Imagination is No Escape: integrates facts into the gameThink a Nintendo game is a good way to teach kids about the Holocaust? A 21-year-old British video game developer does, and the company producing his latest creation hopes to have it ready for distribution in Europe by the end of the year. Luc Bernard's game, Imagination Is the Only Escape, is based on the ways that the Nazis tortured children, and won’t be distributed in the US.

Reactions have been as condemnatory as you’d expect. However, Bernard maintains that he’s not trying to make light of the suffering of children. He promises that there won’t be any on-screen violence, and though Alten8--the company producing the game--originally asked him to remove all swastikas from the game, it subsequently backed off. Bernard says he’s trying to make a game that will be educational and appropriate for young children, and points out that his mother is Jewish and members of his family took care of Jewish orphans after World War II.

So far, the most interesting response has come from the Anti-Defamation League. Instead of lashing out against Bernard and Alten8, Myrna Shinbaum, a spokeswoman for the ADL, is quoted as saying, “We certainly believe that we have to find new ways of teaching lessons of the Holocaust as new technologies are being developed.”

Related: Holocaust Remembrance Project for French Kids Sparks Ire

So here's the promised update on the panel discussion on genocide denial that took place Thursday night at UCLA. Commenter Micromike wonders whether anything was accomplished. I frankly don't know.

The discussion was interesting. Professor David Myers drew incisive connections between the experience of the Armenian and Jewish communities; Professor Richard Hovanessian gave a fascinating talk on the rhetorical moves deployed by genocide deniers; I argued that while issues such as those are complex enough to support endless academic study, the moral contours of this situation are very stark—one needn't consult scholars to know that Jewish orgs ought not support a campaign of genocide denial. Then Aram Hamparian placed all this in the context of his work as head of the Armenian National Committee, and also made some very kind and encouraging comments about Jewcy.

Phantom says he hopes the experience was meaningful for me, and yes, absolutely it was. Having a chance to sit next to, and engage with, David Myers, Richard Hovanessian, and Aram Hamparian, was as edifying as it was flattering.

But of course that's entirely irrelevant. There are cheaper and easier ways to edify and flatter ourselves than to hold a genocide denial panel discussion at UCLA. There were people who flew across the country for this discussion (afterward, one person came up to me and said she flew in from Chicago, and another said that he came from Arizona; Mr. Hamparian flew in from DC): presumably, they weren't there just to hear interesting or stirring things. They must have hoped that something significant was actually going to come out of it.

On my end, there's one preeminent criterion by which I'll judge whether the event was a success: did it do anything at all that will make genocide denial a less acceptable political manuever to leaders of Jewish-American orgs such as the AJC (David Harris) and the ADL (Abraham Foxman). Will it cause anything to happen that in turn causes people lower down in these organizations to say to these men, "I understand how simple-minded and Polyanna-ish this sounds, but I really think we need to consider the idea that supporting a genocide denial campaign is really just deeply problematic, political considerations aside."

If that's too much to hope, then I'd be satisfied if supporters came to them and said, "listen, this isn't just some bullshit about 'morality' or 'the memory of the Holocaust'—it's actually serious. People out there are saying all kinds of damnfool things about our supporting Turkey's campaign of 'genocide denial,' and it could turn out to have very negatives consequences for this organization."

If that happens--if one person in either of those organizations can muster up the conviction to say either of those things to Abraham Foxman or David Harris--I'd call the event a success. But maybe I'm more easily satisfied than people who flew across the country hoping to witness some progress in ending denial of their family/community's systematic murder, I don't know.

Evolution: The big question.

In this week's Jewcy feature, How to Raise an Ideological Warrior, Neal Pollack worries that opponents of evolutionary theory will corrupt his son's education. If Neal's nightmare comes to pass, it'll be in large part due to the efforts of The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that promotes the theory of Intelligent Design (ID). ID holds that the diversity of life on earth is "best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection," and it includes among its backers President Bush, parents and school board members across America, and a growing list of dissident academics.

We've asked David Klinghoffer, a Jewcy contributor and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, to tell us "What would the Discovery Institute like to teach Jewish-American children about Intelligent Design?" Here is David's answer:

No thoughtful, feeling person would find it palatable to live a life without meaning. For many Americans, meaning is obtained primarily through religious faith. For others, through family, career, or politics. For lots of people in the Jewish community, but not only there, life’s meaning is supplied by fear.

Some fear the so-called Islamofascist threat. Many liberal Jews, however, are terrified by the scientific critique of Darwinian evolutionary theory.

My stake in the matter? I work at the Discovery Institute here in Seattle, which almost single-handedly put the issue Darwin v. Design before the public. For the record, I’m a fellow in DI’s program on Religion, Liberty & Public Life, which is not focused on evolutionary or other scientific questions. What exactly would the Discovery Institute like to teach Jewish-American children about intelligent design?

