey expert at the Brookings Institution. [2] The culprit, he argued convincingly, is Washington's misguided promotion of Turkey as a model of "moderate Islam". The abominable stupidity of American policy towards the region - I would use stronger words if I could find them - is in large measure responsible for the looming catastrophe.

Professor Taspinar, who also teaches at the National War College, is one of America's best-known experts on his native country, and I am chagrined to have overlooked his analysis until now. He places most of the blame on Washington's portrayal of Turkey as a paragon of the "moderate Islam" it wants to sell to the rest of the Muslim world.

As I wrote last week, the humiliating spectacle of Washington trying to squelch a congressional resolution on the Armenian genocide points up fundamental failings in American foreign policy, as well as foundational flaws within Turkey itself. Taspinar’s paper in the main reinforces my view of Turkey’s weakness; Turkish rage and paranoia express conflicts in its national identity.

Dr. Taspinar writes,

As the Cold War came to an end, so did the era of ideology. It was as if Turkey had suddenly once again returned to its formative decades of the 1920s and 1930s, during which Ataturk's Ankara faced multiple Kurdish-Islamic rebellions challenging the secularist and nationalist precepts of Kemalism. This is mainly because the central point that I would like to emphasize is that Turkey’s anti-Americanism essentially stems from Turkey’s own identity dilemma. At its roots, Turkey’s current wave of distrust of the United States is Kemalist identity problem.

By promoting "moderate Islam" on the Turkish model, Taspinar adds, America undermined the secular state founded by Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. That is why secular Turkish nationalists hate America just as much as Turkish Islamists.

Taspinar writes:

America's advocacy of "moderate Islam" against the "radical Islam" in the Middle East worries Turkey the most. Turkey being portrayed as a model within the moderate Islam project has been conceived as a support for the moderate Islam in Turkey, thereby led to a clash between America’s approach and Turkey’s laic and Kemalist identity. Already alarmed over the landslide victory of Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Republic’s laic reflexes have become overwhelmingly concerned with the "model" expression of the US, which allegedly promoted Turkey’s moderate Muslim identity. In the aftermath of his victory, Washington’s invitation to the AKP Chairman Tayyip Erdogan, who was not confirmed as a prime minister then, was perceived [by the Turkish intellectuals] as the weakening of the secular foundations of Ataturk’s republic by the United States.

Ataturk suppressed Islam ruthlessly, banning Islamic dress, emancipating women, requiring universal secular education, and crushing armed Islamist resistance to his reforms. Ultimately he failed; the artificial secular culture of Turkishness that Ataturk sought to conjure from the pre-Islamic Anatolian past left a vacuum which the new Islamism gradually has filled. Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, as I reported earlier, portrays this vividly in his novel, Snow.

Turkey is enmeshed in a terrible battle for its national identity, in which neither the secular nor the Islamist parties have any use for "moderate Islam". The Islamists do not wish to be moderate, and the Kemalists know that the Islamists are not moderate. By pursing the phantasm of a "moderate" Islam as harmless as George W Bush’s Methodism, Washington’s strategists have succeeded in enraging both sides in the battle.

I have never believed that such a thing as "moderate Islam" exists, any more than I believe that "moderate Christianity" exists. Either Jesus Christ died to take away the sins of the

world, or he did not; if one believes that Jesus was just another preacher with a knack for parables, one quickly will be an ex-Christian. Either God dictated a final revelation to Mohammed which invalidates the corrupted scriptures of Jews and Christians, and the sign of the crescent should rise above the whole world, or he did not. Turkey’s Islamists are not moderates; they are Islamists, and they despise the United States for religious and cultural reasons, as much as Turkish nationalists despise the United States for making Turkey into a laboratory rat for religious reform.

The common hatred of Kemalist nationalists and Turkish Islamists for America bears on why Turks have the worst opinion of Christianity of any people in the world. According to a 2005 Pew survey, only 21% of Turks have a favorable opinion of Christianity, compared to 33% of Moroccans, 58% of Jordanians, and 58% of Indonesians. [3] The Kemalists dislike Christians because the Kemalists are atheists, and the Islamists dislike Christians because they are Islamists. Christian America gets no sympathy from either side.

That is only part of the story; Kemalism defined as Turks the Kurdish fifth of Turkey's population, suppressing their language and customs as brutally as it suppressed Islamic dress. As a leader of the "Young Turk" government, Ataturk bore at least some responsibility for the genocide against the Anatolian Armenians starting in 1915. The Turkish government enlisted Kurdish tribes to do most of the actual killing, in return for what formerly was Armenian land. It is this crime that made the Kurds preponderant on Turkey’s Eastern borders, and left them to threaten Turkey’s territorial integrity.

That is where Taspinar's analysis converges with the thoughts I published last week. He wrote in 2005,

The debate on Turkey's role in the promotion of "moderate Islam" and as a "model" had already created anti-Americanism within the Turkish elite. The Kurdish issue, in contrast, has carried this anti-American sentiment to public and rejuvenated nationalist reactions. Today almost everyone in Turkey - of course we also include the intellectuals in this category - thinks that Washington supports a Kurdish state in Iraq. The ones who do not necessarily believe that Washington pursues this policy on purpose are nevertheless inclined to think that America’s policies will eventually result in a similar scenario.
As I wrote last week, the prospect of a tri-partite division of Iraq, endorsed by the US Senate in a 75-23 vote last month, confirmed Ankara’s worst fears. Virtually all the Senate Democrats and half the Republicans now endorse partition as an exit strategy for the United States. No one but the most abject toady of the Washington administration or a blinkered ideologue can come up with an exit strategy for Washington other than partition. Partition implies the realization of Turkey's worst nightmare (and one of the nastier nightmares for Iran and Syria), namely an independent Kurdish state with its capital at Kirkuk, the "Kurdish Jerusalem", sitting on abundant oil revenues.

In this respect Turkey is far from paranoid: a Kurdish state does threaten Turkey's territorial integrity, because the state that Kemal fashioned 80 years ago was badly made to begin with. That is something that today’s Kemalists cannot admit, for their only weapon against the encroachment of political Islam is the integrity of Ataturk's secular constitution.

As Taspinar observed in 2005, "that the Kurds refer to Kirkuk as 'our Jerusalem' causes disturbance. In this context, not only Turkey's reaction evokes fear, but there is also a legitimate anxiety over a potential civil war following from Kirkuk's uncertainty." His analysis is correct, but nowhere is it written that Washington must try to avert a Turkish civil war. America's civil war was the best and bravest thing it ever accomplished; it washed away the stain of slavery with an ocean of blood. The cost was terrible, but human freedom is beyond price. If Turkey requires a civil war to choose between a Western and Islamic identity, who is to say that what was good for America is not the cure for Turkey as well?

Kurdish independence cannot long be prevented; Iraqi Kurdistan is independent in all but name, and the devolution of Iraq is only a matter of time. In a well-ordered world the Kurds of eastern Turkey would be able to vote on whether to remain in Turkey or to join Kurdistan, just as the Saarland chose to join France rather than Germany in 1947. But Kurdish secession would tear apart the fragile bonds that hold the Kemalist state together, and for that reason the Islamists and the Kemalists will unite to prevent it by almost any means necessary.

It does not matter whether the US Congress passes a resolution on the Armenian genocide. Regardless, the tragedy will proceed. I would vote for such a resolution if asked, because my religion forbids me to bear false witness, and the governments of world powers must stand as witnesses to the fate of peoples. But the 3 million citizens of the small surviving state of Armenia are not actors in this tragedy; rather, the ghosts of their murdered brethren in western Armenia haunt the geopolitical stage as a silent chorus.

Notes
[1] Global Unease With Major World Powers Pew Global Attitudes Project, June 27, 2007.

[2] The Anatomy of Anti-Americanism in Turkey The Brookings Institution, October 22, 2007.

[3] Islamic Extremism: Common Concern for Muslim and Western Publics Pew Global Attitudes Project, July 14, 2005

Source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IJ23Ak01.html

10/21 NYTimes: A Nod to Dark Days

2007-10-21T21:16:00.000-07:00

October 21, 2007

Urban Studies Remembering

A Nod to Dark Days, a Moment in the Sun

By JOSEPH V. TIRELLA

BEFORE services, after passing through the golden doors of the Armenian Church of the Holy Martyrs in Bayside, Queens, parishioners often pause briefly in front of a glass case. The case contains fragments of bones of Armenians who died at the hands of Ottoman Turks during World War I.

Some of the parishioners chant along with the hymns being sung from the altar; others pray silently for the dead. Last Sunday, a young girl with long black hair wearing a white dress gently ran her hand over the glass, as if touching the past.

The past was the main topic of conversation last week at the church, a beige brick structure in a small but vibrant Armenian community. A few days earlier in Washington, the House Foreign Affairs Committee had voted to recommend that Congress recognize as genocide the killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians early in the last century.

Although the chances that Congress would do so seemed to dim as the week proceeded, in the face of vehement opposition by the Turkish government, Armenians are gratified that a long-nursed anger is at least on the table.

“It still affects us,” Hrair Ghazarian, a 51-year-old parishioner, said of the killings. Mr. Ghazarian, an electrical engineer who lives across the street from the church, chatted excitedly with another parishioner about Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, who had discussed the resolution on television.

“She’s going to bring it before the entire House,” said Mr. Ghazarian, a stocky man who speaks as much with his hands as his voice. Then, as cars whizzed by outside on the nearby Long Island Expressway, the two men headed toward their pews.

Discussion of possible Congressional action continued after the services, when about 50 church members gathered in the wood-paneled auditorium for coffee, bagels and homemade cookies. The Very Rev. Vahan Hovhanessian offered a prayer of thanks “in celebration of the resolution and what it means to us.”

Despite the general euphoria, some among the congregation recalled deep sorrow, among them Marie Gemdzian, who is 81.

“I’m happy but not happy,” she said in halting English. “Too many people are dead. My mother’s family — how many died? Aunts, uncles. ...” With the help of Alice Keurian, her daughter, Mrs. Gemdzian began counting her lost relatives on her hands. She soon ran out of fingers.

