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Kick the ADL out of Watertown, Massachusetts
By Joey Kurtzman / August 14, 2007
Tonight the city council of Watertown, Massachusetts, will debate whether a local diversity-education program called "No Place for Hate" should be kicked out of town. The problem with the program is that it is supported by the
Anti-Defamation League. And the problem with that is that the ADL has promoted a hate-campaign against 20 percent of the population of Watertown. So you can understand why the townsfolk are perturbed.
I say "hate-campaign" because I assume that "hate" is how the ADL would normally characterize genocide denial, which is precisely what Abe Foxman's ADL has promoted at the expense of the Armenian community, which includes one in five Watertown residents. The Armenian Genocide, the murder of up to 1.5 million Armenians from 1915-1923, is a historical fact. As Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt puts it, “It's not a matter of debate. There is an overwhelming consensus among historians that work in this area that there is no question that this is a genocide. You can't deny this history."
Yet as I’ve written before, Abraham Foxman, head of the ADL, has sought to please his Turkish friends by announcing that i
t is not the place of the Jewish community, nor the place of the U.S. Congress, “to be the arbiter of other people’s history.” The Armenians and Turks need to work out their own history, he says.
This is a novel approach to the study of history. Normally, believe it or not, historians determine historical truth, and we expect the warring parties to accommodate themselves to it. Thus, we don’t expect Bosnian Muslims and Serbs to decide between themselves what took place at Srebrenica. But in this case, Foxman bypasses the historians and asks the Armenians to negotiate their history with those who both perpetrated the genocide and deny the genocide.
For Jews, of course, Foxman takes the more traditional approach to history. He has no time for those who reject the historical record of the Holocaust, and hasn’t yet asked Jews to negotiate a compromise with such people.
POST A COMMENT
"This is a no brainer, and if the ADL can’t even get itself to AT LEAST SAY NOTHING rather than saying "don’t pass the Armenian Genocide resolution" then what kind of "human rights" organization is that?"
ADL is an organisation that talks about human rights a lot, but really it is a political organisation. Such is the case with all ‘human rights’ organisations. This is not to condemn them in the least or suggest that I disapprove of all the work that these organisations undertake. On the contrary I think some of these organisations fulfil an all too necessary role. But everything about them is political.
The ADL is a case in point. Today it is partly an anti-discrimination advocacy organisation and partly a pro-Israel advocacy organisation. When those two aims collide, people will start to fight and disagree over which goal takes precedent and for what reason. I suppose the best thing about all this controversy is that the ADL’s reasons for doing this are relatively clear.
This controversey also demonstrates that these advocacy organisations are not necessarily reflective of the views of the ‘Jewish community’, whose political views are clearly far from homogenous.Â
Also, Kill the spammers! KILL THEM ALL! BURY THEM IN SMALL COFFINS AND LET THEM SUFFOCATE WITHOUT ANY HOPE OF RESCUE!
And so forth.Â
The ADL has made a monster of itself by denying a genocide. It has made the entire Jewish community look morally incompetent for allowing ourselves to be represented by someone who engages in Holocaust denial. And it has earned the justified fury of the Armenian-American community, which bears witness to the mass-murder of its forebears, and refuses to see that memory trampled upon.
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oliviaharis
Hi,
I help organize salons in Boston through GesherCity for facilitated discussion about topics in the Jewish community for young adults. Would anyone like to join in a face-to-face discussion about this further? You can contact me at jmgoldberg@jccgb.org
 - Jeremy
The ADL's official statement on the Congressional recognition of the Armenian Genocide is to oppose it. The ADL has officially placed all of its weight against such recognition. Given that fact, how can you still argue with a straight face that the ADL protects immigrants of all nationalities? This is a no brainer, and if the ADL can't even get itself to AT LEAST SAY NOTHING rather than saying "don't pass the Armenian Genocide resolution" then what kind of "human rights" organization is that?
The ADL of New England has publicly and repeatedly repudiated Foxman's views on the Armenian genocide. What is gained by stopping the anti-bigotry education campaign in Watertown, Mass., home to many Armenian-Americans? The ADL of New England is one of few organizations that protects immigrants of all nationalities, that fights bigotry in all its forms, and that educates people about the implications of hate.
I don't always agree with Foxman either, but I know that the ADL is one of the greatest contributions Jews have made to American society. For nearly 100 years, the ADL has fought to make this a better country. I cannot agree with the tone and implications of the article.Â
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I was a big fan of Berlesconi, he was the first Italian President that wasn't a lefty in long time. I had not idea he was an anti-Semite.Â
 Unfortunately the anti-Semitism in Europe is almost an epidemic. Even my friends and relatives in Itally have those tendency. It's really sad.
I don't know how many of you remember that about two or three years ago, Abe Foxman presented the Man of the Year award to Silvio Berlesconi. When reminded that Mr. Berlesconi supported the manner in which Jews were turned over to the Nazis during World War II and referred to the fact as the Jews being sent on a long vacation, Mr. Foxman stated that Mr. Berlesconi is a friend to the Jewish people, albeit a flawed friend, but a friend no less. I, and many other people were disgusted by that statement as well as the act of presenting this man with this coveted award. As far as I am concerned the award and Mr. Foxman can go to hell.
be jew or be american, you folks can’t handle both
I'm drunk, sure, but not too drunk to put up a celebratory blog post from John C. Dimascio!