Paranoia has been running high. The Anti-Defamation League calls ID a “challenge to religious freedom in America.” The group warns that, “Many who believe in intelligent design want to teach this idea as science — either alongside the scientific theory of evolution or in place of it.”

Outside the more fevered precincts of the Jewish community, a few of the Republican presidential candidates would not oppose teaching both sides of the Darwin controversy to public school students. Hillary Clinton affirmed her own faith: “I believe in evolution, and I am shocked at some of the things that people in public life have been saying….I am grateful that I have the ability to look at dinosaur bones and draw my own conclusions.”

Like The Shroud of Turin, but for Atheists: When Hillary Clinton looks at dinosaur bones, her faith in evolution is reaffirmed Setting aside the question of how Senator Clinton could draw a scientific conclusion from gazing at dinosaur bones, one notes her implication that Republicans sympathetic to ID pose a “shocking” threat to her freedom to “draw her own conclusions” about life’s origins.

There are so many misunderstandings here.

ID theory represents an inference from scientific facts, facts agreed to by all scientists, like the nanotechnology in the living cell and the information-rich software of DNA. This is not Bible-based creationism. No Darwin critic that I know differs from established scientific conclusions about the age of the earth or of the universe since the moment of the Big Bang. The issue dividing Darwin advocates and Design theorists is a question of the interpretation of universally accepted data for the purpose of describing events in the distant past.

Continue reading...

Jewcy's Armenian comrade Sevag Arzoumanian sends video from last week's rally outside the ADL Headquarters. Footage is interspliced with scenes from the first Jewcy-sponsored rally outside the 92nd Street Y.

 

 

He applauds the Armenian-Jewish* community for slamming Yerevan University's bestowal of an honorary doctorate on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

"It is one thing to provide a forum to speak, as universities are environments where freedom of speech should be promoted and encouraged," said Mr. Foxman. "However, it is quite another to confer degrees and awards on a dictator who denies the Holocaust and calls for the destruction of the state of Israel. Such tributes should be reserved for those academics and world leaders who rightfully deserve them."

Whoever wrote that statement for Foxman must have been cackling at his keyboard.

*Originally said Armenian-American community. Late day typo. Irony still stands given that quote. 

Jewcy is once again teaming up with No Place for Denial to protest the Anti-Defamation League cynical and immoral posturing with respect to the Armenian Genocide. Be there this Thursday, outside the ADL headquarters. Sevag Arzoumanian has the press release:

The ADL National Meeting is in town from Nov. 1st though Nov. 3rd

Join the good folks at Jewcy and No Place for Denial for a hastily organized, totally spontaneous demonstration in front of ADL Headquarters on Thursday, November 1 @ 7 p.m.: 605 3rd Avenue New York, NY

Youthful representatives of two ancient peoples will hit the pavement in front of the ADL offices to demand that the ADL come down on the right side of a key human rights issue: unqualified opposition to genocide denial.

Spontaneous, irreverent, unscripted, a celebration of Jewish-Armenian solidarity, hard hitting political messages transmitted through irony, parody and prose.

B.Y.O signs and slogans.

[Note: Now that President Bush has officially declared his opposition to the House resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide, I thought it might be worthwhile to re-examine Turkey's supposed importance to "stability" in the Middle East. I wrote this blog post a little over a month ago. -MW] 

In his academic satire The Catastrophist Lawrence Douglas envisions a great auction of ethnic self-pity. At a conference in Berlin, Daniel Wellington, an art historian of war memorials, shrivels before an Armenian scholar who maintains that Germany should erect an “omnibus” memorial to honor not just the victims of the Holocaust but all victims of atrocity. (Wellington is there to argue the opposite case.) “Doesn’t the long history of the suffering of the Jews,” submits Professor Kostygian, “contain the suffering of all peoples?” A trifle sententious, but this remark hits the right note with the audience. Kostygian’s Armenian grandparents were slaughtered by the expiring Ottoman regime during World War I, and yet, as he later admits to Wellington in private, the “universality of atrocity” hasn’t got a fighting chance.

When the interests of two embattled and victimized minorities collide, you can be sure that cant and moral hypocrisy will prevail. I’ve remembered Douglas’s vignette in the current scandal over the Anti-Defamation League’s refusal to even recognize, let alone commemorate, the Armenian Genocide. My colleague and comrade Joey Kurtzman has brilliantly shown how the “watchdog” organization founded in the 1930’s to combat anti-Semitism has now become another mangy outfit worthy of invigilation itself. The public pressure brought to bear on the ADL since Joey’s “Fire Foxman” article first appeared in Jewcy has been intense, yet the group’s position remains unchanged. The ADL still will not unequivocally state that between 1915 and 1917 Turkey slaughtered and displaced up to a million and a half Armenians, and it still will not back the Congressional resolution that recognizes this event as the first genocide of the 20th century.

