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ADL Speaks Out Against Muslim Org: Sad Cuz It’s Funny
By Joey Kurtzman / August 22, 2007
The ADL has issued a deeply credible and morally authoritative press release in which it denounces a nonprofit organization that represents an American religious group. Apparently, that organization has refused to issue "a simple declaratory statement condemning" human rights outrages "by name." Even more disturbing, this same organization that refuses to "clearly and unequivocally condemn" atrocities has had the temerity to represent itself as a "civil liberties group with a mission to…encourage justice and mutual understanding." And boy, the Anti-Defamation League sure is outraged by all this.
You know, the Council on American-Islamic Relations may very well be a dodgy organization. But unfortunately, when someone like Foxman condemns such a group, no one other than the Kool-Aid drinkers could possibly read the press release without laughing. That's the cost of behaving as Foxman has. You still may be able to serve as head of a National Association for the Advancement of Jewish People, but can the universalist lectures unless you're going for giggles.
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In case anyone still doesn't get that the Armenian genocide cries out for recognition, we read today in an LA Times article about aging Holocaust survivors called, "Fearing the Nazis Again" that, "There has never been a group of genocide survivors live to this age in history . . ."
I don't know what could be worse than being haunted in one's old age by memories of unspeakable horrors, unless perhaps it is being haunted in one's old age by memories of unspeakable horrors that much of the world has never even acknowledged.
As Hitler said, "After all, who remembers the Armenians"?
Charity’s boycott guide slammed as a ‘handbook of hate’
24/08/2007
By Bernard Josephs
MPs and Jewish leaders have condemned a high-profile British charity which has unveiled plans for a world-wide anti-Israel boycott.
A document, described as “a guide for boycott, divestment and sanctions”, appears on the War on Want website, and as a booklet, laying out a strategy for those planning sanctions against the Jewish state. MPs have called on the Charity Commission to investigate the publication, described as “a handbook of hate” by Jewish Leadership Council chief executive Jeremy Newmark.
It suggests that the boycott movement needs to “gain greater popular support” in order “to grow into a truly global movement”.
Comparisons are drawn between sanctions against Israel and those imposed against apartheid-era South Africa. Investment in Israel should be presented to the public as “investment in a system of occupation, injustice and apartheid,” it says in the booklet, co-published with the Palestinian Stop the Wall organisation.
Lorna Fitzsimons, former Labour MP and chief executive of BICOM, the Britain-Israel Communications and Research Centre, said that “to equate the Palestinians’ situation with the absolute powerlessness of black South Africans under the apartheid regime is at best misguided, and at worst an insult and a tragedy”.
Liverpool Riverside Labour MP Louise Ellman said the publication was “very questionable” for a charity. Ilford North Conservative MP Lee Scott found it “disgraceful. I’m going to ask the Charity Commission to look into it”.
A government spokesman said that War on Want had received backing of £1.1 million from the Department for International Development, but none of this was for projects in the Middle East.
A War on Want representative told the JC: “ We helped fund [the booklet] and we are happy to promote it.”
A government spokesman said that War on Want had received backing of £1.1 million from the Department for International Development, but none of this was for projects in the Middle East.
Conservative MP Lee Scott who said: “ This is disgraceful. I’m going to ask the Charity Commission to look into it.”
Labour peer Lord Janner suggested that if the charity “wanted to attack anyone they should concentrate on the non-democracies of this world. They seem to be existing on another planet.”
Zionist Federation president Eric Moonman warned that “those who thought that pressure for boycotts only came from academics and the unions have made a mistake. This is much more serious. It shows that well-meaning people are buying into the boycott too.”
Despite the criticism, a War on Want spokesman told the JC: “This [document] is produced with our partner organisation Stop the Wall. We helped fund it and we are happy to promote it.” It was to be be followed up, by a more extensive study of boycott strategy to be published later this year.
A government spokesman said that War on Want had received government backing of £1.1 million from the Department for International Development, but none of this was for projects in the Middle East.
