Did Abraham Foxman acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, or reword his denial?

Yesterday I noted my puzzlement at the convoluted ways that the ADL statement seemed to affirm the genocide without ever explicitly stating that, yes, this was a genocide.

Turns out I wasn’t the only one that found it odd.

FresnoZionism, “a pro-Israel voice from California’s Central Valley,” supports the ADL and criticized my Fire Foxman article, but he’s flabbergasted by this “truly remarkable" excerpt from the ADL statement:

...On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide. If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide. [FresnoZionism’s emphasis]

He then asks,

Does Mr. Foxman think he is writing some kind of international treaty whose language must be creatively ambiguous?

What he should be saying is that the ADL was wrong in not applying the word ‘genocide’ to the aforesaid events, which in fact were a genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire. It would have been much easier to write than the tortured prose above, which is not going to win him a lot of friends among either Turks, Armenians, or Jews who understand the importance of calling genocide by its name.

Hrag Vartanian, too, wonders, “ why say “tantamount to genocide” and not just say it was genocide?”

And Chris Helms, editor of the Watertown TAB & Press, says,

Forgive me, but the latest turn in the Anti-Defamation League story has me thoroughly confused…[I]f you read the actual statement of the ADL’s director, it only says the “consequences” of the Ottoman Turks’ actions were “tantamount to genocide.”

I’m still holding out for Abe Foxman to say “the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire were genocide.”

Someone from the ADL then wrote to Helms and said “’genocide” is “genocide” and that Helms is “trying to make much too much out of syntax that simply is meant to provide historical context…”

Yesterday I assumed the “tortured prose” of the statement was just typical committee-crafted garble. But phrases such as “the consequences of [Turkish] actions were indeed tantamount to genocide” now look depressingly fishy and deliberate to me. Not only do we not get “It was a genocide,” or even “the consequences of Turkish actions amounted to genocide,” but only that the "consequences" of [Turkish] actions were "tantamount" to genocide.

Hasn’t it been a consistent position of deniers that the vast number of Armenian deaths were an unplanned outcome of war? And that though Turkish military actions may have led to a large number of Armenian deaths, there was no genocide because there was no intention or centralized plan to destroy the Armenian people? So to say that the Turkish actions during the war had "consequences" that were "tantamount" to genocide reads…well, doesn't it read rather like an elaborate restatement of the position that the Turks' military campaigns had the consequence of devastating the Armenians in Ottoman territory--a catastrophe, but not an intentional one and not actually a genocide?

Interested to hear others' take on this. Two activists from Watertown tell me they think I got it right. Regardless, I'm with FresnoZionism. Yesterday's statement was "truly remarkable." I can't imagine a more Byzantine way to say,

In light of the recent controversy, I have revisited my position on the the tragedy that befell the Armenians from 1915-1923. I have consulted with my friend and mentor Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and other respected historians, and I now acknowledge that the deaths of over a million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide.

UPDATES ON THIS ISSUE:
* The Newton TAB, local newspaper of Massachussussetts town considering breaking with ADL's No Place for Hate program, publishes editorial denying that Foxman has acknowledged Armenian Genocide. "Foxman is playing political games."
* As of  morning of Thursday, August 23, most media (including this Globe article) seem to have addressed the issue by just quoting the words "tantamount to genocide," rather than asserting that he acknowledged the genocide.   

* Check our always up-to-date list of Jewcy's posts on the ADL/Armenian Genocide issue