Jewish groups pressure the ADL, urge recognition of Armenian genocide

Excellent, keep up the pressure. Genocide is genocide.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/08/21/jewish_groups_pressure_the_adl">LINK

Local Jewish groups rushed yesterday to sign a letter urging the Anti-Defamation League to acknowledge the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide, increasing pressure on the ADL after it fired its New England director for endorsing the emotionally charged position. Nancy K. Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, e-mailed a letter yesterday to some 40 prominent Jewish leaders in Massachusetts, asking them to support the ousted director and to recognize the genocide against Armenians. "We must never forget the Armenian genocide and maintain our guard against those who deny its occurrence," the letter said.

Within hours of sending the letter, Kaufman said that 11 groups had signed and that more were expected to do so shortly. "I have never gotten such unanimous support for any position by the JCRC as I have in the last few days on this one," Kaufman said. "It doesn't matter where people are on the political spectrum -- left, right, middle -- people are really standing behind this because it strikes at the core of what it means to be a Jew and never again means never again."

Signers of the letter include the Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Russian Community Association of Massachusetts, the Hillel Council of New England, the Bureau of Jewish Education, and the David Project Center for Jewish Leadership.

Kaufman said her group, which represents 41 Jewish organizations, unanimously approved a resolution in 2005 calling the massacre an act of genocide. "We just felt we needed to be on record," Kaufman said. "We needed to be in solidarity and in support of the Armenian community locally."

The rift opened last week after the Town Council in Watertown, home to 8,000 Armenian-Americans, voted unanimously to pull out of an ADL program called No Place for Hate. The town was protesting the ADL's refusal to acknowledge as genocide the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks starting in 1915 in what is today Turkey.

After the vote, the ADL's New England director, Andrew H. Tarsy, who had initially defended the ADL's position, said the massacre was genocide. Then he was fired by the national ADL.

Previous thread: ADL fires New England Director for acknowledging Armenian genocide

:kick:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2007/08/antidefamation.html">LINK

The national office of the Anti-Defamation League reversed its long-held position today and acknowledged the Armenian genocide of 1915, saying in a statement that the mass killings of that era at the hands of the Ottoman Turks "were indeed tantamount to genocide."

However, the statement reaffirms the national ADL's belief that the legislation pending in Congress to recognize the genocide is "a counterproductive diversion."

The ADL's statement, released to the Globe and on the group's website this afternoon, came "in light of the heated controversy," which began weeks ago in suburban Watertown, where more than 8,000 Armenian-Americans call home. Days earlier, the ADL's national director, Abraham H. Foxman, fired the regional director of the New England ADL for making a similar statement.

:woohoo:

As I understand, Turkey won't accept it to this day, and some ADL leaders feel intimidated on this point because of Israel's dependence on good relations with Turkey? Am I right here? In any case, why are Turkey still insisting on refusing to acknowledge it as genocide so long after the event? Is it because they might have to pay reparations?

Turkey's kinda pathological about the issue. If you look at just about anything about Armenians or Kurds online - book reviews, WIkipedia talk pages, etc - there's big hordes of Turkish people spamming it up with propaganda or denial as is appropriate for the given topic.

My "favorite" was some elementary teacher who, as a class assignment, got his students to astroturf some book that mentioned the Armenian genocide happened. They were required to one-star it on Amazon and (where the teacher shines for stupidity) identify themselves and the class while they were doing it.

I almost think you'd sooner get Bob Jones University's student body to convert to Catholicism than you'd get Turkey to remove the stick from its ass on this issue.