ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, only made things worse when he said, in an interview published in the Los Angeles Times: “The Turks and Armenians need to revisit their past. The Jewish community shouldn?t be the arbiter of that history. And I don?t think the U.S. Congress should be the arbiter either.”
How astonishing for a major Jewish figure to take this view! How would we Jews react to, say, an Iranian group lobbying Congress against recognition of the Shoah on the grounds that “the Jews and the Germans need to revist their past” and that “the Iranian community shouldn’t be the arbiter of that history?”
Foxman even had the chutzpah to say it would be “bigoted” to dismantle NPFL in Watertown merely (merely!) because the ADL does not recognize the Armenian genocide as a genocide.
I asked Bob Trestan, the ADL’s Eastern States Civil Rights Counsel, for an explanation of the ADL’s position. He sent me a statement for which I don’t have a link, but here it is:
The Anti-Defamation League has acknowledged and never denied the massacres of hundreds of thousands of Armenians –and by some accounts more than one million –at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1918. We believe that the Turkish government must do more than it has to confront its history and to seek reconciliation with the Armenian people. We have said that to the Turkish government and its officials, we will continue to do so, and we take this opportunity to repeat it publicly. We will continue to work to convince Turkey to pursue recognition and reconciliation, and we will seek ways to encourage this process. We believe that legislative efforts outside of Turkey are counterproductive to the goal of having Turkey itself come to grips with its past. We take no position on what action Congress should take on House Resolution 106. The Jewish community in Turkey has clearly expressed to us and other major American Jewish organizations its concerns about the impact of Congressional action on them, and we cannot ignore those concerns. We are also keenly aware that Turkey is a key strategic ally and friend of the United States and a staunch friend of Israel, and that in the struggle between Islamic extremists and moderate Islam, Turkey is the most critical country in the world.
This statement fails to meet the mark for two reasons. First, it fails to use the word “genocide.” “Massacres” happen all-too-often, but not every massacre is a genocide. Now, I do not personally regard the Holocaust as a primary constituent of my identity as a Jew, but many Jews do, and I imagine that many Armenians similarly feel the same way about their catastrophe. So language matters.
Second, for goodness’s sake, what does Turkey’s role as an ally of Israel and a bridge between moderate and extreme Islam have to do with the issue? Iran is a major regional power in an area of vital strategic importance to the U.S., but we do not kowtow to President Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial for that reason.
ADL, get with the program!
TedF
pack mentality behavior. One problem is that it is hard for groups to admit they were wrong so they harden their attitudes. On the radio, about 10 yrs ago I was listening to an Armenian activist and a Jewish activist debate whether or not Armenians have a right to use the word Holocaust. It was one of the most heated — unnecessarily heated — debates I have ever heard.
Elie Wiesel — who coined the term “Holocaust” — said it should not be used any more because it implies a singular event. What he meant was, humans are always brutal to each other (hence his famous dictum “We are all Jews”), and we need to be aware of it as an ongoing problem.
Abe Foxman is an colorful character in charge of a basically good organization. So just as we’d like people to criticize Bush, and not damn America, we should criticize Foxman and remember that the ADL will outlast him.
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What’s the basis of the statement that they’re a Jewish group? It’s my understanding that they were founded by Jews(?) but are staffed by people of all religions.
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And I agree with you. The Holocaust refers to a singular event. A holocaust is a greek term about burnt-sacrifice. There was indeed an Armenian Genocide, and I don’t know what game Foxman is playing.
You’re right that some gentiles are active in the ADL. But in my (albeit limited) experience, the organization is predominantly Jewish, with Jewish roots and a focus on combating anti-semitism, though as you say the ADL also does good work combating other forms of bigotry.
are not going along today. The ADL has done too much good work to be sidetracked like this.
They disagreed passionately. They were both 100% convinced they were correct. They both had irrefutable evidence. Their passion and their mountains of evidence actually obscured rather than shed light on the issue.