The whole issue rests of course on that teetering concept realpolitik. We must therefore consign to the dustbin of idealism a few annoying facts: namely, that in 1943 a Polish Jew named Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” to describe the annihilation of European Jewry, and that twenty years before, he instanced the annihilation of Armenians as a prototypical example that would yield an inevitable sequel. Never mind, also, that in 1939 Adolf Hitler was given to exclaim, “Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?” as his own "realist" justification for implementing the Final Solution.

To put the matter bluntly, the American Jewish community is worried about alienating Turkey, the strongest military ally of Israel in the Middle East. Turkey is today a member of NATO and a seemingly permanent candidate for European Union membership, a status imperiled by its policy of making acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide a national crime: "denigrating Turkishness” in the official script. Turkey has brought unending shame upon itself by attempting to prosecute its own Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk for speaking the truth about his country’s blood-stained past, and there is evidence to suggest that the Turkish police—ever the wayward arm, along with the military, of the Kemalist state— were behind the murder of the beloved dissident journalist Hrant Dink for similar reasons.

As reactionary as its domestic policies have been, Turkey has a shown a radical willingness to align with Israel in matters of geopolitical importance. Last summer, it committed U.N. troops to help disarm Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and it routinely shares intelligence and conducts counterinsurgency exercises with the IDF. This special relationship is thus brokered on “security,” the ultimate trump card on humanitarian concerns for a staunchly pro-Israel contingent of American Jews.

A tipping point in the current ADL controversy was reached last week when the left-leaning Jewish newspaper The Forward published an astonishing editorial heralding a “post-Holocaust” age in which“[r]emembering genocide is important, but not as important as saving lives today.” The Forward was less clear about which lives are to be saved simply by asking the ADL to recognize the Armenian Genocide, but the editorial begged an interesting question. Just how vital is Israel’s alliance with Turkey, and should Diaspora Jews really be lobbying for its continuance?

There are four reasons to suspect that realpolitik is, as ever, wishful thinking garbed in the wardrobe of cynical excuses.

The “ancient history” argument applies just as stingingly to Turkey. What’s past is past, only the future matters. If this is the hollow core of The Forward’s logic, then we must ask: Why can it not be applied with equal force to the Turkish gambit of denial?

If Turkey admitted the Ottoman Empire's barbarism, how could this be construed as a blight on the democratic state, founded, let's not forget, on a feverishly pro-Western policy of modernization? Unless one thinks that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown should stand trial for the Amritsar Massacre, the acknowledgment of a decades-old atrocity in a parliamentary regime is ethical but academic. The price of truth and reconciliation is, in “realist” terms, smaller to pay.

Unlike Saddam’s genocide of the Kurds or Milosevic’s genocide of Balkan Muslims, no participant in the current Turkish government orchestrated the genocide of Armenians almost a century ago. But an entire nation robs itself of moral credibility by continuing to deny what the rest of the world long ago accepted as historical fact. Would it not benefit Turkey and its allies to settle this national question once and for all?

Turkey is hostile to the Kurds, who are more valuable friends of Israel. The Armenian Question is not the only one bedeviling Turkey, which has long persecuted its Kurdish minority under the pretext of “assimilation.” It outlawed, until recently, the Kurdish language and jailed one of the country’s most charismatic Kurdish parliamentarians, Leyla Zana, for “separatist speech.” However, the war in Iraq has forever changed the dynamics of discrimination in the Mediterranean.

If Iraq breaks up into three separate countries—"Sunnistan," "Shiastan," and Kurdistan—there is every indication that the Turkish military would attempt an invasion of an independent Kurdistan to thwart the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk from failing into the Kurdish sphere of influence. The Turkish army is already fighting what amounts to a civil war in the southern, mainly Kurdish province of Diyarbakir. But as Seymour Hersh documented in a 2004 New Yorker article, any attempt by Turkey to antagonize Suleimaniyah would also objectively antagonize Tel Aviv.

After the fall of Saddam’s regime, Israel re-established its covert training and intelligence-sharing program, first conceived in the sixties, with the Kurds of northern Iraq. Hersh cited Intel Brief, a newsletter circulated by two CIA counterterrorism experts, who concluded that Iraqi Kurds were helping Israel uncover the details of Iran’s nuclear weapons project, and bolstering opposition to the Assad dictatorship in Syria—much to the chagrin of Ankara.

Good. As far as both Israel and the United States are concerned, the Kurds make for better secular Muslim allies in the Middle East, and their readiness to help either government despite former betrayals is nothing short of a monument to stoicism and friendship.