As people tossed out their paper cups and pushed in their folding chairs, one young parishioner spoke of the future.

“The genocide is a big part of how we define ourselves,” said a Columbia freshman named Markrete Krikorian. “As a culture, I think we need to let it go.” But she added that until the event is “recognized by the people who did the genocide to us, then we can’t move on.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/nyregion/thecity/21arme.html?ref=thecity

10/21 MetroWest: Experts, survivor explore Armenian genocide

2007-10-21T21:14:00.000-07:00

Experts, survivor explore Armenian genocide

By Peter Reuell, Daily News staff

Sun Oct 21, 2007, 12:07 AM EDT

ARLINGTON –

Even today, more than 90 years after the mass killings, the forced relocation, the years spent in squalor in what was essentially a refugee camp in the desert, the memories are sharp, like a fresh wound, to Kevork Norian.

When he talks about surviving the Armenian genocide, the 89-year-old Arlington resident closes his eyes, as though wanting not to remember, but being unable to forget, and matter-of-factly describes the horrors his family only narrowly avoided.

"My name is Kervork Norian and I am a survivor of two genocides," he says. "How did I survive? My father was in manufacturing clothing. When the Turks entered the war (World War I) they drafted two million soldiers, and they need clothing, so they took my father ... and the families of those draftees were exempt from deportation. So that's why we survived."

Norian, born at the end of WWI, became one of thousands of Armenians caught up in what would later become known as the Armenian genocide - the organized killing, beginning in 1915, of more than 1.5 million Armenians and forced deportation of thousands more.

Though recognized by most scholars and historians as meeting the traditional definition of genocide, the killings have returned to the headlines in recent months.

Earlier this year, Watertown officials pulled out of an Anti-Defamation League program because of the organization's refusal to recognize the killings as genocide. Watertown has a large Armenian population.

The question of whether to recognize the genocide has in recent weeks erupted into an international controversy, as Democrats in Congress push ahead with a bill to recognize the genocide, while Turkish officials threaten to withdraw their support for the U.S. military in the region if the bill passes.

Though it now appears a vote on the resolution is unlikely, among Bay State lawmakers, the question isn't up for debate - the genocide should be recognized.

All Massachusetts representatives co-sponsored the House resolution, while U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy co-sponsored a similar bill in the Senate.

Even newly elected Rep. Niki Tsongas believes the genocide should be recognized.

"Other countries have acknowledged dark chapters in their past, and it's time for Turkey to do the same," she said in a statement. "The Armenians and the descendants of those who were victimized deserve justice."

For local Armenians, though, the issue of whether to recognize the killings as genocide is simply a question of human rights.

"This has been a continuous struggle by Armenians," said David Boyajian, a community activist in Newton who lost several family members in the genocide. "It did not just come up now. The Turks have been stonewalling. You can't just reward them for stonewalling and say 90 years have passed.

"This is a human rights issue. It's not just about the Armenians. The ADL issue and the resolution are human rights issues that create more awareness of genocide."

"I think it's more important today than it has ever been," said Sharistan Melkonian, chairwoman of the Armenian National Committee of Eastern Massachusetts. "The U.S. Congress and the administration has stood firm in its mission to end the genocide in Darfur, but at the same time, they are denying the Armenian genocide."

Melkonian dismissed worries about Turkey's threats to cut off support for the U.S. military's operations in the region if the resolution passes. News reports have said as much as 70 percent of the war material and supplies for American troops fighting in Iraq pass through military bases in Turkey.

"What kind of an ally imposes a gag rule on the U.S. Congress?" she asked. "It's unbelievable to me that we would allow that kind of intimidation to stand in our way of standing up for what's right."

Ultimately, she believes, neither country will be able to move beyond the genocide debate until it is recognized as the crime it was.

"You have to get closure," she said. "Closure is part of it both for the Armenians and for the Turks. They need to feel closure with their history, but it is also the starting point to be able to move on in terms of security in the region and in terms of the international community taking a serious bite at ending genocide."

Even among many Turks, the killings are considered a genocide.

"My personal impression is the lack of morality from the Turkish," said Taner Akcam, a history professor at the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and a Turk.

"What the majority of Armenians want is a recognition ... and an apology," he said. "That would solve 70 or 80 percent of the problem."

Why hasn't it happened yet?

The roots of Turkey's denial of the genocide, Akcam said, lay with the founding of the Turkish republic in 1923.

"The founders of the republic were members of the party which organized the genocide," he said. "They either participated in the killing, or they became rich by plundering Armenian property. It's not easy for a state or a nation to call its founding fathers murderers and thieves."

Since the genocide ended, Akcam added, the government has relied on the population's fear of a plan proposed by the British in the wake of World War I to break up the nation as an additional method to suppress debate.

The international community's pressure for the nation to recognize the genocide, the government claims, is simply a ruse for Western powers to break up the nation.

"Every attempt is a historical reminder of the partitioning plan," he said. "Any reference (to the genocide) is a cover-up plan for the partitioning. Turkey considers the genocide itself as the discussion of the genocide as a threat to its national security."

(Peter Reuell can be reached at 508-626-4428, or at preuell@cnc.com)

Source: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/homepage/x2130892944

10/21 Boston Globe: After split, town mulls own antibias effort

2007-10-21T21:13:00.000-07:00

After split, town mulls own antibias effort

By Connie Paige, Globe Correspondent October 21, 2007

Sosse Beugekian says her family has not forgotten what happened to her great-grandparents a century ago.

A purge and mass slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks prompted the 18-year-old's great-grandparents to settle in Lebanon. Seven years ago, she said, she and her parents migrated from there to Lexington.

Last week, Beugekian, a Lexington High School senior, organized a student petition to selectmen asking them to sever ties to the Anti-Defamation League's No Place for Hate program because of ADL's stance on the atrocity against Armenians.

"We obviously want everyone to recognize the Armenian genocide," said Beugekian, who added that she helped persuade more than 250 fellow students to sign the petition.

At the urging of Armenian-Americans and others, Lexington and Arlington have joined the growing chorus of communities that have decided to break with the No Place for Hate program, despite the ADL's move to modify its stance on the Armenian genocide.

Now, Lexington selectmen are appointing an organizing committee to recommend how to carry on the work of No Place for Hate without the offending political ties and suggesting ways to carry its message of tolerance statewide. The recommendations are expected within six weeks or so, said Jeanne Krieger, board chairwoman.

The turmoil over No Place for Hate is occurring as Congress tries to come to grips with how to characterize the deportation and killing of as many as 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks between 1915 and 1923 that many scholars call genocide. A resolution to that effect faces opposition from the Bush administration.

As debate rages in local, state, and national board rooms, Al Gordon, ADL's associate Northeast regional director, said the group regrets the most recent votes against No Place for Hate.

"We believe that No Place for Hate has been and continues to be a valuable tool for combating hate and promoting diversity in about 60 Massachusetts communities," Gordon said. "We think the towns have benefited greatly from the programs' capabilities and their access to the expertise that the Anti-Defamation League brings to the realm of bias and hate crimes."

Gordon added that many individuals within the ADL, including some members of the Northeast regional chapter, "have acknowledged the Armenian genocide."

Still, Sharistan Melkonian, chairwoman of the Armenian National Committee of Massachusetts, said communities are taking a stand because a statement by a national ADL officer about the genocide did not go far enough. She was referring to the statement in August by ADL executive director Abraham Foxman that the atrocities were "tantamount" to genocide.

The votes in Lexington and Arlington followed similar withdrawals in Belmont, Newton, and Watertown. Medford is also considering severing its ties with No Place for Hate, Melkonian said.

Before the selectmen's vote last week, Lexington had already experienced lengthy public and private debate among members of the local No Place for Hate Committee that sparked outrage earlier this month from the town's Armenian-American community.

Three Armenian-American residents complained after they were barred from an unannounced meeting that the local No Place for Hate committee held behind closed doors at Town Hall to help determine how they would approach selectmen about the controversy.

Laura Boghosian, one of those excluded, said she believes ADL holds contradictory positions - on the one hand supporting human rights, and, on the other, backing Turkey, as a close ally of Israel. Officials in Turkey have denied that the killings of Armenians constituted genocide.

"They have to make a choice what kind of organization they're going to be," Boghosian said last week of the ADL. "I don't think they can do both."

As part of its human rights mission, the ADL established the No Place for Hate program in 1999 to promote diversity and allow communities to take a stand against bias.

To earn the designation, cities and towns had to show the ADL that they had taken certain steps, including hosting at least three antibias events. Communities would then receive recertification each year, provided they held at least two more annual events.

But after the ADL fired its regional director in August for acknowledging the Armenian genocide, some towns began to withdraw from No Place for Hate. The regional director, Andrew Tarsy, has since been rehired.

Along with local communities, the Massachusetts Municipal Association is "monitoring the matter," said Geoffrey Beckwith, executive director.

The municipal association released a statement last month saying the slaughter of Armenians "must be recognized by all as a genocide."

Beckwith said the association has called on the national ADL to respond to the criticism during a November meeting of the group's national governing board.

"After that, we will certainly evaluate our official sponsorship," Beckwith said.

Meanwhile, Lexington's Krieger said she believes that a statewide coalition of local human rights commissions could be the vehicle for No Place for Hate's message.

Beugekian applauded the idea of having new local and statewide organizations as watchdogs against bias instead of No Place for Hate. "I think that's the best solution," she said. "They've done a lot of good work, and we've heard about them in school, too. We all appreciate their work."

Connie Paige can be reached at cpaige@globe.com.

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/10/21/after_split_town_mulls_own_antibias_effort/

10/21 Boston Globe: 'No Place for Hate' no longer

2007-10-21T21:11:00.001-07:00

'No Place for Hate' no longer

Town cuts ADL ties over genocide

By James Vaznis, Globe Staff October 21, 2007

No longer do signs welcome travelers to Westwood as a "No Place for Hate" community. Those signs, located at four town lines, were taken down last week.

Selectmen decided Monday night to suspend participation in the antidiscrimination program because they don't believe its sponsor, the Anti-Defamation League, has gone far enough in recognizing the Armenian genocide of nearly a century ago - an issue that remains a sensitive matter today, especially for area residents of Armenian heritage.