This is an honest question — I’m weak on modern history, both US and world…
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How about the use of adjectives? I mean, the holocaust is the one that Jews, homosexuals, Catholics, gypsies, et al share from the 1940s. The Armenian holocaust is obviously something quite different. It’s not ambiguous at all. Nobody is confusing the time period, the location, the people on either side of the heinous crimes, or the severity of the event.
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It seems to me that if the Armenians lay a claim to the “Armenian holocaust” that people won’t rent Schindler’s List expecting ?ükrü Kaya or somesuch. Furthermore, their understanding of the horrors of the holocaust won’t be reduced.
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So, why can’t adjectives solve the problem? This liberal suggests: give adjectives a chance, brother. Just give adjectives a chance.
how crazy these arguements can get. The Armenian person was initially saying Armenian Holocost but they ended up really just debating the word Holocost. I was using it as an example–not about the merits of the arguements so much as just the way they were arguing.
I have to admit that I haven’t heard much about this, the comments by the ADL borderline insane. The position that it’s an Armenian/Turkish issue and that people are bigoted if they don’t agree. What? Watertown did the only right thing here, I grew up in Watertown and I’m glad to hear of their actions. The ADL needs to get their collective heads out of their arse.
One, Elie Wiesel, with all of his good works, did not coin the term “holocaust.” It is a centuries old word. Maybe he capitalized the “H,” but the word remains the same.
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Two, I’m actually surprised at the stance of the ADL. Despite the fact that they have appeared to gone a bit overboard in recent years in a very few instances they have been remarkably supportive of equal rights for a number of other minority groups. Yes, including gay people.
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I cannot understand this about the Turks and the Armenians, unless it has something to do with the word “genocide.” The problem may be with use of the word “genocide.” “Genocide” is not only an emotive term, it is also a term that is used an international treaty, to which the US is a signatory. The treaty, if the US were to acknowledge it as such would require the US and other countries to take action against (whom?) if (whom?) were to have been declared to have been in a genocide.
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There is a further complication, regarding the Armenian (I’ll use the word: genocide), and that is, that the entity that engaged in the genocide ceased to exist at the end of WWI. But Turkey, today, is a NATO ally (albeit just barely) and if the US were to acknowledge that Turkey was involved in a genocide against the Armenians, the treaty (mentioned above) might be deemed to require the US to act against a NATO ally. Sorry, it isn’t going to happen.
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BTW, just to let you know, re “the Jews and the Germans need to revist their past” as I have mentioned here many times, the Germans incessantly revisit their past. It has almost become a comic ritual. It is possible overdo something, so that it becomes boring and hence stupid, and they are certainly doing that.
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2. “Genocide.” As you say, though, “genocide” is a legal term, without the baggage, at least in my mind, of “holocaust.” I am not sure I follow your point about the implications of declaring a genocide, since the U.N. genocide convention does not, to my unexpert eyes, seem to require action against states guilty of genocide. Is there some other treaty to which you refer? My guess is that even the Armenians would not call for punishment of modern-day Turks on account of the genocide perpetrated by the Ottomans, any more than the Jews want to punish modern-day Germany for the crimes of their grandfathers. (As an aside, I lived in Germany for a while as a high school student, at around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I was almost embarrassed by the West Germans’ Holocaust complex. I did, though, experience a frightening instance of neo-Nazi vandalism in a small town in the DDR). So I think this concern is a bit of a red herring.
If we’re going to get into the legalities of “taking action” against the perpetrator of a genocide, wasn’t the genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire. Not only was it about 100 years ago, but the legal body who committed the act doesn’t exist anymore. And while there is a lot of overlap, this would be equivalent to punishing Serbia for the acts of Yugoslavia, or Russia for those of the USSR.
I am reading “The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East” by Robert Fisk. It is an amazing treatise, 1038 pgs, by an award-winning journalist who has covered the Middle East since the Algerian war. His chapter on the Armenians is called “The First Holocaust,” uses the term genocide and was a revelation to me, as I really did not know much about it. I encourage people to read it. He quotes original sources, such as a cable from the US Ambassador to Constantinople, Henry Morgenthau, describing exactly what was going on.