Turkey has somehow maintained its amicable relationship with Israel despite its threatening security arrangement with the Kurds. How absurd to think that the ADL’s about-face on the Armenian Genocide could possible endanger that relationship.

The Turkish government is still openly anti-Semitic. It defies irony that the ADL, normally so attuned to the faintest whiff of Jew-hatred in international media, will truckle to the Islamist regime of the newly elected Turkish President Abdullah Gul.

As recently as last year, Turkey produced a laughable state-funded film entitled Valley of the Wolves Iraq, also known as the “Turkish Rambo.” Chronicling a minor incident involving Turkish special forces during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the action movie was a high-budget exercise in conspiracy-mongering. It also trafficked in an anti-Semitic caricature that would have done Der Sturmer proud. One subplot of Valley of the Wolves featured Gary Busey – yes, Gary Busey – as an American Jewish Army doctor who steals organs from Iraqis and sells them to wealthy patients in New York, London and Tel Aviv.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was given a private screening of the film, which went on to become Turkey’s biggest blockbuster to date, and Gul himself said it was “no worse than some of the productions of Hollywood studios.” How right he was two years after The Passion of the Christ, still the ADL’s bete noir of anti-Semitic cinema.

In other words, Turkey has been undermining the popularity of its own alliance with Israel, and using bigotry of a higher magnitude than anything the ADL routinely condemns.

The critics of the “Israel Lobby” benefit from the ADL’s stance. Now that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have ballooned their notorious thesis – that a powerful “Israel Lobby” wields undo influence over U.S. foreign policy – into a book, who better to rebut them than… Abe Foxman!

On the very same day that The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy was published, Foxman’s own counterargument hit the shelves as The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control. If they were so inclined to challenge their challenger, Mearsheimer and Walt could start with Foxman’s title and proceed from there: “How dare a man who refuses to acknowledge a genocide accuse us of spreading the 'deadliest lies'?” Moreover, the cretinous maneuvering of the ADL conforms almost perfectly to the Harvard scholars’ theory about just how far American Jewish organizations will go to protect Israel. The ADL’s press release on the Armenian Genocide might as well be blurbed on The Israel Lobby’s book jacket.

If The Forward is really out for the Jewish state’s best interests, how can it possibly hope to defend them by standing behind such a flammable straw man as Abe Foxman?

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

Bird's-Eye View of Hatred: The ADL sees the big picture.

 

The Anti-Defamation League in San Diego has objected to the shape of the buildings.

“We told the Navy this was an incredibly inappropriate shape for a structure on a military installation,” said Morris S. Casuto, regional director of the organization. He added, however, that his group “never ascribed evil intent to the structures’ design.”

Mr. Casuto praised the Navy for recognizing the problem and “doing the right thing.”

The $600,000 for the changes is included in the Navy’s approved 2008 budget.

Full story.

 

Special thanks to Evin Watson for filming the event for Jewcy.

To read more about what we were doing two weeks ago, and why:

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

Thank you to Paul for bringing this to my attention in the comments section. Please watch this video if you have any doubts about the ADL's miserable policy on the Armenian Genocide. Watch it even if you don't.

By bombing Syria:

"They dropped bombs over Syria and they dropped fuel tanks on Syrian soil," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said in Ankara Monday, while briefing Turkish officials on the incident. Turkey, which has strong military and diplomatic ties to Israel, described the overflights as "unacceptable," and has demanded an explanation from the Israeli government.

Now will Foxman recognize the Armenian Genocide?

I was just having dinner with an old friend the other night who's from Newton, Massachusetts, sort of the haute-bourgeois Lodz for the Diaspora. I told him about Jewcy's ongoing battle with the ADL and that organization's cynical stance on the matter of the Armenian Genocide. My friend's pretty conservative and is far more concerned with tradition, Jewish continuity, and Israel than I am. He shook his head and told me what anyone below the age of 50 has come to discover in due course: Guys like Abe Foxman are just too fucking old.

I had no idea what the term "New Jew" meant until I joined this magazine. But judging by its readership, the wider online community of vibrant young members of Team Chosen, and the array of their political and cultural convictions, I think we have cause to be optimistic. The Foxmans of the world won't be around forever, and guess who stands to inherit the mantle of Jewish leadership once they're gone? The generation that grew up watching an overnight annihilation of Tutsis take place live on CNN; the generation that saw an ex-Communist apparatchik ethnically "cleanse" one of the most cosmopolitan centers of European Islam; the generation that continues to watch black Muslims being killed, raped, and exiled from their homes in Sudan. If "never again" is too high a mark to shoot for, then let's redefine the term: let's make it mean that so-called realism can no longer stand in the way of cold, hard, brutal fact.

