In Rafi Kanter’s recent letter he questions the truthfulness of my statements about the ADL. The suggestion of dishonesty require a response.
The ADL’s recent protestations that they never denied the Armenian genocide are much like Bill Clinton’s disavowals of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Yet strenuous denial does not equal the truth.
A July 2007 piece from Jewcy, an online Jewish magazine, explained how the ADL took on the job of being Israel’s mouthpiece: “Abdullah Gul needed a favor. […] The Turkish foreign minister was fighting a push in the U.S. House of Representatives to recognize the Turkish murder of over one million Armenians during World War I. […] Gul summoned representatives from the Anti-Defamation League and several other Jewish-American organizations to his room at the Willard Hotel in Washington. There he asked them, in essence, to perpetuate Turkey’s denial of genocide. Abraham Foxman’s ADL acquiesced…”
Plenty of Jews objected to the cowardice, if not hypocrisy. One of them was Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, a staunch Israel supporter who has given talks to the Jewish Federation at Rabbi Kanter’s very pulpit. On August 23, 2007 Jacoby wrote in the New York Times: “Particularly deplorable has been the longtime reluctance of some leading Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to call the first genocide of the 20th century by its proper name. When Andrew Tarsy, the New England director of the ADL, came out last week in support of a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide, he was promptly fired by the national organization.”
On April 16, 2008 the Armenian Genocide Museum also blasted the ADL and on August 14, 2007 the Watertown, Massachusetts Town Council voted unanimously to rescind its affiliation with the ADL’s “No Place for Hate” campaign.
Only after widespread outrage at its cowardice reached a crescendo did the ADL change its tune.
In a June 2010 piece in Salon magazine Armenian writer Mark Arax expressed disappointment with the ADL best: “As victims of the Holocaust, Jews might be expected to stand beside the Armenians and their tragedy. […] This sudden embrace of the Armenian Genocide actually marks a shameless turnaround for the major American Jewish organizations. For decades, they have helped Turkey cover up its murderous past.”
My original point was that the ADL too often wades in on political issues as a proxy for Israel – even when it is contrary to American or Jewish values. The Liberty billboard incident was just the latest example.
No matter what the ADL says it now believes, what I wrote was absolutely correct.
This was published in the Standard Times on April 27, 2016
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20160427/opinion/160429527
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