ADL bows to pressure, acknowledges Armenian genocide

From the Boston Globe:

He has stood up to Mel Gibson, Jimmy Carter, Louis Farrakhan, and the president of Iran. But Abraham H. Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, backed down yesterday after a standoff with Armenian-Americans in Watertown drew the attention of some of the nation's most prominent Jewish leaders.

Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, reversed course and acknowledged that the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks was genocide. The change stunned those who have followed Foxman's 42-year career at the ADL, where he has rarely bowed to critics.

Finally. Now the question is, will Foxman reinstate Andrew Tarsy, the man he fired for stating that the Armenian genocide was actually a genocide?

The Anti-Defamation League Denies the Armenian Genocide, Fires its New England Director

A controversy has been growing in New England over the refusal of the Anti-Defamation League to admit that the Armenian genocide was really, well, a genocide. Things came to a head yesterday, according to this article in the Boston Globe:

The national Anti-Defamation League fired its New England regional director yesterday, one day after he broke ranks with national ADL leadership and said the human rights organization should acknowledge the Armenian genocide that began in 1915.

The firing of Andrew H. Tarsy, who had served as regional director for about two years and as civil rights counsel for about five years before that, prompted an immediate backlash among prominent local Jewish leaders against the ADL's national leadership and its national director, Abraham H. Foxman.

...

The national office's three-page response ... made clear just how far apart the two sides were on an issue with local, national, and international implications.

The letter, signed by Foxman and Glen S. Lewy, the ADL's national chairman, said "we have acknowledged the massacres of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire and called on Turkey to do more to confront its past and reconcile with Armenia. We will continue to press Turkey, publicly and privately . . ." But the letter also makes clear that the national ADL feels the safety of Israel, which considers Turkey a rare Muslim ally, is paramount.

I don't mean to diminish legitimate concerns about the safety of Jews in Israel. The Ant-Defamation League was founded in 1913 to protect Jews (and others) from discrimination. Denouncing genocides around the world isn't its main reason for existence. But still... does the ADL really believe that genocide should be denied when it is politically convenient to do so? Apparently. China and other nations have downplayed the genocide taking place in Darfur because they value their access to Sudanese oil. The ADL is downplaying the Armenian genocide because it values Israel's alliance with Turkey. In both cases, geopolitical concerns are trumping the moral issue of genocide. The Armenian genocide, unlike the crisis in Darfur, is long over, so obviously the ADL is not causing as much damage as those who deny a genocide occurring today. But this fact hardly makes the ADL's actions any less distasteful.