Here's an encouraging sign: The Newton Human Rights Commission has severed its ties to the ADL. Our friend Sevag Arzoumanian sent us this press clipping, reposted from No Place For Denial:

Town Refuses to be ‘On the Same Boat’ with ADL
By Khatchig Mouradian

The Armenian Weekly
September 12, 2007

NEWTON, Mass. (A.W.)

—Generations of Americans converged at Newton City Hall on Sept. 11 to make their voices heard to the local Human Rights Commission (NHRC) meeting, which, after deliberations, unanimously voted to cut their ties with the ADL’s No Place for Hate (NPFH) program until the former unequivocally recognizes the Armenian genocide and supports H.R.106 in Congress, thereby affirming the historical record.

Commissioners and Advisory Council Members
In a letter dated Aug. 24, the NHRC had asked the ADL to recognize the Armenian genocide, actively support H.R.106 and rehire the ADL’s New England regional director Andrew Tarsy. During the Sept. 11 meeting, commissioner Marianne Ferguson noted that although Tarsy has since been rehired, unequivocal recognition and support for the Genocide Resolution had not been achieved.

Advisory Council member Dianne Chilingerian expressed concern about the ADL’s position on the Genocide Resolution, which she considered inconsistent with its mission. She said that she is bothered by the ADL’s position as a human rights activist, and that this is not just an Armenian issue. Student Advisory council member David Fisher asked how we expect to end genocide campaigns today “when we still can’t recognize what happened 92 years ago.”

ADL Regional Board Members
Emphasizing that he was not speaking on behalf of the ADL, the organization’s NE Regional Board member Gerry Tishler said, “I have studied, thought and written about the Armenian genocide and it wasn’t ‘tantamount to genocide’ it was genocide. … I am also in favor of the U.S. government acknowledging and commemorating the Armenian genocide.” He noted that the meeting of the ADL’s national commissioners will discuss the issue in November, though said that continuing with the NPFH should not be based on that outcome. “If you make it conditional, you are making a bad mistake,” he said, noting how much the ADL has added to the town’s programs.

NE Regional Board member Beth Tishler also argued the importance of not dissociating from the NPFH, adding, “We have stood up and gone against our national leadership. We have heard you. The National ADL has heard you.”

ADL National commissioner David Apel said that ADL national director Abe Foxman “is not empowered” to support the Genocide Resolution, and that “your message will be brought forth to the national commissioners in November.” In response, members of the audience pointed out that while Foxman seems to be able to change his position daily on the Armenian issue, he needs the green light from the commissioners to properly acknowledge the truth about 1915.

“I reject the notion that we are misguided citizens,” continued Apel. He said the last few months had been a learning experience for him and many others, and that everyone in the room was on the same boat. “Give us time till November,” he added.

Members of the Audience
Newton residents, university professors, human rights activists, students, descendents of Armenian genocide and Holocaust survivors, spoke about the need to send the right message by severing ties with the ADL.

Newton resident David Boyajian, whose letter to the Watertown Tab sparked the ADL controversy, said that the “ADL’s [genocide] acknowledgement was thinly disguised denial,” and that its “verbal gymnastics show bad faith.” He stressed that the ADL will not change its position without pressure from the towns, and asked that Newton sever its ties immediately.

Newton resident Sonya Merian, whose mother was on one of the earliest Newton Human Rights commissions, read a letter by the ANC of Eastern Massachusetts addressed to the NHRC members and Newton mayor David Cohen. “Foxman apologized to the Prime Minister of Turkey for having put his government ‘in a difficult position,’ expressing his ‘sorrow over what we have caused for the leadership and people of Turkey.’ No apology to the heirs of Armenian Genocide survivors has been issued to date,” she said.

Prof. Jack Nusan Porter, treasurer of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), stressed the importance of severing ties with the ADL until Foxman resigns or changes course. “Turkey cannot harm a single hair of a single Jew,” he said, referring to Foxman’s stated concern that supporting the Genocide Resolution would harm the Turkish-Jewish community. “Is Israel, with its army, afraid of Turkey?” he asked.

Newton resident Nancy Aykanian said she was startled that the NPFH has an annual re-certification process for all participating towns, and said the ADL was hardly in a position to grade anyone on their human rights performance.

“The ADL lacks the moral leadership and courage and any program sponsored by the ADL cannot be accepted,” said Newton resident Michael Mensoyan.

Newton resident and Armenian Youth federation (AYF) member Nora Kaleshian said, “My family and I are deeply hurt [by ADL’s practices],” expressing hope that it promotes the Human Rights of all people.

Prominent human rights activist and author of Our Bodies, Ourselves, Judy Norsigian, also from Newton, noted that “the time is ripe to make this a national issue.” She underlined the position and authority of Newton to send a strong message to the ADL by severing ties.

Newton resident Bethel Charkoudian introduced her father, a genocide survivor and thanked the NHRC for their stance. “My father survived the genocide and came here because he knew people understood his suffering,” she said.