Westwood joins Arlington, Belmont, Lexington, Newton, and Watertown in suspending or cutting ties with the ADL, believing its refusal to directly acknowledge the historical genocide runs counter to the ADL's mission of fighting against hatred and fostering an atmosphere of mutual respect. About 60 cities and towns across the state, including many south of Boston, belong to the ADL's local No Place for Hate program.

"I think the community wished it didn't have to come to this," said Town Administrator Michael Jaillet. "We wish our sponsor had taken a different position and stood up for the truth."

The ADL acknowledged in August that the Ottoman Empire's massacres of Armenians from 1915 to 1923 was "tantamount to genocide." But Westwood and other critics want the ADL to use sharper language - dropping the "tantamount to" - and push for congressional passage of a resolution directly acknowledging the genocide.

Westwood, where some Armenian residents pushed for dropping the ADL affiliation, will continue promoting cultural harmony, town leaders say. But the No Place for Hate Committee will now go by a new name, the Human Rights Committee.

"The town of Westwood has concluded that our ability to carry out the founding principals of the No Place for Hate program is seriously compromised by the ADL's position on the Armenian genocide and the House and Senate resolution," said Nancy Hyde, chairwoman of the Board of Selectmen, reading from a letter the town sent to the ADL last week about their vote.

Al Gordon, a spokesman for the New England region of the ADL, said the town will find it difficult going it alone in its campaign for tolerance.

"We think in the long run Westwood will not profit from its decision to sever ties," Gordon said. "The ADL has internationally recognized expertise in dealing with hate incidents and promoting cultural awareness."

Since adopting the No Place for Hate program two years ago, the committee has done such things as passing out literature on tolerance, organizing panel discussions, and participating in local cultural events. The ADL helped the group locate speakers and a choir of Ugandan orphans for a Martin Luther King Day program this year.

Tom Viti, the town's library director who cochairs the Human Rights Committee, acknowledged it would be difficult to replace the connections the ADL has.

"The ADL has been really involved in high-pressure volatile situations in responding to hate crimes," he said. "The committee is going to have to do a bit more work."

But he said the town's new Human Rights Committee will probably seek out guidance from other similar groups, and hopes to offer an increased number of programs and events each year.

The ADL first came under fire this summer in Watertown. At that time, the ADL did not acknowledge the Armenian genocide, outraging the large Armenian population in that town. Watertown's decision to cut ties prompted other communities to follow and for the ADL's New England office to break from the national group's position of not calling the massacres a genocide.

Ultimately, the ADL's national director, Abraham H. Foxman, in a carefully worded statement, acknowledged the massacres was "tantamount to genocide." The group, however, did not offer to support a resolution in Congress that would officially call the massacres a genocide. Support for that legislation, which had been building momentum, appeared to be eroding last week as the Bush administration worried it might offend the Turkish government, an ally of US military troops in Iraq.

Westwood officials say they would restore the town's affiliation with the ADL if the group adopts sharper language and backs a Congressional resolution acknowledging the genocide.

"We are looking for an unequivical statement," Viti said. "A word like tantamount starts to qualify things."

James Vaznis can be reached at jvaznis@globe.com.

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/10/21/no_place_for_hate_no_longer/

10/19 NYTimes: Armenian Issue Presents a Dilemma for U.S. Jews

2007-10-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

By Neela Banerjee

LEXINGTON, Mass., Oct. 17 — On the docket for the weekly selectmen’s meeting here on Monday were the location of park benches, a liquor license for Vinny T’s restaurant and, not for the first time, the killing of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey 90 years ago.

The debate in this affluent Boston suburb, home to many Jews and Armenians, centered on a local program to increase awareness of bias. The issue was not the program itself, but its sponsor, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish advocacy group, which has taken a stand against a proposed Congressional resolution condemning the Armenians’ deaths as genocide.

“If you deny one genocide,” said Dr. Jack Nusan Porter, a child of Holocaust survivors and a genocide studies scholar who attended the meeting, “you deny all genocides.”

The Congressional resolution has created an international furor and deeply offended the Turkish government, both a key ally of Israel’s and a crucial logistics player for the American presence in Iraq. But as events in Boston suburbs in recent months have shown, it has also put American Jews in an anguished dilemma as they try to reconcile their support of Israel with their commitment to fighting genocide. In the end, the Board of Selectmen here voted unanimously to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League, as did three other Boston suburbs this week. Three other towns had already done so, with more considering the option.

For many Jews, the issue has involved much soul-searching.

“It’s hard to talk about it because there are two things or more in conflict here,” said Rabbi David Lerner of Temple Emunah in Lexington. “Israel is in a very vulnerable position in the world, and Turkey is its only friend in the Middle East. Genocide is a burning issue for us, now and in the past. It’s something of who we are.”

The House resolution condemning the killings of Armenians as genocide is nonbinding and largely symbolic, but Turkey’s reaction has been swift and furious. It has recalled its ambassador from Washington and threatened to withdraw critical logistical support for the Iraq war.

For Patrick Mehr, a Lexington resident who spoke at the meeting Monday, the overriding priority is condemning the killings, regardless of Turkey’s response.

The next day at his home, Mr. Mehr, the son of a Holocaust survivor, voiced the anger many Jews and Armenians feel toward Abraham H. Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director. “Abe Foxman, like George W. Bush, is mumbling that it may not have been genocide,” Mr. Mehr said. “Foxman talks about commissions of scholars who should study this. That, to me, rang exactly like Ahmadinejad saying, ‘Let’s have a committee to study the Holocaust.’ Give me a break.”

Jewish leaders have long sought to focus attention on the killings of Armenians, starting with the American ambassador to Turkey in 1915, Henry Morgenthau Sr., who wrote in a cable that the Turkish violence against Armenians was “an effort to exterminate the race.” Several members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who voted for the resolution, including a key sponsor, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, are Jewish.

Several major Jewish groups, like the American Jewish Committee, oppose the resolution, arguing that it is not the best way to persuade the Turks to examine their past.

Mr. Foxman argues that Turkey is the only friend Israel has in the Muslim world, and it has been hospitable to Jews since giving them refuge after they were driven from Europe during the Inquisition.

“Israel’s relationship with Turkey is the second most important, after its relationship with the United States,” Mr. Foxman said. “All this in a world that isolates Israel, and all this can’t simply be waved away.”

Widespread attention to the Anti-Defamation League’s opposition to the resolution came in July, when David Boyajian, an Armenian-American resident of Newton, Mass., wrote to a local newspaper saying that the town’s anti-bigotry program, known as No Place for Hate, was tarnished because of its sponsorship by the Anti-Defamation League.

He wrote that the A.D.L. “has made the Holocaust and its denial key pieces” of the program, “while at the same time hypocritically working with Turkey to oppose recognition of the Armenian genocide of 1915-23.”

The news shocked most local Jews, many of whom have long been active in campaigns against killings in Bosnia, Rwanda and, most recently, Sudan. By mid-August, Watertown, Mass., had decided to end its affiliation with the Anti-Defamation League’s program. On Aug. 17, the board of the New England Anti-Defamation League passed a resolution calling for the national organization to recognize the Armenian genocide. Its regional director, Andrew Tarsy, was fired by the national group the next day.

The clampdown on the local chapter infuriated many Jews in the Boston area. Two members of the New England board resigned, although one has since returned, and many local leaders criticized Mr. Foxman. Newton, whose population is heavily Jewish, voted to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League unless it changed its position on the resolution.

Mr. Foxman quickly rehired Mr. Tarsy and issued a statement intended to heal what he said were dangerous rifts in the Boston Jewish community at a time when Jewish unity was crucial. The statement did not support the House resolution. The killings of Armenians, Mr. Foxman wrote, were “tantamount to genocide.”

He added, “If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide.”

Some Jews praised Mr. Foxman, whose reappraisal, they said, was uncharacteristic. But other Jews and Armenians said he did not go far enough.

“It denies the intentionality of genocide,” said Joey Kurtzman, executive editor of the online magazine Jewcy.com. Janet Tassel, a congregant at Temple Isaiah in Lexington, said she did not like Mr. Foxman but could not understand how Jews could be fighting over the word genocide when Israeli and American interests are at stake.

“If this resolution goes through, it’s goodbye Charlie for Israel, for U.S. troops in Iraq,” Ms. Tassel said. “It will lead to more anti-Semitism. I’m conflicted about what’s right.”

Dr. Porter, the genocide scholar, said the differing views among Jews on the resolution stemmed in part from whether they saw Israel as particularly vulnerable. “I see Israel as a strong nation,” Dr. Porter said, after speaking for cutting ties to the Anti-Defamation League at the Lexington meeting. “Jews are strong. They don’t have to be intimidated by politics.”

The complex of considerations weighed heavily on Rabbi Howard L. Jaffe of Temple Isaiah, who after weeks of thought decided to back the genocide resolution. “It’s very hard for me to support a position that could be detrimental to Israel,” he said. “But for me as a Jew, I have to take seriously Jewish values, and they require us to do what is right and righteous.”

At the Lexington meeting, nearly everyone praised the No Place for Hate program, which has worked with hundreds of residents in the past seven years.

Some Jewish residents pointed out that the local Anti-Defamation League chapter took a stand for the resolution and should not be punished for the national leadership’s policy; but Vicki Blier, another member of Temple Isaiah, said in a phone interview that the Anti-Defamation League had to be held accountable for its views.

“If this were an organization that were denying the Holocaust, would they be allowed to do anything in town, even if what they are doing is the most beneficial of programs?” Ms. Blier said. “In my experience, Jews are at the forefront in the recognition of injustice. Jews have always stuck their neck out for others.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/us/19genocide.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

10/20 MetroWest: One family scarred by genocide

2007-10-20T21:10:00.000-07:00

One family scarred by genocide

By Peter Reuell, Daily News staff

Sat Oct 20, 2007, 11:52 PM EDT

ARLINGTON –

For Kevork Norian, the question of whether the mass killing of Armenians after 1915 should be acknowledged as a genocide isn't one of righting the historical record, or musty academic debate.