Thank you again for restoring my faith in the ethical fire of the Jewish tradition.
That you, a Jew, seem to be as flabbergasted and outraged over Foxman's statements and actions as I, a non-Jew, non-Armenian, am is a great source of comfort and encouragement to me that there is still hope for truth and justice in this world.
Foxman IS shitting all over your fine tradition and you have every right to be concerned. From my perspective, Foxman has been creating anti Semitism with everything he has said and done thus far on this issue.
David S.,
Can you post the link. Thanks.
Now I’ve read that Israel and the ADL are trying to reassure the Turks that they didn’t meant it or something.
Now, that’s bullshit.
Heartfelt response, and I see your point.
I too, have read Foxman’s insincere quips. I’m not as flabbergasted or surprised as you are because I think that anyone in Foxman’s position is going to – unfortunately – be a political animal, an absolute bulldog, and politics is an ugly game. That’s why Foxman has survived in his position.
I don’t know Foxman personally, either, but I have no doubt that he is used to not being liked and expects to be slammed for his views. His judgment here is obviously wrong, and not acknowledging genocide…Armenian or other…was a very bad thing.
As far as my statements, though, about your outrage: if only you guys held Norman Finkelstein to the same standards that you hold Foxman. His quips about the Holocaust have more animus behind them than anything Foxman has ever said about anybody in public. Yet, you’ve had some sympathetic (and totally uninformed) coverage of him.
It’s strange how that works, and as long as a double standard applies, some of us will wonder what’s behind it.
Phantom:
“You know full well I didn’t compare Foxman and David Duke. I said that as far as I’m concerned, Foxman has the same amount of credibility as Duke, which is 0!”
Do you realize that you just said, “I didn’t compare Foxman and David Duke” and then you went right along and compared them? Don’t you think it’s a bit gratuitous? When has David Duke EVER backpeddled the slightest on anything he’s said?
"Sounds like what Joey and the pilers on here really want is to de-Judaize the ADL completely." "Joey doesn't like the ADL or Foxman."
Obviously I don't know Foxman personally, so I don't know why he acts as he does or makes the decisions he does. I assume he's trying hard to make the best decisions he can based on his own life experience and his own sense of what's important. But yes, I deeply resent what I see Foxman doing. I resent it in a different and perhaps deeper way than I would resent his walking around with a JDL fist-through-a-magen-david necklace and a "Kahane was right" shirt.
Jack Wertheimer was right when he said that I'd bought the tikkun olam-y pitch from the Jewish community. As a kid, I definitely did take seriously, and internalize, this sense that there is an ethical fire in the Jewish tradition, an impulse for moral striving that was intensified, rather than destroyed, by Jewish history. By now I know, of course, that Judaism and the Jewish community are much more complicated than that. All religious traditions and all communities are more complicated than that.
Still, what can I tell you, I read these quotes from Foxman and the ADL–who present themselves as a voice of human and Jewish conscience and a force for justice–saying, essentially "these Armenians, with all their dead family members, suddenly they're making some crazy fuss about the g-word. They think this matters. This wouldn't have been an issue–what do I know from a million-and-a-half dead Armenians!–but then Jews started to argue about it, and that's serious, because we don't want Jews arguing over things that aren't important. So they want the g-word, fine, I gave them the g-word."
I hear this stuff and I'm just flabbergasted. Absolutely flabbergasted. Obviously, no one needs to spell out for Phantom, Rick, Joseph or other Armenian readers what's at stake here for the Armenian community. So I focus more on what I feel it means for the Jewish community. And I feel like Abraham Foxman is shitting all over a tradition that I value, shitting on it in the most disgusting and public way, and you're right, I don't like that.
I’ve been called worse things than obtuse so perhaps I’ll consider that a compliment. Truth is, the first I heard of Foxman’s dreadful remarks was from a column Joey wrote on Jewcy, which was then covered on the Huffington Post. In fact many Armenian blogs were then crediting Joey for breaking the issue. If his source for this was that letter to the editor, then I can’t be blamed if Joey doesn’t credit his sources.