Associate professor of philosophy at Worcester State College Henry Theriault said that while people were used to the denial of the Armenian genocide by Turkey, it was shocking to see a human rights organization engaging in the denial, adopting similar hate speech and lobbying against genocide recognition.

“There is no such thing as ‘degree of genocide,’” said Newton resident Salpi Sarafian. “The ADL has spoken in absolute clarity against Sudan, Bosnia and Afghanistan. They need to do the same regarding the Armenian genocide.”

In a poignant speech, activist Berge Jololian underscored the importance of realizing that recognizing the Armenian genocide is a moral issue and not a political one. “ADL was established in 1913, the Armenian genocide occured in 1915. ADL had 92 years to acknowledge this crime,” he said.

Activist Narini Badalian recounted her experience at a recent lecture by Foxman in New York. Badalian had confronted Foxman to say whether ADL’s position is consistent with that of a Human Rights organization. Foxman had responded, “It is up to you to decide.” Badalian urged, “It is time for us to decide.”

Activist Luder Sahagian made strong points about the failure of the ADL to “rigorously uphold settled history.” He said, “The ADL has yet to subscribe to the wisdom of the esteemed Rabbi Hillel, who many, many years ago advised, ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor…That is the entire law. All the rest is commentary.’”

Visiting professor of Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University Dikran Kaligian said, “The ADL has made itself complicit in [Turkey’s] multi-million dollar denial campaign.” When the ADL controversy first broke, he explained, the ADL’s first reaction was not to approach the Armenian community but to hire a leading PR company. “Foxman does not see this as a moral issue, but a PR problem,” Kaligian said, adding, “We need to take the necessary steps for them to get the message.”

In an emotional speech, activist Alik Arzoumanian responded to the numerous calls on the NHRC and on Armenians to wait until the November meeting before deciding to sever ties. “We have been waiting all our lives,” she said, and explained how offended she was by Foxman’s claim that a Genocide Resolution was “counter-productive.” Foxman considers “our struggle to recover our dignity” to be counterproductive, she added. “I don’t want to give National ADL one more day.”

Mayor Cohen
Newton mayor David Cohen spoke next, and said that “there is a tremendous amount of common ground here.” He called the ADL National’s failure to “make a forthright statement” recognizing the genocide and supporting the resolution as “an ongoing injustice.”

“The resolution that we have in the U.S. Congress is one of the best pieces of legislation that deserves passage,” he said, referring to H.R.106. “It is incumbent on the ADL” to support it, he added.

On the same boat?
ADL Regional Board members emphasized several times during the meeting that everyone in the room was “on the same boat,” though they went on to say that suspending ties with the NPFH and ADL was not the answer. Asked to comment near the end of the meeting, however, Student Advisory Council member Fisher said, “Hearing the voices of the Armenian community and my own Jewish conscience, I cannot be on the same boat with you.”

The NHRC voted unanimously to cease participation in the NPFH, pending the ADL’s unambiguous recognition of the Armenian genocide and support of HR106.

I have been reading about Jewcy's protests against Foxman and the ADL's unwillingness to step on Turkish toes by condemning the Armenian Genocide.

While the idealist in me wants every genocide condemned, I really don't see Jewcy succeeding here. Operating under the assumption that the ADL would not do anything to undermine Israeli interests (and please correct me if my assumption is incorrect), then this passage from Chomsky in 2002 is probably why the ADL would not say anything remotely anti-Turkish:

The Israeli military authorities claim to have air and armored forces that are larger and more advanced than those of any European NATO power (Yitzhak ben Israel, Ha'aretz, 4-16-02, Hebrew). They also announce that 12 percent of their bombers and fighter aircraft are permanently stationed in Eastern Turkey, along with comparable naval and submarine forces in Turkish bases, and armored forces as well, in case it becomes necessary to resort to extreme violence once again to subdue Turkey's Kurdish population, as in the Clinton years. Israeli aircraft based in Turkey are reported to be flying reconnaissance flights along Iran's borders, part of a general U.S.-Israel-Turkey policy of threatening Iran with attack and perhaps forceful partitioning.

By the way, I am really curious about if, and how, Turkey's relationship with Israel has changed after the election of the AKP Party. What was Israeli sentiment towards the Islamists?