For Norian, the genocide was frighteningly personal.

Norian, 89, and born at the end of World War I, was one of thousands of Armenians whose families were caught up in what would later be called the Armenian genocide, in which more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed and thousands more forced from their homes.

"My name is Kervork Norian and I am a survivor of two genocides," the Arlington resident said this week, from a couch in his living room.

"How did I survive? My father was in manufacturing clothing. When the Turks entered the war (World War I) they drafted two million soldiers, and they need clothing, so they took my father...and the families of those draftees were exempt from deportation. So that's why we survived."

Though recognized by most scholars and historians as meeting the traditional definition of genocide, the killings have returned to the headlines in recent months.

Earlier this year, Watertown officials pulled out of an Anti-Defamation League program due to the organization's refusal to recognize the killings as a genocide. Watertown has a large Armenian population.

The question of whether to recognize the genocide has in recent weeks erupted into an international controversy, as Democrats push ahead with a bill to recognize the genocide, while Turkish officials threaten to withdraw their support for the U.S. military in the region if the bill passes.

For Norian, though, the killings remain intensely personal.

At the end of World War I, the Turkish government began the forced deportation of thousands of Armenians to the desert of Syria, where they lived in what essentially was a refugee camp.

"So we settled in Syria, and lived a refugee life, that was (the) second genocide," he said of the forced relocation of Armenians to the Syrian desert.

Norian's entire family - seven people - was forced to live in a small, one-room shack, in an area where there was one toilet for every few hundred people.

The conditions were so bad, he said, his grandmother was killed by cholera which was spread through the water.

"But somehow we survived," he said. "I was five years old when we moved to Syria, and we remained there until 1964, and then we came to the United States.

"We were welcomed in the United States, we were accepted. We were treated with respect and dignity. I say, 'Thank You, USA for saving us from this hell."'

To see the killings again go unrecognized, Norian said, is as if they are being committed all over again.

"This is another genocide," he said. "They are not recognizing what happened. Americans say they are for justice and human rights, but when it comes to recognizing it, they are denying it.

"We suffered so much, and our wounds will not be healed until the world recognizes it. We are not asking more than that."

(Peter Reuell can be reached at 508-626-4428, or at preuell@cnc.com.)

Source: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x2130892946

10/19 NYTimes: Armenian Issue Presents a Dilemma for U.S. Jews

2007-10-19T21:08:00.000-07:00

October 19, 2007

Armenian Issue Presents a Dilemma for U.S. Jews

By NEELA BANERJEE

LEXINGTON, Mass., Oct. 17 — On the docket for the weekly selectmen’s meeting here on Monday were the location of park benches, a liquor license for Vinny T’s restaurant and, not for the first time, the killing of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey 90 years ago.

The debate in this affluent Boston suburb, home to many Jews and Armenians, centered on a local program to increase awareness of bias. The issue was not the program itself, but its sponsor, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish advocacy group, which has taken a stand against a proposed Congressional resolution condemning the Armenians’ deaths as genocide.

“If you deny one genocide,” said Dr. Jack Nusan Porter, a child of Holocaust survivors and a genocide studies scholar who attended the meeting, “you deny all genocides.”

The Congressional resolution has created an international furor and deeply offended the Turkish government, both a key ally of Israel’s and a crucial logistics player for the American presence in Iraq. But as events in Boston suburbs in recent months have shown, it has also put American Jews in an anguished dilemma as they try to reconcile their support of Israel with their commitment to fighting genocide. In the end, the Board of Selectmen here voted unanimously to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League, as did three other Boston suburbs this week. Three other towns had already done so, with more considering the option.

For many Jews, the issue has involved much soul-searching.

“It’s hard to talk about it because there are two things or more in conflict here,” said Rabbi David Lerner of Temple Emunah in Lexington. “Israel is in a very vulnerable position in the world, and Turkey is its only friend in the Middle East. Genocide is a burning issue for us, now and in the past. It’s something of who we are.”

The House resolution condemning the killings of Armenians as genocide is nonbinding and largely symbolic, but Turkey’s reaction has been swift and furious. It has recalled its ambassador from Washington and threatened to withdraw critical logistical support for the Iraq war.

For Patrick Mehr, a Lexington resident who spoke at the meeting Monday, the overriding priority is condemning the killings, regardless of Turkey’s response.

The next day at his home, Mr. Mehr, the son of a Holocaust survivor, voiced the anger many Jews and Armenians feel toward Abraham H. Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director. “Abe Foxman, like George W. Bush, is mumbling that it may not have been genocide,” Mr. Mehr said. “Foxman talks about commissions of scholars who should study this. That, to me, rang exactly like Ahmadinejad saying, ‘Let’s have a committee to study the Holocaust.’ Give me a break.”

Jewish leaders have long sought to focus attention on the killings of Armenians, starting with the American ambassador to Turkey in 1915, Henry Morgenthau Sr., who wrote in a cable that the Turkish violence against Armenians was “an effort to exterminate the race.” Several members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who voted for the resolution, including a key sponsor, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, are Jewish.

Several major Jewish groups, like the American Jewish Committee, oppose the resolution, arguing that it is not the best way to persuade the Turks to examine their past.

Mr. Foxman argues that Turkey is the only friend Israel has in the Muslim world, and it has been hospitable to Jews since giving them refuge after they were driven from Europe during the Inquisition.

“Israel’s relationship with Turkey is the second most important, after its relationship with the United States,” Mr. Foxman said. “All this in a world that isolates Israel, and all this can’t simply be waved away.”

Widespread attention to the Anti-Defamation League’s opposition to the resolution came in July, when David Boyajian, an Armenian-American resident of Newton, Mass., wrote to a local newspaper saying that the town’s anti-bigotry program, known as No Place for Hate, was tarnished because of its sponsorship by the Anti-Defamation League.

He wrote that the A.D.L. “has made the Holocaust and its denial key pieces” of the program, “while at the same time hypocritically working with Turkey to oppose recognition of the Armenian genocide of 1915-23.”

The news shocked most local Jews, many of whom have long been active in campaigns against killings in Bosnia, Rwanda and, most recently, Sudan. By mid-August, Watertown, Mass., had decided to end its affiliation with the Anti-Defamation League’s program. On Aug. 17, the board of the New England Anti-Defamation League passed a resolution calling for the national organization to recognize the Armenian genocide. Its regional director, Andrew Tarsy, was fired by the national group the next day.

The clampdown on the local chapter infuriated many Jews in the Boston area. Two members of the New England board resigned, although one has since returned, and many local leaders criticized Mr. Foxman. Newton, whose population is heavily Jewish, voted to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League unless it changed its position on the resolution.

Mr. Foxman quickly rehired Mr. Tarsy and issued a statement intended to heal what he said were dangerous rifts in the Boston Jewish community at a time when Jewish unity was crucial. The statement did not support the House resolution. The killings of Armenians, Mr. Foxman wrote, were “tantamount to genocide.”

He added, “If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide.”

Some Jews praised Mr. Foxman, whose reappraisal, they said, was uncharacteristic. But other Jews and Armenians said he did not go far enough.

“It denies the intentionality of genocide,” said Joey Kurtzman, executive editor of the online magazine Jewcy.com. Janet Tassel, a congregant at Temple Isaiah in Lexington, said she did not like Mr. Foxman but could not understand how Jews could be fighting over the word genocide when Israeli and American interests are at stake.

“If this resolution goes through, it’s goodbye Charlie for Israel, for U.S. troops in Iraq,” Ms. Tassel said. “It will lead to more anti-Semitism. I’m conflicted about what’s right.”

Dr. Porter, the genocide scholar, said the differing views among Jews on the resolution stemmed in part from whether they saw Israel as particularly vulnerable. “I see Israel as a strong nation,” Dr. Porter said, after speaking for cutting ties to the Anti-Defamation League at the Lexington meeting. “Jews are strong. They don’t have to be intimidated by politics.”

The complex of considerations weighed heavily on Rabbi Howard L. Jaffe of Temple Isaiah, who after weeks of thought decided to back the genocide resolution. “It’s very hard for me to support a position that could be detrimental to Israel,” he said. “But for me as a Jew, I have to take seriously Jewish values, and they require us to do what is right and righteous.”

At the Lexington meeting, nearly everyone praised the No Place for Hate program, which has worked with hundreds of residents in the past seven years.

Some Jewish residents pointed out that the local Anti-Defamation League chapter took a stand for the resolution and should not be punished for the national leadership’s policy; but Vicki Blier, another member of Temple Isaiah, said in a phone interview that the Anti-Defamation League had to be held accountable for its views.

“If this were an organization that were denying the Holocaust, would they be allowed to do anything in town, even if what they are doing is the most beneficial of programs?” Ms. Blier said. “In my experience, Jews are at the forefront in the recognition of injustice. Jews have always stuck their neck out for others.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/us/19genocide.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1195103299-Vq2CVVV2BfvniDWVAF6YHg

10/19 Jewish Chronicle: Turkey lobbies US on Armenian genocide

2007-10-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

Turkey lobbies US on Armenian genocide

18 October 2007

By By Sami Kohen, Ankara

The Jewish community of Turkey is actively campaigning to block a US House of Representatives a draft resolution labelling the mass Ottoman-era killings of Armenians as “genocide”.

Turkey has threatened to take action that would seriously damage US-Turkish relations if the resolution was to pass. The Bush administration has also striven to dissuade Congress from approving the draft.

Despite all these efforts, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted through the resolution last week. The draft goes now to the House floor, where it is likely to be passed unless lobbyists succeed in blocking it.

The controversy relates to the killing of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1922. Turkey insists that both Armenians and Turks died in the context of ethnic conflict.

Ankara has asked Israel and US Jewish organisations for support, and last month Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan met Jewish leaders and lobbyists in New York to get their backing.

Turkish Jews, uneasy about the consequences that the bill might have on attitudes towards them, have contacted US Jewish groups and placed advertisements in the media.