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Major points relevant here:
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Although people blame the Ottomans, at the time of the genocide (1915) a “Young Turk” movement had effectively taken control. In “The Aftermath” Churchill wrote “it may well be that the British attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula stimulated the merciless fury of the Turkish government.”
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5000 people were killed by forcing them into a cave, lighting a fire at the mouth, and filling the cave with smoke to asphyxiate them. – the first gas chamber
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The Turkish war minister told the US Ambassador that the Armenians were being sent to “new quarters” and many died while being transported in railway cattle wagons.
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A special action group was set up to carry out exterminations.
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Viscount James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee (then young) were commissioned to prepare a report for the British government in 1915. Fisk describes the 700-page result “The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-1916” as not only a formative history of the slaughter but the first serious attempt to deal with crimes against humanity.
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There were many American eyewitnesses who wrote and press stories, including near daily coverage in the NYTimes. This was no secret – at the time.
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Most disturbing to me was reading about how Germans, there to help reorganize the Ottoman military, witnessed the massacres, took pictures, and saw the use of rail cars (90 people to a wagon – the same average the Germans later achieved). I will quote one paragraph
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“In a work of remarkable scholarship, the Armenian historian Vahakn Dadrian identified Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter as one of the most effective Nazi mentors. Scheubner-Richter was German vice-counsul in Erzerum and witnessed Turkish massacres of Armenians in Bitlis province, writing a long report on the killings for the German chancellor. In all, he submitted to Berlin fifteen reports on the deportations and mass killings, stating in his last message that with the exception of a few hundred thousand survivors, the Armenians of Turkey had been exterminated (ausgerottet). He described the methods by which the Turks concealed their plans for the genocide, the techniques used to entrap Armenians, the use of criminal gangs, and even made a reference to the Armenians as “these ‘Jews of the Orient’ who are wily businessmen.” Scheubner-Richter met Hitler only five years later and would become one of his closest advisors, running a series of racist editorials in a Munich newspaper which called for a “ruthless and relentless” campaign against Jews so that German should be “cleansed.”
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Hitler referred to the genocide in 1924, saying that Armenians were victims of cowardice. In 1939 he asked of his generals, “Who, after all, is today speaking of the destruction of the Armenians?”
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Apparently, Watertown is. Good for them!
On the word “Holocaust.” The word is from the Greek for “burnt offering,” and it is the translation of one of the Hebrew words for sacrificial offerings in the Hebrew Bible. While of course Elie Wiesel did not coin the word, I believe (without citation) he was the first to use it in reference to the Shoah.
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I don’t know the etymology of the word, and, quite frankly the etymology is orthogonal to the issue. The issue is whether the ADL (which has done yeomans’ work on behalf of denigrated minorities, who happened not to be Jews) should be chastized for being reticent, if not hesitant, of using the word “genocide” in connection with the Ottoman shoah against the Armenians.
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That is the issue that is being overlooked.
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Re (From TedF) “Genocide.” As you say, though, “genocide” is a legal term, without the baggage, at least in my mind, of “holocaust” no, that is the point. “Genocide” is a legal term in international treaties, whereas neither “Shoah” nor “Holocaust” are. I will only cite the first section of the Genocide treaty that you linked to:
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The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
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I sincerely don’t know how to put it more succinctly. That is an operative phrase, requiring the contracting parties to do something that has been declared a genocide to act. And that is why the contracting parties to the genocide convention have been virtually unwilling to declare much of anything a genocide. If you believe that I am joking, I can assure you that I am not.
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My own view is that the theological and symbolic concepts behind the word are reasons why we should reserve its use to discussions of the Nazi genocide of the Jews (and perhaps to the Nazi extermination of the Roma people–was this genocide?–homosexuals, and other undesirables).
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You are perfectly able to believe what you wish, but, I’m sorry, as far as I’m concerned you are sadly mistaken. The religious wars (RCCi vs. Protestants) that were fought in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries decimated Germany. And the earlier efforts of the RCCi to get rid of the Albegensian Heresy in southwestern France were despicable.
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Genocides have been going on for centuries. The Japanese empire is not even willing to admit today for their genocide called the Rape of Nanking in Dec 1937-Mar 1938, the forgotten holocaust of WWII.