Regarding Joey’s anti-semitism, all I can say is for a start, read the crap he wrote in support of the anti-semitic professor Kevin MacDonald. Even the skinheads at VDARE.COM were surprised at what Joey had written.
Anon 6:12,
You know full well I didn’t compare Foxman and David Duke. I said that as far as I’m concerned, Foxman has the same amount of credibility as Duke, which is 0!. That wasn’t the case over a year ago when Foxman was saying that Passion of the Christ may cause anti-semitism. At that time, I had no reason to doubt his opinions, and I thought he may have a valid point. But now I do doubt whatever he says, because I know he’s trampling on the memory of my ancstors. Perhaps Joey and others here were fed up with Foxman much earlier than me and others like me, because perhaps he was lying or being hypocritical about some other issue with which they are familiar. What I’ve witnessed here is that Joey calls it as he sees it, and on this topic, he sees it the way I see it.
You must be obtuse. Joey wasn’t the one that raised the whole Foxman genocide denial issue, it was an Armenian from Watertown:
http://www.noplacefordenial.com/2007/08/20070706-david-boyajians-letter-to.html
Joey took the lead in showing the world that not all Jews are anti-Armenian like Foxman and the ADL.
Plus, please show me these anti-semitic statements:
“all of the anti-semitic statements he has made on Jewcy”
Joey is in fact a Jew if you didn’t know.
Now grow up, and stop calling others that criticize Jewish establishments, that enable the growth of anti-semitism, anti-semites.
You Anon, are an Anti-Armenian. You say “who raised the whole Foxman genocide denial issue in the first place” So it would have been better that Jews were ignorant to the fact that their major organizations were helping deny a HOLOCAUST?
For Pete’s sake, do you, Foxman, ADL, and all other denialist Jewish lobbies have any spec of moral fiber left in your veins. Or are you all selling away your souls and the future of humanity for a mere buck or two.
What people will do for money…
And don’t you dare talk about Turkey and Israel’s relations. Turkey has criticized ADL openly for saying that Turkish Jews are under threat and this Resolution IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA has nothing to do with ISRAEL.
Thats an absurd conclusion you’ve reached regarding Abe Foxman. Let me first say that I was outraged at Foxman’s Armenian genocide denial. However to compare David Duke, a former KKK grand wizard and Abe Foxman who made a mistake and acknowledged (ableit half-heartedly) is ridiculous and wrong.
In any case, if I am to accept your comment that the ADL now has no credibility and that you will not believe anything Foxman states, then why would you accept anything Joey Kurtzman (who raised the whole Foxman genocide denial issue in the first place)says, given all of the anti-semitic statements he has made on Jewcy. Clearly you wouldn’t even consider the whole Foxman genocide issue because of the source.
David,
Joey's point is a good example why we do not see much on the news about CAIR, because exposing CAIR will also make ADL and Foxman available for discussion. Given present situation it maybe best for ADL and Foxman to keep low profile.
Would you care to tell us why Joey and others should love ADL and Foxman?
“Why should non-Jewish Americans trust or care what he has to say when he has made it clear that his only interest is in protecting Jewish interests… America is 97% non-Jewish. And I think Joey has done a great service to the Jewish community by asking them to wake up before this man does any more damage to the reputation of the Jewish community.”
So, that’s what this is. It’s not REALLY about the Armenian Genocide. It’s about how Jewish Americans look to non-Jewish Americans. I figured. And we can’t have Jews like Foxman screwing up in the bloody game of power politics.
Foxman made a big mistake, here. We all acknowledge that.
But I stand by my assertions that there is something more behind this endless pile up. Joey doesn’t like the ADL or Foxman. Michael Weiss has jumped on the bandwagon, too.
You guys hate the ADL.
We get it.
No. I did fill out an online form for they free DVD about the life of Muhammad. There's a Latter Day Saints movie about Joseph Smith that I absolutely loved, and I wanted to see whether the CAIR video could compete for title of most masturbatory hagiography. But they never sent it!