“We have been trying to convince congressmen that it is not right nor wise to pass such a resolution,” said Lina Filiba, vice-president of the Jewish community. “We have been in close touch with the ADL and other Jewish organisations. We hope that, at the end of the day, the resolution will not be passed. It is hard to predict the implications and effects if the House passes the resolution, but it may create problems for everybody.”

Levent Bilman, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: “We highly appreciate all these efforts.

“The leaders, businessmen and associations of the Jewish community in Turkey — being an integral part of our society — have been active to prevent the passage of the resolution. They have been holding meetings with the relevant people abroad and publishing letters and statements in the media.”

However, Jewish bodies in the US are divided on the issue.

In August, the ADL faced a split when a regional director was fired because of his campaign to support the Armenian case. An uneasy compromise was finally reached when Abraham Foxman, the national director, stated the ADL accepted the genocide label but rejected the congressional action.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan last week met President Shimon Peres in Israel, after which Mr Peres reportedly urged leading congressmen to consider the ill effects the resolution would have on Turkey’s relations with the US.

“We oppose the controversial resolution not only because of our friendship with Turkey but also as a matter of principle,” said Israeli ambassador Gaby Levy. “It is for historians and not for parliamentarians to investigate [genocide].”

However, he added: “Israel cannot be held responsible if the resolution is passed. This is the decision of the US Congress and not of Israel or the Jews. Our relations should not be affected by such a resolution.”

Source: http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m11s19&SecId=19&AId=56125&ATypeId=1

10/19 Brandeis Hoot: Dial D for Denial

2007-10-19T21:05:00.000-07:00

Dial D for Denial

or How I learned to stop worrying about history and love genocide

By Jon Lange

Someone once asked Marcel Ophüls, a director whose films The Sorrow and the Pity and Hôtel Terminus changed the way a generation of Europeans thought about fascist collaborationism, what it was like spending so much of his time interviewing Nazis. “Oh I get along with Nazis,” he responded.“We share something in common: an interest in the past. I share more with them than I do with most people today who don’t care about the past.”

Last week, President Bush demonstrated that he cares about past. The House of Representatives is trying to pass a long overdue resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide. The massacre and forced deportation of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917 marked the beginning of a golden age of mass murder during which technology and ideology came together in perfect symbiosis and made it possible to do in a few years something that used to take centuries viz. exterminate an entire ethnic, religious, or national group.

Bush has come out firmly against the House resolution. In so doing he took the standard line that Turkish nationalists have been towing for decades. The argument goes something like this: Sure, a lot of Armenians died, but 20 million people died during the First World War, so we really don’t have to call this particular slaughter genocide. Bush’s denial of the Armenian Genocide is based on simple political calculations. The US needs Turkish cooperation to ship military supplies for its own mass murder in Iraq, and the Americans want to make sure that Turkey doesn’t invade Kurdistan. Denying genocide is a price Bush has shown that he is all too ready to pay as long as this denial furthers US imperialism.

If the Armenian Genocide denier’s argument sounds vaguely familiar to you, you’re not alone. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad takes a similar tact when talking about the Nazi Holocaust. Ahmadinejad famously told NBC’s Brian Williams, “In the second World War, over 60 million people lost their lives. They were all human beings. Why is it that only a select group of those who were killed have become so prominent and important?”

This kind of hypocrisy and opportunism is exactly what I’ve come to expect from the Bush Administration, but there is some good news. For the first time in nearly seven years, Bush and I have something in common. We both care about the past, albeit in different ways. I agree with Orwell that we can’t obliterate history for political purposes. For Bush, on the other hand, history is a tool which he can use to denounce his enemies and which he can ignore when denial advances his political goals.

Perhaps this resolution will scuttle the long-standing American-Turkish alliance. If that’s the case, I say let it drown. Any relationship build on a foundation of lies is doomed to collapse. Even the most elaborate diplomatic dance will not resurrect dead Armenians and no alliance is so essential that we should deny a genocide in order to protect it.

Friday October 19, 2007

Source: http://www.thehoot.net/?module=displaystory&story_id=2329&format=html

10/19 Armenian Weekly: ADL is Complicit in Genocide Denial

2007-10-19T21:04:00.000-07:00

ADL is Complicit in Genocide Denial

By Alik Arzoumanian

"The Armenian Weekly", Volume 73, No. 42, October 20, 2007

Alik Arzoumanian of Cambridge, Mass., was one of several individuals present at the monthly meeting of the Massachusetts Association of Human Rights and Relations Commissions on Oct. 12 to express her concerns about the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) No Place for Hate (NPFH) program. Below is her statement.

I do not know what horrors my great grandmother went through during the summer of 1915, because I have been told that every time she tried to tell what happened, she became sick for three days, so she rarely spoke about it. All I know is that her first newborn, a baby girl called Angel, died in her arms in the Syrian desert, and that a kind horseman saved her from drowning in the Euphrates.

Two days ago, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee adopted a resolution that acknowledges what happened to my great grandparents and countless others as genocide. As Turkey frantically multiplied its threats to discourage Congress from doing the same, in the face of such shameless bullying and blatant denial, I thought, for a moment, that I was exhausted of being Armenian.

I am exhausted of witnessing the denial of my history.

I am exhausted of being denied justice for so long.

And I am frankly exhausted of having to go town to town explaining how Abraham Foxman and the national ADL are complicit in Turkey’s denial campaign, and asking Human Rights Commissions to sever their ties with a human rights organization that has denied us, Armenians, our human rights.

What outrages me most are Mr. Foxman’s repeated calls on Armenians to take up Turkey’s offers of a commission that will “re-examine the shared past of both peoples”.

On Sept. 27, Turkey’s Prime Minister met with Mr. Foxman—among others—”to reject allegations the Ottoman Empire committed an act of genocide against its Armenian citizens in 1915.” After the meeting, Mr. Foxman reiterated his opposition to Congressional affirmation of the Armenian genocide.

He also repeated that Armenians should respond to calls from Turkey for a joint commission to investigate the past, knowing very well that:

1. The debate on the Armenian genocide has long been over.

2. Turkish historians on such a commission would be on the payroll of the Turkish state, which not only denies the Armenian genocide but also suppresses attempts by Turkish intellectuals and human rights activists to speak the truth.

Just yesterday in Turkey, Arat Dink, the son of Hrant Dink, the journalist murdered earlier this year because he dared to write about the Armenian genocide, was convicted of “insulting Turkishness” for republishing his father’s remarks.

Armenians will only rest when Turkey recognizes the Armenian genocide and Ottoman Turkey’s role in perpetrating it.

As a human rights organization, the ADL has no right to stand in our way, alongside with Turkey, as we work to recover our human rights and dignity.

The ADL charter states that its “ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike.” As an Armenian-American, I am deeply offended that the ADL does not deem us worthy of justice and fair treatment.

As human rights commissioners, I am sure you believe, unlike Mr. Foxman and the national ADL, that Armenians DO deserve justice—like any other people.

Therefore, I respectfully urge you to follow the example of Watertown, Belmont and Newton, and to withdraw from the ADL-sponsored No Place for Hate program in your towns until the ADL reverses its position 180 degrees by unambiguously recognizing the Armenian genocide—without casting any doubt on its historical truth—by apologizing to the Armenian community for not having done so earlier, and by expressing support for efforts seeking Congressional affirmation of the Armenian genocide.

Until then, I think there should be no place for ADL-sponsored human rights program in any of our towns.

Source: http://www.hairenik.com/armenianweekly/com10200701.htm

10/18 Bloomberg: Jews Become Targets of Turkey's Anger at U.S. Vote on Armenia

2007-10-18T21:02:00.000-07:00

Jews Become Targets of Turkey's Anger at U.S. Vote on Armenia

By Louis Meixler

Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Turkey's rage over a U.S. congressional resolution accusing it of genocide against Armenians nearly a century ago is being felt in quarters far removed from Washington: its own Jewish community.

Turkish Jews' concerns for their safety have been fanned by comments from Foreign Minister Ali Babacan that there's a perception in the country that Jews and Armenians ``are now hand-in-hand trying to defame Turkey.'' Turkey's complaint: Its usual allies among pro-Israel U.S. lobbyists didn't work hard enough to block the resolution.

Even as support for the measure fades in Congress -- U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday backed off her promise to bring it to a floor vote -- it has intensified feelings of vulnerability among Turkey's 23,000 Jews, who have been subjected to terrorist bombings.

``There have been insinuations that our security and well- being in Turkey is linked to the fate'' of the resolution, Jewish leaders said in a half-page ad in the Washington Times urging its rejection.

``Public opinion is so emotional on the issue that they seem to blame everyone who may not have been able to block it,'' Sami Kohen, a prominent member of the Jewish community in Istanbul and a columnist for the Milliyet newspaper, said in an interview. ``Some elements -- Islamists and ultranationalists -- might use the Jews as a scapegoat and say they have failed, they have done nothing.''

Genocidal Campaign

Armenian groups say 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a campaign of genocide as the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I and a new Turkish republic was established. Turkey says that number is inflated and that Turks and Armenians alike were killed in large numbers.

Turkey, which has close ties with Israel, has long relied on lobbying from Jewish groups in Washington to aid in fending off proposals like the one endorsed by a House of Representatives panel Oct. 10. But the alliance suffered a blow when the Anti-Defamation League, the largest U.S. organization aimed at combating anti-Semitism, issued a statement on Aug. 21 saying the killings of Armenians were ``tantamount to genocide,'' though it still opposed the congressional resolution.

Babacan, in an Oct. 6 interview with Turkey's Vatan newspaper, said that ``we would not be able to keep the Jews out of this business'' if the resolution is adopted.

Defaming Turkey

Three days later, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, he said that ``the perception in Turkey right now is that the Jewish people, or the Jewish organizations let's say, and the Armenian diaspora, the Armenian lobbies, are now hand-in-hand trying to defame Turkey.''

Foreign Ministry spokesman Levent Bilmen issued a statement the day after the Jerusalem Post interview, saying that leaders of the ``Jewish community, which is a part of our society, have from the beginning rejected the unjust and wrong contents'' of the genocide resolution.

