"I'm a longtime supporter of the ADL, and I think the work the organization has done has often been stellar," said Rabbi Ronne Friedman, senior rabbi of Boston's largest synagogue, Temple Israel. "But I'm really saddened that Abe Foxman, the national director, has failed to affirm the historical fact of this genocide, and I really think that failure represents a moral myopia."...
Jews, being victims of Adolf Hitler's genocide plan, should understand the importance of this issue, Friedman said.
Foxman understands the importance of this issue. But he will NEVER acknowledge anyone but the Jewish community is entitled to use the word "genocide."
Local chapter breaks with ADL position
Armenian genocide at issue
By Keith O'Brien, Globe Staff | August 17, 2007
The local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League broke ranks with its national leadership yesterday amid growing outrage by area Jewish leaders over the ADL's refusal to acknowledge the World War I-era mass killings of Armenians as genocide.
In an emergency meeting yesterday afternoon, the regional ADL board adopted resolutions calling on the national organization, which has refused to recognize the Armenian genocide, to change its policy, according to a source familiar with the proposal.
Also, Andrew H. Tarsy, the ADL's New England regional director who had defended the ADL's position as recently as Tuesday, reversed course, saying the ADL should acknowledge the genocide.
"I strongly disagree with ADL's national position," Tarsy said in an interview with the Globe, declining to explain his change of stance. "It's my strong hope that we'll be able to move forward in a relationship with the Armenian community and the community in general."
The developments were the latest turn in a national debate that began weeks ago in Watertown, home to more than 8,000 Armenian-Americans.
Some residents were upset to learn that the ADL was the sponsor of the town's antibigotry program "No Place For Hate." Many began calling for Watertown to pull out because the ADL refused to acknowledge the genocide.
On Tuesday, the Watertown Town Council voted unanimously to rescind its relationship with No Place For Hate. And by yesterday, residents in Newton, Belmont, Somerville, and Arlington were rethinking the program, and local Jewish leaders were renouncing the ADL's stand.
ADL leaders agree that Armenians were massacred by Ottomon Turks during World War I. The ongoing debate focuses on the Armenian stance that what happened was genocide and the ADL's refusal to acknowledge that.
A resolution pending in Congress would formally recognize the deaths as genocide. The ADL's national director, Abraham H. Foxman, has said that the human rights organization has no position on the issue. But he has also questioned whether what happened was genocide and said he believes that Congress should not be considering the matter.
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The Armenian Genocide
The ADL's position appears to have more to do with Israeli foreign policy issues and concerns than with common sense and historical truth. Does Foxman et al. want us to believe that the Ottoman Turks just accidentally killed more than one half-million Armenians? Is this why he denies that it was genocide? Maybe he believes that aliens took the Armenians away in space ships. There are some deniers of the Jewish Holocaust, for example, who come dangerously close to this position in trying to explain why more than one-third of the world's Jews disappeared from the face of the earth. It is, of course, nonsense. They were intentionally and deliberately murdered by the Germans and their European allies. The Ottoman Turks did the same to the Armenians.