Done. The Town Council voted to rescind the resolution that enrolled the town in the program.
The ADL needs to understand that subordinating its tolerance mission to dabble in global realpolitik has consequences. A black eye from getting kicked out of Watertown is a good place to start. Â
On a related note, I would highly recommend to anyone in the Boston area to visit Little Armenia for themselves. Its just a short bus ride from Harvard Square and you'll be rewarded with an excellent selection of breads, spices and olives.Â
"On Foxman's watch, however, the organization has sold its honor and its good name the way a cheap prostitute sells herself on the street."
Bill, yes, I have to say that the same comparison has occurred to me. For me, it's the feeling that Foxman doesn't mind desecrating himself, all of us, or the memory of the Holocaust in order to service Turkey.
And yeah, good reporting work over at Israpundit with the moveon.org affair. I'm just getting up to speed on it.
I admit that the ADL has made some statements I agree with, particularly re: some of the European left. But they certainly do seem to have a symbiotic relationship with Stormfront, and other organizations of marginal haters surfing the web 16 hours a day in their underwear. They denounce one another, and pretend that in so doing they're fighting important battles. What can I say, I've can't complain too much, everyone deserves a little bit of pleasure in this world, no matter how silly.
Joey,
My father thought very highly of the ADL, and so did I when I was younger. On Foxman's watch, however, the organization has sold its honor and its good name the way a cheap prostitute sells herself on the street.
Last year, my friends and I exposed MoveOn.org for exercising editorial control in favor of anti-Semitic hate speech at its now-disgraced Action Forum. Foxman & Co. whitewashed MoveOn.org by accepting Eli Pariser's word that the hate speech had been removed, even though I E-mailed ADL reams of hate speech that I harvested from the Action Forum afterward. When I called ADL, I was told that "that was the decision it had made" (to accept Pariser's explanation) despite the evidence that Pariser had lied.
The only conceivable explanation is that Foxman & Co. chose to use ADL's prestige to protect fellow left-wing Democrats from the consequences of their actions. The ADL (now the Antisemitism enabling and Denial League) sold its good name and honor the way a cheap prostitute sells her body.
I have provided extensive details on this to the Armenians, so they can use this to denounce and discredit ADL by showing that this is not the first time ADL has put political considerations above doing the right thing.
On another note, the white supremacist group Stormfront.org is citing ADL's attempt to blow up some Jewish jokes that were made on Big Brother, a CBS reality show, into an "anti-Semitic" incident. We have so far:
 (1) ADL as a shill for MoveOn.org, which it whitewashed for genuine anti-Semitic (and other) hate speech as bad or worse than anything one might find on Stormfront or the Jeff Rense Show
(2) ADL falling one step short of (Armenian) Holocaust denial. In fairness, I can't accuse ADL of actual Holocaust denial because ADL representatives other than Foxman said unequivocally that Armenians were indeed murdered.
(3) ADL is now a stooge and useful idiot for the Stormfront community, again thanks to Abe Foxman.
The claim was made over the Maan Palestinian news agency Monday Aug. 13 four days after Ahmad Hatib from Manda village, Galilee, died after grabbing the sidearm of an Israeli security guard on Jerusalem’s Christian Street and shooting him in the shoulder. Ten people were injured before he was killed.
DEBKAfile cites Israeli intelligence sources as rating this claim more credible than earlier assumptions of responsibility by Fatah-al Aqsa Brigades, the Islamic Jihad and the PFLP. They link the Jerusalem attack to undercover Hizballah cells believed planted in the Galilee villages of Manda and Kafr Kana. Those sources recall three crimes attributed to the Galilee Freedom Brigades in 2003: the murder of the Israeli soldier Oleg Shaichat, the disappearance of Dana Bennet from Tiberias and the ambush of an Israeli policy patrol.
One source told DEBKA that if Hatib did indeed act on behalf one of those cells, Hizballah can claim to have carried out its first cross-border attack in Israel since kidnapping the Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev last summer and sparking the Lebanon War.
Israel security authorities have therefore reopened the file on the unsolved murder of Michael Ronkin, 68, who was stabbed to death on July 13 outside his home in Nazareth Illit. This murder and the attack in Jerusalem were carried out by lone killers who staked out their victims before seizing the opportunity to strike, regardless of being outgunned. This is a departure from regular Islamist and Palestinian terror methods and points to killers who are highly motivated and well trained. The Israeli Islamic movement called Hatib a shahid.
In the four years since Oleg Shaichat’s murder, Israeli security authorities have not got to the bottom of the Hizballah network suspected to have been planted between Carmiel and Nazareth Illit, although even in 2003, there were signs that Hizballah was sending orders and money to Arab citizens deep inside northern Israel.
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