Even so, Kohen said, for the Jewish community, ``this publicity could make their life difficult.''

On the Web site of the Islamic-leaning Zaman newspaper, 22 percent of the 869 people who had responded to an online survey by yesterday blamed ``Jews having legitimized the genocide claims'' for the resolution getting as far as it has.

De-Linking

``This perception has to be fought by the government, which must de-link the American Jews and the resolution,'' said Soner Cagaptay, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. ``A lot of Jewish groups are working to defeat the resolution.''

So is President George W. Bush, who called Pelosi Oct. 16 to urge her to cancel plans for a vote and said yesterday that Congress ``has more important work to do than antagonizing a democratic ally in the Muslim world.''

The Turkish government recalled its ambassador after last week's panel vote. U.S. relations with Turkey, the only Muslim member of NATO and a key supply route for troops in Iraq, were further strained by yesterday's vote by the Turkish parliament to approve a possible attack on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.

Leaders of the Jewish community in Turkey declined to be interviewed. While there have been no reports of increased security at Jewish sites, security is already extremely high. Most synagogues in Turkey are unmarked and guarded by police.

Bombing Synagogues

In November 2003, terrorists linked to al-Qaeda slammed truck bombs into two synagogues in Istanbul, killing 25 people, mostly Muslim bystanders and nearby shopkeepers. In 1986, Palestinian gunmen entered the main synagogue, firing guns and lobbing grenades at Sabbath worshippers. Twenty-two were killed.

The land that is now Turkey has been home to a Jewish community for at least 2,000 years. Ottoman Sultan Beyazit II invited Spanish Jews to settle in Istanbul after they were expelled in 1492.

The community -- numbering about 100,000 in 1900 -- dwindled after Turkey imposed special taxes on minorities during World War II that destroyed many businesses. The creation of Israel in 1948 attracted many Jewish immigrants from Turkey, one of the factors that helped forge good relations between the two countries.

``Turkey's perception of its good ties with Israel is that this relationship stands on American Jewish support for Turkey in Washington,'' Cagaptay said. ``This is not a bilateral relationship, it is a trilateral relationship.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Louis Meixler in Istanbul at lmeixler@bloomberg.net .

Source: http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=avskLGzQhWNA&refer=home#

10/18 USNews: An Ugly Truth

2007-10-18T21:00:00.000-07:00

An Ugly Truth

The challenges of confronting the Armenian genocide

By Jay Tolson

Posted October 18, 2007

Call it a tragic episode, a massacre, even a crime against humanity. But don't—at least officially—call the death and forced displacement of up to 1.5 million Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire a genocide. That is what the government of Turkey has long insisted, though seldom more strenuously than in the wake of the most recent attempt in the U.S. Congress to pass a nonbinding resolution that would do just that. Were it to pass, the United States would be on record as seeing the events of 1915-1919 as, in the words of the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide, acts "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group."

[Photo]

A boy pauses in front of a wall-sized poster depicting the faces of 90 survivors of the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, in Yerevan.

At the moment, however, it looks as though Turkey and an impressive array of supporters—from the White House to K Street and beyond—will prevail in blocking the attempt. Twenty earlier backers of the bill have already defected in response to a tsunami of pressure that includes millions of lobbying dollars, eight former secretaries of state, three former secretaries of defense, Gen. David Petraeus, the patriarch of the Armenian church in Turkey, and even The Daily Show.

The case put forward against the bill is powerful: Its passage would alienate Turkey, America's strongest ally among Middle Eastern Muslim nations and a crucial geostrategic partner. Not only might Ankara shut down the American-run Incirlik air base (through which 74 percent of Iraq-bound U.S. air cargo transits), it would feel even less reluctant to send troops into northern Iraq to crush the Kurdish separatists who have found a haven there. In return for an entirely symbolic resolution, the voices of realism declare, an already colossal mess in Iraq would grow even worse.

Despite the dwindling number of supporters, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insists that the bill will still go before the full House. But even if the measure meets the fate of earlier ones, the forces that repeatedly bring the issue up will not go away. Foremost among these are the some 1.4 million Armenian-Americans who are part of a larger world diaspora that dwarfs the number of Armenians now living in Armenia itself. To them, this is not ancient history but something that lives on painfully in their present lives, a crucial fact of "our narrative," as Ross Vartian, executive director of the U.S. Armenian Public Affairs Committee, calls it. "This is about the U.S. being on the record about the Armenian genocide," he says, "and it's about confronting genocide in general, even when it's hard."

Denials. But just as much a force, in a perverse way, is the obstinate refusal of the modern Turkish republic to acknowledge a historical episode for which it was not itself responsible. Ironically, the vehemence of persistent denials—including a 2003 law requiring schools to deny the massacre and a provision added to the penal code that made "insults to Turkishness" jailable offenses—has made this sad historical chapter loom even larger in the Turkish present. The assassination of Hrat Dink, an Armenian-Turkish journalist who had been charged under the new law for writing about the massacre; the near imprisonment of Nobel-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, who had mentioned the killing of a million Armenians in an interview; the death threats that hang over Taner Akcam, who has written an unflinching history of the genocide—all of these have been cited by the larger global community as proof that Turkey has done nothing to set its own record straight.

Yet repeatedly, Turkish officials say that the events of 1915-19 are questions that historians and scholars should adjudicate, not ones on which governments should pass laws or pronouncements. (When France proposed a law in 2006 criminalizing the denial of the Armenian genocide, Ankara responded by cutting off military relations and some commerce.) Even many self-critical Turks say that political pressure from the outside will suppress nascent efforts to confront the history and even create a backlash. "This resolution will just block the way to dialogue," says writer Mustafa Akyol, deputy editor of the Turkish Daily News. But the response of UCLA historian Richard Hovannisian is pointed: "I don't think the resolution will stifle investigation in Turkey. They've had over 90 years to study this."

The question is whether Turkey will ever enter a debate in which the consensus of scholars holds that the killings and mass deportations of Armenians did indeed constitute a genocide. According to the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the historical record on the Armenian genocide is "unambiguous": In the years approaching World War I, a new breed of Ottoman officials, the Young Turks, heirs to two centuries of imperial decline, saw themselves as the defenders of the Turkish remnant state in the Anatolian core of the empire. Embracing an ultranationalist and supposedly secular ideology, Young Turk leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress pointedly excluded non-Muslim minorities, particularly Armenians, from their vision of Turkish purity. The outbreak of war allowed these leaders to paint all Armenians as pro-Russian fifth columnists (which only a small number were) and undertake organized and widespread massacres and deportations that led to further deaths from starvation and disease.

Most historians conclude that the massacre was carefully planned and executed. They base their evaluation on American diplomatic cables, some Ottoman documents, and Austrian and German archives, as well as accounts of the Turkish courts-martial of 1919-20 which, under Allied pressure, tried and convicted many of the Young Turks for the atrocities.

By contrast, the populist Turkish take on this history emphasizes the war conditions and the threat of Armenian disloyalty to discredit allegations of an intentional policy of extermination. As Akyol says, almost every Turk today has heard a grandparent's tale of treacherous Armenians. The Turkish view has found at least partial support from a small number of scholars abroad.

"Nonnegotiable." If a consensus exists, then, there are at least grounds for discussion. So why is it unlikely that truly open conferences will occur within Turkey? To some degree, both Armenians and Turks are at fault. The former insist that Turks embrace the "G" word even at the outset of discussion. Akcam says that what Armenians expect is "an acknowledgment of moral wrong, and most are not worried about what exact word is used." But Vartian, speaking for many activists, says, "The 'G' word is nonnegotiable."

That hard stance doesn't bode well as an opening move. But neither does the overly defensive outlook of many Turks—an attitude reminiscent of the late Ottoman mentality. Seeing fifth columnists everywhere (now mainly among Kurds rather than Armenians) and overly suspicious of foreign intentions (the proposed resolution is denounced as proof of "American imperialism"), the Turks view any concessions on the Armenian question not only as an affront to national pride but as something Armenians will use to extort reparations or even restoration of property. The fact that the International Criminal Court has imposed strict limitations on the retroactive use of the genocide charge to recover damages does little to assuage Ankara.

But what about the broader meaning of the resolution, and even implications for the prosecution of genocide cases? Michael Scharf, a professor of law at Case Western Reserve University and a frequent adviser to genocide tribunals, doubts that the resolution would be of any practical prosecutorial value. And he adds that because there was no scholarly debate in Congress, the measure appears to Turks to be nothing but pure politics. Yet, like many, he wonders at Turkey's inability to put the matter to rest: "Why doesn't Turkey do a mea culpa and move on? There just doesn't seem to be a downside to doing that."

Source: http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/world/2007/10/18/an-ugly-truth.html

10/18 Jewish Exponent: ADL Director Counters Some of the 'Deadliest Lies'

2007-10-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

ADL Director Counters Some of the 'Deadliest Lies' Making the Rounds

October 18, 2007 - Bryan Schwartzman, Staff Writer

When it comes to the bitter dispute over whether the deaths of more than a million Armenians at the hands of the Turks was, in fact, an act of genocide, Abraham Foxman has a simple message for American Jews: Butt out.

The national director of the Anti-Defamation League gave an Oct. 11 talk at Temple Sholom in Broomall that dealt primarily with the arguments he advances in his new book, The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control.

He barely touched on the Turkish issue in his lecture, but it's a matter with which he's become identified. His Delaware County appearance happened to fall on the same day that Turkey recalled its ambassador to the United States after the U.S. House moved one step closer to passing a resolution labeling the deaths as a genocide, which Turkey has long denied.

"I think that, as painful as the Armenian experience was in 1915, the way to reconcile it is not with a resolution in Congress," said Foxman in an interview after his presentation. "I hope the American Jewish community will also understand that it is not only counterproductive to America's best interests and to Israel's best interests, but also the best interests of Turkey's Jewish community."

The ADL has faced heavy criticism from the Armenian-American community for publicly opposing the proposed congressional resolution and equivocating on whether or not the killing constituted a genocide.