Also, I couldn't join an organization that's sympathetic to fascism so long as its of a theocratic variety, and killing civilians so long as doing so serves a cause you support. I don't know too much about CAIR, but word on the street is that they're that kind of organization.
has Joey joined CAIR yet?
Phantom:
I never said the ADL shouldn’t have recognized the Armenian Genocide or human concerns in general.
I was talking about Joey’s outrage, and that of others on this board, who slam the ADL for defending Jewish issues – whether it is taking on CAIR (which isn’t really a Jewish issue, by the way, since they are seeking to put hate crime laws on the books that would make it illegal for you or I to throw a Koran in the toilet, thereby threatening the separtion of church and state) or Mel Gibson – and get mad when the ADL doesn’t adequately take on non-Jewish ones.
Sounds like what Joey and the pilers on here really want is to de-Judaize the ADL completely, which is in line with his other essays about Jews “accepting life after peoplehood”. Indeed, Joey’s been ranting about the ADL in hyperbolic terms – calling it a threat to the Jewish people – on these boards for months, and has gained a dedicated following of ADL bashers because of it.
Vrezh:
You seem to have completely forgotten what you wrote.
Let me refresh your memory.
“I have noticed that lots of links dealing with Watertown and ADL have misteriously disappeared and also many articles and blogs in Israeli newspapers online have been removed. I guess Foxman still has friends in high places… Interesting that some insignificant actress getting a DUI is all over media and a leader of major organization with immoral lobbying does not get mentioned at all.
You are implying here some kind of conspiracy, despite that fact that this issue is actually becoming way over saturated.
CAIR makes some of the most most ridiculous statements at least twice a week, and the most outrageous ones barely blip the major news organizations.
This issue is being covered more than any other “lobbying organizations” ever get.
David S,
ADL is supposed to stand up for HUMAN issues, not just Jewish issues. Moreover, acknowledging the Armenian Genocide is a Jewish issue; one which you apparently are too shortsighted to understand.
David,
Google search is not the same as trying to revisit bookmarked pages, so please think before you react.
Vrezh:
Interesting, because I just did a Google News search, which yielded active links to articles in Ha’aretz, Jerusalem Post, and The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, to name a few.
Sounds like your conspiracy-theory addled brain needs its own damage control.
Just a recommendation.
It’s funny how Joey and others on this site rant at the ADL when…
1. They stand up for Jewish issues (Joey doesn’t like them pissing of Christians)
2. They don’t stand up for non-Jewish ones.
Interesting how that works.
And the pile up and Jewcy continues…
I have noticed that lots of links dealing with Watertown and ADL have misteriously disappeared and also many articles and blogs in Israeli newspapers online have been removed. I guess Foxman still has friends in high places. They actually think that people will just forget about the whole thing. Another interesting thing is that the story of Watertown never reached major TV news nor major newspapers outside of Boston area. Interesting that some insignificant actress getting a DUI is all over media and a leader of major organization with immoral lobbying does not get mentioned at all.
Perhaps "no one other than the Kool-Aid drinkers" was needlessly snotty. There's room here for honest disagreement.
However, I hope some of you can enjoy the giggles as anon and I have.
The stench of hypocricy abounds when you deal with people like Foxman. Funny how he thinks that he has any “moral” say on the issue.
I couldn’t stop laughing. Thanks for the giggles.
(I sadly don’t drink Kool Aid)
Because I’ve been keeping up with CAIR for awhile, and the evidence of their ties to Hamas, and other radical Islamic charities (the case where they dropped their “defamation” lawsuit against Andrew Whitehead as soon as the discovery process started – forcing them to prove they were not a “terrorist sponsoring front group” was particularly telling) is undeniable. They just keep digging themselves deeper into a hole. Ibrahim Hooper puts his foot in his mouth everytime he opens it. His recent thrasing by Christopher Hitchens was very interesting.
Foxman’s release is tame compared to the criticisms they’ve received from others.
Have fun attacking Foxman. I’m off to drink more Kool-Aid…
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