Gershom Gorenberg has an excellent piece in the American Prospect distilling the main points of the ADL-Armenian Genocide fiasco. One of my arguments all along has been that a failure to acknowledge a historical atrocity is also an implicit acquiescence before future atrocities. Indeed, the current Darfur refugee crisis -- and Israel's recent expulsion of 50 Darfuris last month -- becomes a grievous complement to the events of not only 1915, but of 1939:

Olmert, who has an uncanny ability to miss opportunities for leadership, blew this chance as well. In July, he announced that he'd agreed with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that any refugee caught crossing the border would be sent back. That prompted 63 Knesset members, more than half the parliament, to sign a petition against deporting Sudanese refugees, citing "the Jewish people's history as well as the values of democracy and humanity." Nonetheless, authorities sent back a bus of over 50 Africans in late August, most reportedly from Darfur. One official argument is that Al-Qaeda activists could be among the refugees. Lurking behind that is fear -- expressed quietly even by some who oppose deportations -- that large numbers of refugees could change Israel's ethnic character.

Under pressure, the government has announced it will let 500 Darfur refugees stay. Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit -- a rival of Olmert from within his own Kadimah party -- says he'll grant the 500 citizenship. The other Sudanese are to be sent back to Egypt.

As a country of 7 million, it's true, Israel can't solve the Darfur refugee crisis. Then again, the Israeli population is now about one-twentieth that of America just before the Holocaust. If it is enough for Israel to let in 500 people fleeing genocide, then the U.S. could have met its responsibility by taking 10,000 Jews. In fact, 50,000 Jews came to America between 1933 and 1941, according a Yad Vashem scholar. That was insufficient refuge.

I suppose it's not impossible that a member of Al Qaeda could slip past the asylum processors and enter Israel. However, one of the things that makes the Khartoum regime, which has been blessed by Al Qaeda, guilty of genocide is that it is targeting specifically black African Muslims for annihilation and expulsion. A black Darfuri is therefore much less likely to be a Bin Ladenist than, say, a white man from Warsaw claiming Jewish heritage in 1939 was likely to be a Nazi in disguise. This "official" argument centered on Israeli security is not so terribly compelling.

That said, given our own hysterical debate over the perils and promises of immigration to the U.S., it is an absolute crime that we have turned our backs on refugees from Sudan and Iraq.

The Iraqi Diaspora was among the most sophisticated and prosperous in the world up until 2003. It would be a small humanitarian triumph of this war if, given the continued bloodshed and chaos in Iraq, we could add to that population within our own borders, the better to prepare Iraq for a later influx of U.S. visa-holders and naturalized citizens.

Of course, such a reversal of policy might actually help the Bush administration save face, so no, it wouldn't want to do anything so bold as that.

From our Armenian friends at No Place For Denial:

BREAKING NEWS: The Belmont Human Rights Commission voted unanimously this evening to recommend to the board of selectmen that Belmont immediately sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League. It cited the ADL’s failure to unambiguously recognize the Armenian Genocide and its continued opposition to Congressional resolutions recognizing the Genocide.

Karine Birazian, the Eastern Regional Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of America, called me this morning to tell me the good news. I suggested the next stop should be Amnesty International.

Contact Amnesty's Northeast Office at aiusane@aiusa.org, or call them at 212-807-8400. Tell them that the ADL has disgraced human rights activism and has no business call itself an organization that combats "bigotry of all kinds" unless it unequivocally recognizes the Armenian Genocide and backs the Congressional resolution that does so.

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

Just got back from the ADL protest an hour or so ago. I'll have a more comprehensive post about the event tomorrow, but suffice it to say, it came off remarkably well. I was very proud to be an editor of this magazine tonight, and even prouder to call Joey Kurtzman -- who brought the bulk of the media attention to this scandal -- a friend and co-thinker.

Mobius (formerly)* of Jewschool was there and took photos. Some below, more here.

Manning the Barricades: Armenian protestors across the street from the 92nd St. Y

 

Our Resident Cartoonist: Jewcy contributor Eli Valley lent his Foxman caricature skills to the signage

 

"Why Jewcy Did This": The Armenians asked me to address the crowd and explain the mag's commitment to recognizing the genocide

* See Jewcy's official press release for the protest
* Check our always up-to-date list of Jewcy's posts on the ADL/Armenian Genocide issue

I meant formerly, yes. But can you ever really leave Jewschool?

 

[Note: This is the official Jewcy press release about our upcoming protest of Abe Foxman at the 92nd Street Y. Please copy and paste what's below if you intend to e-mail any news sources or organizations about the event.]

Jewcy Protests Anti-Defamation League Director Abe Foxman at the 92nd Street Y

WHERE: Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street, New York
WHEN: Thursday, Sep 6, 2007 at 7:00 p.m. (The event starts at 8:15 p.m.)

As reported by Jewcy Senior Editor Joey Kurtzman, Abe Foxman has refused to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Weeks after Jewcy called for his ouster, Foxman issued a mealymouthed press release but did nothing else. He has not apologized to Armenians and the Jews he claims to represent. The ADL has not changed its position that it would be a “counterproductive diversion” to support the Congressional resolution affirming the Armenian Genocide.