Nearly two months ago, Watertown, Mass. -- which has a large Armenian population -- severed ties with the ADL and its "No Place for Hate" Program, protesting the ADL's stance vis-à-vis Turkey. Foxman even had a public spat with the head of ADL's New England office, Andrew Tarsy -- who was fired soon afterward, but later rehired -- over the ADL position on the Armenian genocide.

Foxman added that representatives of the Turkish Jewish community have lobbied U.S. Jewish organizations to stay out of the fray, fearing that their own positions could be compromised. According to news reports, Turkish officials have denied that Jews need fear reprisals. For their part, other American Jewish groups have come down on both sides concerning the congressional resolution.

Foxman spent most of his speech addressing worldwide anti-Semitism, as well as explaining why he felt compelled to write his latest book, The Deadliest Lies -- essentially a response to the polemics of former President Jimmy Carter, as well as authors and academicians John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

The ADL director said that, while worldwide anti-Semitism is not as rampant as it was leading up to World War II, things remain as bad as they've been since that time.

Foxman cited everything from the statements of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to the murders of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and French Jew Ilan Halimi as evidence that anti-Semitism not only simmers on the back burner, but can boil over in a deadly way.

"Daniel Pearl was kidnapped as a journalist, but slaughtered as a Jew," declared Foxman. "If you ignore anti-Semitism, if you deny it, you give it credibility, you give it life."

Citing an internal ADL poll, Foxman told the audience that one in three Americans believes that Jews are more loyal to Israel than they are to the United States. He used statistics as a segue into his rebuttal to Walt and Mearsheimer's contentions about "The Israel Lobby," as well as Carter's use of the term "apartheid" to describe the current situation in the West Bank.

"There's a legitimate debate now, if you will, about a classic anti-Semitic canard" -- namely, the extent of Jewish power, said Foxman.

He noted that, in response to Walt and Mearsheimer's book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, he's been asked to respond to questions about how loyal American Jews really are.

"How powerful are they? Do they control Washington, the Congress, the media? Did they lead us to war in Iraq?" he said he's been asked.

One audience member inquired about whether former Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle -- who both pushed for invading Iraq -- somehow need to apologize for, in essence, giving Jews a bad name. And did they add fuel to the fire of conspiracy theorists who felt the United States went to war to protect Israel, largely on the advice of Jewish officials?

"That's nonsense. Don't fall for it," he admonished. "You either agree with their advice or you don't.

"But to say we went to war because of the Jews ... they did a job and what they believed was in the best interests of the United States. They are loyal American citizens."

Source: http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/14304/

10/18 Haaretz: Courage and history

2007-10-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

Courage and history

By Michalis Firillas

Nations are measured by their history. But we often forget that they
are also measured by the way they confront their history. This can be
a difficult task, requiring courage, vision and commitment to a
different future. It demands more honesty and less pride. It makes a
distinction between dignity and shame - and knows how to enhance the
former and address the latter. And it requires the involvement of both
the political leadership, on the one hand, and the individual citizen,
on the other.

Which brings us to the following question: What can we learn from the
German response to the Holocaust that might help Turkey alter its
attitude toward the Armenian genocide? A loaded question? Obviously.
An unfair one? Maybe. But is it a useful one? Definitely, and not only
for the Turks. If there is one lesson we must have picked up on during
the 20th century, it is that we are all "built" for genocide. There is
no culture, polity, community that is immune from this. There are of
course many ways of carrying out genocide. You can starve your
victims, parch them, march them into the desert, shoot them, rape
them, gas them, burn them, bomb them, hack them to pieces. You do not
need to be an industrial powerhouse to do it quickly, efficiently. And
by most standards, there is at least one genocide taking place right
now, in East Africa.

Mentioning Turkey in the same sentence as the Holocaust is anathema to
all Turks - and they are right because it is a horrific stigma to
bear. "Placing the Turks in the same category as Nazis is intolerable
to us," one Turkish official was quoted as saying in The Economist on
October 4. But that is missing the point. This is not about
comparative genocide - an exercise that invariably devolves into some
form of bean counting. But when a state refuses to acknowledge
history, it affects the psyche of the nation, perpetuating stasis,
first on a moral level and then in every other aspect of life.

When World War II came to an end in Europe, in May 1945, the crimes of
Germany were exposed before the world. The horror was such that for a
while there were American officials who sought to reduce Germany to an
agrarian society so that it could never again perpetrate such criminal
aggression.

Things turned out differently, in great part because of Cold War
exigencies. But at least in West Germany, a concerted effort was made
by its political leadership - and first and foremost by Konrad
Adenauer, the country's first chancellor - to restore Germany to the
community of nations, foremost through the acknowledgment of the past.
Not only did Germany accept responsibility, but it actively sought to
preserve that diabolical chapter in its history - in the memory of the
state and of every single German citizen.

It can be argued that the Germans were forced into accepting
responsibility. They were occupied, crushed, starving, shocked and
shamed. All true. But they did take responsibility, with the
understanding that they could not escape history and that if they
could muster the courage, they could use that experience to build a
better future.

Such a tack requires leadership. And the epitome of Adenauer's
leadership came with the reconciliation between West Germany and
Israel, which began formally in 1952, with the signing of the
reparations agreement. This also required a great deal of courage and
leadership on the part of David Ben-Gurion, who pushed that accord
through in the face of great opposition at home. It did not mean
forgiveness by any means. But it was the start of reconciliation, and
that is what genuine leaders owe to the future generations of their
people.

Turkey's circumstances are different from those of Germany, and so is
its historical development. But finding excuses is always easier than
doing what is right. Yes, Turkey has simultaneously struggled with at
least three massive challenges since its establishment in 1923, the
roots of which dated back to the great reforms started in 1839:
building a nation-state; modernization; and democratization. By the
time Germany perpetrated the Holocaust, it had gone through all these
stages, with greater or lesser success. Indeed, apologists are always
quick to point out that "this is not a good time" for Turkey to
address the Armenian issue. The bottom line is that it is never a good
time: There is always some crisis brewing, some hyper-sensitive
general, politician or group, too many other things going on. That is
the nature of the mix that makes Turkey what it is.

However, all too often the Turkish people are underestimated. This is
more frequently done by its own leaders than by foreigners. When Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declares that "there was no Armenian
genocide," that is precisely what he is doing: underestimating his
people, and their ability to look forward and acknowledge mistakes.
For the leader of a party whose popularity stems from the desire of
many Turks to remove the shackles of a traditionally paternalistic
state - this is no way to usher in change. History is not solely the
domain of historians, as Erdogan and others would have us believe.
Every Turk has a role in the making of Turkish history, and a stake in
the making of Turkey's future. Recognizing past wrongs and calling
them by name is difficult, and may even seem insurmountable, but the
Turks must find the courage to try to do so.

Michalis Firillas is on the editorial staff of Haaretz.

Source: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/914666.html

10/18 Haaretz: Mozart and the Armenian genocide

2007-10-18T20:55:00.001-07:00

Mozart and the Armenian genocide

By Tom Segev

On August 22, 1939, just days before the outbreak of World War II,
Adolf Hitler met with his army generals. When he explained why he had
decided to attack Poland, he assured them that the world would keep
silent: "Who, after all, speaks today about the annihilation of the
Armenians?," Hitler reasoned. This sentence has been quoted countless
times as ostensible proof that the Armenian genocide served as a kind
of "general rehearsal" for the annihilation of European Jewry. At the
Holocaust Museum in Washington, these words are etched on one of the
walls.

Approximately 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Turks during
World War I. It was genocide; however, the quote attributed to Hitler
is of dubious provenance. It originated with a well-known American
journalist, Louis Lochner, an AP reporter in Nazi Germany and a
Pulitzer Prize winner. Lochner reported on Hitler's speech in a book
he published in 1942. After the war, Lochner gave a version of the
speech to the American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. The
prosecutor was not satisfied, because he didn't know the source of the
speech, nor under what circumstances it was leaked to the reporter. He
dispatched his people to search for the official version.

It turned out that on that day, Hitler gave two speeches. The
Americans managed to locate the official version of both; the line
about the slaughter of the Armenians does not appear in either. The
version Lochner got hold of was apparently a mix of the two. The
prosecution in Nuremberg decided not to submit the reporter's version
to the court, but did leak it to the press; the prosecutor apologized
in court for the leak and claimed it occurred by mistake. At any rate,
this is how the citation entered the heritage of the Armenian
holocaust.

Turkey, of course, denies that there was an Armenian genocide, and
last week it recalled its ambassador from Washington after the House
of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee approved a bill calling
the massacre of the Armenians genocide. This is how history has the
power to make history: Denial of the Armenian holocaust is anchored in
Turkish misgivings about its identity as a modern nation-state.
Although the Turks' position is therefore understandable, it must not
be supported. Unfortunately, Israel has removed itself from the
nations whose voice ought to be heard on all matters pertaining to the
violation of human rights; its military and other interests in Turkey
are even leading Israel to lend a hand to the concealment of the
Armenian genocide. The Turks are putting the Jews, and Israel, at the
center of this affair.

Last week, the Turkish foreign minister came to Israel and called on
it to stop the U.S. Congress from adopting the decision of the foreign
affairs committee; after all, everyone knows the Jews control the
world, and the U.S. Congress. Meanwhile, the Turks are also issuing
threats: The Congressional decision could put the Jewish community in
Turkey at risk. This galling threat is just as despicable as the
denial of the Armenian genocide itself, and just goes to show why
decent people need to demand that Turkey finally learn to look in the
mirror. The Germans have done so; it was painful at first, but worth
it in the end.

Who misled Werfel?

The Turkish Foreign Ministry claims that it wasn't the Armenians, but
the Turks themselves, who were the real victims. A special booklet
published by the Turks says that the Greeks, the Russians and other
Christians, including the Armenians, threatened Turkey's security and
also killed many Turks, and hence there was no choice but to remove
the Armenian population. The Turkish Foreign Ministry counts among the
Christian world's evil deeds the occupation of Palestine by the
British. General Allenby's armies entered Jerusalem a few weeks after
the publication of the Balfour Declaration, 90 years ago, and are
depicted as fighters in the service of the Zionist idea. The
impression is that the ministry is still bewailing the loss of
Jerusalem, although, as far as anyone knows, Turkey is not demanding
that the city be returned.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry attributes the "lie" about the Armenian
massacre to two Jews - Henry Morgenthau and Franz Werfel. Morgenthau
was U.S. ambassador to Turkey, and much of what the world knows about
the Armenian genocide it learned from a book the ambassador wrote
after his return home. The Turkish Foreign Ministry is careful not to
identify Morgenthau as a Jew; it just paints him as a foolish
propagandist.