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I did, though, experience a frightening instance of neo-Nazi vandalism in a small town in the DDR.
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There are still more than a few neo-Nazi problems in the ehemalige DDR. It’s causing problems in the tourism industry in Mecklenberg-Vorpommern (who wants to go sit on the Ostsee, when they might be beat up by a bunch of neo-nazi thugs?) and the Stadt-Staat Berlin, although there have been some problems recently in the (non-ehemalige DDR) Sachsen-Anhalt. The Germans will rue the day that they allowed the CDU (center-right, and worthless) pig Helmut Kohl to “reunify” an ununified country.
Raj, why so prickly?
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On your substantive points:
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The Genocide Convention (article 4) provides that “persons committing genocide” are to be punished, and (article 5) that the states party to the convention are “to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide.” Like I say, I’m no expert, but I read this to mean that the Convention requires punishment of the perpetrators of genocides, not of the states they govern or in which they live. Maybe I’m wrong. Do you read the treaty differently?
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On my point about the use of the word “holocaust,” I agree with you that there have been lots of massacres in the past, including the instances you cite. I think it’s even possible to think about the religious wars in Europe as attempted genocides insofar as (according to the convention) religious as well as national or ethnic groups are to be protected. But what does any of this have to do with the appropriateness of using the word “holocaust” to describe other genocides? You sound like you’re spoiling for a fight, but I don’t see that we have really disagreed.
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TedF
But I’m not going to: Wiesel gave the term “Holocaust” its present meaning, just like somebody gave “Ground Zero” its present meaning, whereas the term is older and had a different meaning beforehand.
The murder of anyone is a tragedy. That Armenians were murdered by Turks and others is a tragedy. Turks, too died in the ethnic strife between the two peoples. That is also a tragedy.
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It should not be compared to a unique historical event such as what happened to six million people in Germany. People that did not fight the Germans. Innocents.
Your knowledge of history is non-existent. You know nothing about the Armenian Genocide.
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What happened to my grandparents is not a tragedy; it is a genocide; you do not want to believe it, too bad. But it is a historical fact.
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Do not try to minimize what happened to us in order to make another point. I have more respect for people who tell me they support modern Turkey for political reason than people like you.
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To say that some Turks died while trying to systematically exterminate Armenians so it’s all equal is insane.
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Here’s a starter..
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On several occasions, most notably in two seperate incidents at Warsaw. Germans died at Warsaw, at the hands of Jews.
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Similarly, the genocide (as it is, in fact recognized genocide) in Rwanda took place as the Hutus and the Tutsis fought each other. Hutus, also, died at the hands of Tutsis.
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In neither case did the fighting make the genocide, not a genocide. The same is true of the Armenian gencocide.
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I say this not to justify the death of those Turks, but to make the point that such an argument is not reason enough to not recognize what happened to the Armenians as the genocide that it is.
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Genocide: (noun) the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.
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That they fought back against the Ottomans does not change the Ottoman policy of systematic destruction of the Armenian people did, in fact, constitute a genocide.
Seems to me that Foxman must either:
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1) announce that ADL has arrived at a new position (“yes, the Armenian Genocide was a genocide”) after listening to the Armenian community and having internal ADL discussions… or
2) resign.
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Further delay will only allow things to get worse. That would be a shame because No Place for Hate is actually a very good program. Foxman’s leadership is damaging not only NPFH but ADL. He is now a liability for them. ADL can rescue its credibility simply by getting rid of him. They can pin the fiasco on his misguided leadership and begin to move on, post-Foxman.
The Globe has the story.
It’s good news. I had not envisioned that the local affiliate could break with the mother ship in NY on this. One hopes this is an interim step before the mother ship changes position too.
Represntative Rachel Kaprielian has co-authored an op-ed in the Globe with Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz.
Here is an excerpt:
…another snorefest. Who is paying Dershowitz for this tripe? The Klaus von Bulow Stiftung? He lost any and all credibility decades ago.
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He’s a worse media hound than Marty Meehan ever was.
… not the person who is making it.