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Dear Mr. Ambassador,

You have asked Israel to “…’deliver’ American Jewish organizations and ensure that the US Congress does not pass a resolution characterizing as genocide the massacre of Armenians during World War I”.

Israeli officials tried to explain to you that Israel did not control American Jewish organizations such as the ADL, whose chairman recently issued a statement that (at least obliquely) recognized the Armenian Genocide committed by your Ottoman predecessors.

But you refused to accept this, saying “On some issues there is no such thing as ‘Israel cannot deliver'”.

Possibly you think that there is an international Zionist conspiracy which takes orders from Jerusalem, and it’s just a question of Israel issuing them. Coming from a country where journalists are jailed for ‘insulting Turkishness’, you expect orders to be obeyed.

Well, Mr. Ambassador, I have news for you.

The government of Israel (sometimes to its sorrow) does not control Jewish organizations, either right-wing or left-wing, in America, Israel, or anywhere else. Abe Foxman cannot be arrested for ‘insulting Jewishness’.

Your attempt to hold Turkish-Israeli relations hostage in order to force Jews to take a position that is contrary to their conscience is reprehensible, and in any event doomed. Jews will be Jews, they will not take orders, and they have very strong feelings about genocide denial.

My expectation is that the pressure will backfire, and Jews will close ranks and support the congressional resolution — even those who had previously stood aside for ‘practical’ reasons.

Update [28 Aug 1027 PDT]: The ADL has rehired Andrew Tarsy as New England regional director. Tarsy had been fired last week for opposing the (then) national organization’s position on the Armenian Genocide. See what I mean?

Technorati Tags: Turkey, Israel, Armenian Genocide, ADL

Abraham Foxman of the ADL has issued a new statement regarding the Armenian Genocide, which includes the following truly remarkable paragraph:

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 of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide. If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide. [my emphasis]

Does Mr. Foxman think he is writing some kind of international treaty whose language must be creatively ambiguous? Or perhaps one of those software licensing agreements?

What he should be saying is that the ADL was wrong in not applying the word ‘genocide’ to the aforesaid events, which in fact were a genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire. It would have been much easier to write than the tortured prose above, which is not going to win him a lot of friends among either Turks, Armenians, or Jews who understand the importance of calling genocide by its name.

The statement also includes the following explanation:

Having said that, we continue to firmly believe that a Congressional resolution on such matters is a counterproductive diversion and will not foster reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and may put at risk the Turkish Jewish community and the important multilateral relationship between Turkey, Israel and the United States.

Of course I don’t know what threats the Turkish government has made. However, if they are attempting to hold the Turkish Jewish community hostage for actions taken by the US Congress, this should be exposed as a clear violation of their human rights, and Turkey should be censured for it.

Technorati Tags: ADL, Foxman, Armenian Genocide

Recently I wrote about attending a lecture by a Holocaust denier at a local church. It was upsetting to listen to the speaker’s repeated statements that yes, a lot of Jews died, it was war after all, but there was no concerted effort on the part of Hitler and the Nazis to wipe out the Jewish people.

The speaker had an answer for everything, and it’s impossible to respond to every ‘fact’ that someone can invent. It takes painstaking research, and by that time they have invented another ‘fact’. So even though historical facts — this happened or it didn’t — are absolutely true or false, there is no absolute proof in history the way there is in mathematics.

But after a while the weight of the evidence, the preponderance of the research, becomes so overwhelming that we can say that we know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that such-and-such did occur. At this point, ‘revisionist’ history stops being constructive, and we need to look for motives behind it other than a disinterested search for truth. This is the way it is with the Holocaust.

And this is the way it is for the Armenian Genocide.

Which brings me to Watertown Massachusetts, where local Armenians are asking the city to remove itself from an ADL program (“No Place for Hate”) because the ADL does not take a position on the Armenian Genocide and lobbied against a congressional resolution calling on the US to recognize it:

[ADL director Abraham] Foxman said he is surprised that he has become a target of Armenians. The ADL, a group founded in 1913 to fight anti-Semitism, has no official position on the Armenian genocide, he said.

“I’m not going to be the arbiter of someone else’s history,” he said in the interview, adding that he does not believe that Congress should either. When asked specifically if what happened to Armenians under the Ottoman Empire was genocide, he replied, “I don’t know.” The ADL only takes positions, he said, on current events, not on something that happened in the past.

Many groups oppose the resolution, including of course the Turkish Republic — although the resolution makes it quite clear that the guilty party was the Ottoman Empire. However, general international recognition of the genocide might make it possible for Armenians to claim compensation from Turkey. Turkey has applied pressure in many directions, including that of the US State Department which is concerned about Turkey’s relations with the Kurds in northern Iraq, and the State of Israel which sees Turkey as its only Muslim ‘ally’ (although in my view it’s a pretty poor ally).

It’s also possible that the ADL was influenced by an implied threat to the Turkish Jewish community.

Nevertheless, Foxman’s position is not supportable:

“You would never ever say that about the genocide in Darfur; you would never ever say that about the Holocaust,” said [Sharistan] Melkonian. “You need to stop genocide anywhere you can, and the only way to stop genocide in the future is to acknowledge that it happened.” — Boston Globe

It is contradictory for the ADL to oppose Holocaust denial vigorously, as it should, while refusing to take a position on another historically documented genocide.

And it doesn’t set a good precedent, either, in a practical sense. Today, pseudo-historical revisionism is being used by Israel’s enemies to claim that Jews dispossessed Palestinian Arabs unfairly from their lands, that Israel engineered the war in 1967 for expansionist motives, etc.

The ADL is wrong about this issue and should change its position.

Technorati Tags: ADL, Armenian Genocide, Watertown