About Werfel, the Turkish Foreign Ministry writes that he published a
book entitled "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh," but that was just a novel
that can teach us nothing more than the film "Amadeus" might teach us
about the composer Salieri. In this equation, the Armenians are Mozart
and the Turks are Salieri, and just as Salieri didn't murder Mozart,
the Turks didn't slaughter the Armenians. At this point, the ministry
offers a small scoop: Shortly before his death, Werfel realized that
he had been misled, and he regretted "Musa Dagh." This revelation is
ascribed to one of Werfel's friends, and the Turkish Foreign Ministry
takes the trouble to note: The man was a Spanish Jew named Abraham
Sabar. And then comes the unassailable argument: "If the Armenians did
indeed fall victim to genocide, how is it that so many Armenians are
still alive today, and in Turkey as well?"

Just as happens when countries try to explain away war crimes, the
booklet published by the Turkish Foreign Ministry fluctuates between
denial and justification until it finally arrives at the inevitable:
partial admission. We didn't do it; we did it for security reasons;
yes, there were exceptions, but the criminals were tried and punished.
According to the ministry, no fewer than 1,397 people were punished,
and some of them were executed. Now comes the calculation: If each one
of them slaughtered just 10 Armenians, that would add up to about
13,000. Yet might one surmise that someone in Turkey wouldn't be
punished for just 10 dead Armenians? And anyway, all of the
"exceptions" certainly didn't make it to trial. Let's say that one out
of every five criminals was convicted (making an actual total of
6,985); and each one of them slaughtered an average of 200 Armenians,
then you would get close to 1.5 million - exceptions, of course,
exceptions.

Czech Republic, Syria, Jordan

After a long search, the burial place has been found of two Czech
underground fighters who, in the summer of 1942, assassinated one of
the masterminds behind the plan to annihilate European Jewry, Reinhard
Heydrich. The two, Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik, committed suicide
before the Nazis could catch them, and were buried in unmarked graves
in one of Prague's cemeteries. Not far from them is buried Karl Herman
Frank, who came up with the Germans' revenge for Heydrich's murder:
the destruction of the village of Lidice.

Not far from the site that Israeli planes attacked in Syria is the
place where the world's oldest wall painting was discovered. French
archaeologists estimate that it was made about 11,000 years ago. It is
found on the wall of a cave, and like a work of 20th-century art, it
is composed solely of colorful lines and blotches.

The Jordanian government is completing construction of a small
archaeological museum named for Lot. The round structure is already
standing, on the shore of the Dead Sea, not far from the place where,
they say, Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt.

Source: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=Armenian&itemNo=914602

10/18 Inside Medford: Human Rights Commission Protest Vote Suspends No-Hate Campaign

2007-10-18T20:55:00.000-07:00

Human Rights Commission Protest Vote Suspends No-Hate Campaign

HRC Seeks Sincere, Unequivocal Recognition from ADL of Armenian Genocide

[Photo]

This sign outside the Office of Human Diversity at City Hall designates Medford’s association with the Anti-Defamation League’s “No Place for Hate” campaign. The sign, along with others throughout the city, will be taken down as a result of the Human Right Commission’s vote to suspend participation in the program given the ADL’s position on the Armenian genocide. Photo courtesy Diane Mcleod.

- Allison Goldsberry

The Medford Human Rights Commission passed a resolution at their Wednesday night meeting to suspend the city’s participation in the Anti-Defamation League’s “No Place for Hate” campaign until the organization recognizes as genocide mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

HRC Chair David Harris said the ADL’s recent statement on the killings was “verbal acrobatics” and it did not sincerely and unequivocally recognize the killings as genocide.

The ADL’s statement stopped just short of characterizing the mass killings as genocide:

“We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities. On reflection, we have come to share the view…that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide,” wrote ADL National Director Abraham Foxman.

The ADL is hesitant to commit strong public support to the issue because of Israel’s relationship with Turkey, a key ally for the country in a tenuous Mideast.

Because the Commission feels the ADL’s stance contradicts the campaign’s mission, it voted to suspend Medford’s participation for six months, at which point it will withdraw completely if the organization does not change its position and continues to waffle on the issue.

“As commissioners, we appreciate the difficulty of living with a genocide and how much harder it is living with denial,” said Harris.

Several community members attended Wednesday night’s meeting to criticize the ADL’s position and urged the HRC to sever ties with the organization completely.

Elaine Hagopian said the ADL’s has “every right” to advocate for Israel and its protection, but its advocacy is conflicting with its mission of tolerance.

“If some of its means promote hatred they have no right to sponsor the ‘No Place for Hate’ campaign,” said Hagopian.

Tufts professor Bruce Boghosian said the ADL has been assisting Turkey for years with a massive campaign of denial.

“If the ADL truly wanted to recognize the reality of the Armenian genocide unequivocally they had time to do it by now,” said Boghosian.

The ADL has come under increasing criticism for their position and the issue is gaining more public attention.

According to Sevag Arzoumanian of the Armenian National Committee, Medford is one of six area communities to sever or suspend ties with the campaign recently, including Watertown, Arlington, Belmont, Newton, and Lexington.

Congress is currently considering a resolution that formally recognizes the genocide, and Congressman Ed Markey (D-Malden), recently expressed support of the measure.

“I believe that by passing this resolution, we will contribute to the process of rebuilding relations between Armenians and Turks and help heal the wounds from that dark period of history,” said Rep. Markey.

City Councilor Robert Penta brought up the issue at Tuesday night’s Council meeting and the Council supported forwarding his resolution to the Human Rights Commission.

Tonight’s decision of the HRC will eventually come back before the Council for a vote.

Medford joined the “No Place for Hate” campaign in 2004 after a Neo-Nazi group dropped hateful literature around the city.

According to Human Diversity Director Diane McLeod, though Medford does receive some funding from the campaign for programming, many of the city’s programs promoting tolerance and diversity would continue if the city chooses to completely sever ties with the ADL.

Police Chief Leo Sacco, a commission member, said if more communities withdraw from the campaign, which seems likely, it’s possible they will come together to fill the void and share best practices on anti-hate programs.

Source: http://insidemedford.com/?p=472

10/18 Boston Globe: Pressure builds for ADL to yield on genocide issue

2007-10-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

Pressure builds for ADL to yield on genocide issue

By Keith O'Brien, Globe Staff October 18, 2007

Even as support crumbles in Congress for a resolution recognizing the World War I-era Armenian genocide, several Massachusetts towns are still calling on the Anti-Defamation League to clarify its position on the matter and support the resolution.

This week alone, Lexington and Westwood have suspended their involvement in a popular ADL antibigotry program, joining four other communities - Watertown, Newton, Belmont, and Arlington - in protesting the ADL's refusal to support the quest for genocide recognition.

Given the fading support for such a resolution in Congress, Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL's national director, said he believes his organization was being wrongly punished by these Massachusetts communities.

"I don't think it's fair," Foxman told the Globe yesterday.

Still, local Armenian-Americans and the town officials who have voted to pull out of the ADL's No Place For Hate program said they will continue to pressure the ADL to specifically acknowledge the mass killings as genocide no matter what Congress does. .

"The issue was not a political issue; the issue was a human rights issue," said Marianne Ferguson, explaining why Newton's Human Rights Commission, which she chairs, voted to pull out of the ADL antibigotry program last month. "And to deny a history, and deny that it happened, to say, 'Not so' - you can't do that and say you're a human rights organization."

From 1915 to 1923, Ottoman Turks slaughtered as many as 1.5 million Armenians in what is now modern-day Turkey. Armenians, historians, and nations including France and Canada have recognized the killings as genocide. But the Turkish government has refused to accept the genocide label and bristled recently over the possibility that Congress might adopt the genocide resolution.

The uproar, which began last week when a House panel voted in favor of the resolution, pushed several members of Congress to withdraw their support. By yesterday, the number of cosponsors had fallen from 227 to 214 - not enough votes to pass - and Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed off her pledge to bring the resolution to a vote of the entire House.

At issue for the Bush administration, Congress, and the ADL is Middle East stability. Turkey is not only a rare Muslim ally of the United States, but also of Israel. Approving the resolution might upset the balance of the Middle East, some congressmen believe, and that notion is shared by Foxman at ADL, an organization founded in 1913 to fight anti-Semitism.

"I think the good people of Congress have seen the light," Foxman said yesterday. "Maybe the good people in the Massachusetts towns who penalized us will also see the light."

For now, that seems unlikely. Under pressure in August, Foxman reversed decades of ADL policy and called the Armenian tragedy "tantamount to genocide" in a carefully worded written statement. But that did not go far enough for local Armenian-Americans and many town officials.

"To me that's like saying slavery was tantamount to slavery, but not exactly," said Ferguson.

Consequently, many still opposed to the ADL's position are making two demands. They want the ADL to make a clear statement acknowledging the genocide. And they want Foxman's human rights organization to stand with Armenian-Americans in calling on the US government to officially recognize the genocide.

"They're still hiding and will not say they're supporting the resolution," said Watertown Town Councilor Marilyn Petitto Devaney. "We're going to stand firm on it."

The ADL will have a chance to answer its critics in two weeks when a national panel of members meets in New York to discuss potential policy changes, including the organization's stance on the Armenian genocide issue.

At that time, Lori Gans, a member of the ADL's New England executive committee, said her first priority will be persuading the 300-member panel to craft a statement acknowledging the genocide unequivocally.

In the meantime, Gans said, "The question is, how will this affect us and our ability to do our work?" she said. "I don't know. Only time will tell."

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/10/18/pressure_builds_for_adl_to_yield_on_genocide_issue/