Jewcy condemns Abe Foxman and the ADL. Our presence outside the 92nd Street Y will be to insist that he and his organization have robbed themselves of moral legitimacy. Foxman must be fired. The ADL must unequivocally recognize Turkey’s organized mass murder of ethnic Armenians and back the Congressional resolution that does so.

We invite anyone who shares our view to join us. We only ask that you respect the seriousness with which Jewcy approaches this issue. Our protest aims to be civilized and peaceful. No bullhorns or microphones will be permitted.

Placards and banners are encouraged, but please stick to the topic at hand.

For more information, please contact Jewcy Associate Editor Michael Weiss at 718-834-8873 or michael@jewcy.com

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

If you're planning to attend the Foxman Protest (and I hope you are), here's a Jewcy forum that'll help you coordinate your travel plans. Car pool, arrange meeting points, etc.

We'll be announcing a date for a pre-protest bull session at the Jewcy offices in DUMBO to help make placards and signs for the rally. Stay tuned...

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

Sometimes a Google news search works like an Ask Sherlock engine. I don't mean to tread on Joey's well-pounded terrain, but I think I know why the ADL offered its mealymouthed half-recognition of the 20th century's first genocide. Abe Foxman has a book to sell.

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have broadened their notorious thesis, that U.S. foreign policy is perilously controlled by a Zionist Lobby (their caps) consisting of high-powered American Jews, into a volume that's already led to the usual cycle of nonsense: canceled lecture gigs, rescinded invitations, and an overflowing Dershowitz inbox. And as disastrous as it may be to hear this, the one person responsible for rebutting Lobby hobbyhorse is none other than the charming Mr. Foxman himself. This sailed in under the radar in the Times a few days ago:

Also being released on Sept. 4 is “The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control” (Palgrave Macmillan) by Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. The notion that pro-Israel groups “have anything like a uniform agenda, and that U.S. policy on Israel and the Middle East is the result of their influence, is simply wrong,” George P. Shultz, a former secretary of state, says in the foreword. “This is a conspiracy theory pure and simple, and scholars at great universities should be ashamed to promulgate it.”

You don't know whether to laugh or cry, really. But how clear it now seems. The ADL is looking to rob Mearsheimer and Walt of their easy trump: How dare we be accused of propagating the deadliest lie being by the man who believes mass graves are only as real as their Hebraic inhabitants. Foxman will presumably argue that M/W are wrong because, well, his pro-Israel organization just alienated Israel's biggest Muslim ally, so there.

That smile on Tony Judt's face right about now? Ear to ear, baby.

Continue reading...

I have my reservations about Congressman Keith Ellison, who has had to reword and fudge statements he's made in the past (such his claim that Louis Farrakhan is not an anti-Semite). Well, now Ellison has compared the Bush administration to the Nazi Party and of course brought down upon himself the full wrath of the ever-excitable Anti-Defamation League. The ADL offered Ellison the chance to recant this sordid analogy before it "went public" with its condemnation of him, an opportunity Ellison eagerly accepted. But - wouldn't you know it - just as he and his damage control team were working out the precise language that recantation would take, the ADL fired off a premature ejaculation to the media, anyway.

How silly. If a U.S. representative wants to hang himself by his own historical illiteracy, he should be able to in peace and quiet. At the very least, the outraged should not be drafting cynical get-out-of-jail free cards, only to then deny them to the guilty party out of -- what, exactly? How much lower can the ADL go?

Here's what Ellison said:

In his July 8 speech, Ellison said that Bush's post-9/11 policies "kind of reminds me" of the Reichstag fire. "After the Reichstag was burned," he said, the Nazis "blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted."

This is neither original nor accurate, and it'd be a refreshing change of pace if alarmist special interests groups could learn to keep their cool and let stupidity do its own dutiful work upon the public. Quaint that Ellison once identified with an outfit whose Hebraiotrophic tendencies are a sight less than those of the current White House (as every resistance fighter of the glowering "cabal" will tell you). Unilluminating, too, given that Hitler went on to strike a notorious friendship pact with the very Communists he tried to scapegoat for the Reichstag immolation. Unless "kind of" encompasses the possibility that George Bush might team up with Osama bin Laden, Ellison has reduced himself -- and historical atrocity -- to adolescent point-scoring. Not bad for a freshman representative. Not bad at all.

There's enough of an indictment of the Bushies to be made on its own terms. Why anyone would need to invoke genocidal 20th century horrors -- especially when they were so reluctant to do so with respect to Saddam Hussein -- is one that I'm sure our able commenters can explain below.

One commenter in the "Fire Foxman" thread calls himself "Just A Jew" but uncannily echoes the sentiments of an anonymous poster who's been haunting these parts saying that Joey is, inter alia, a vile goy with no right to opine on Jewish questions. Even though Joey has registered the domain name Goycy, taking a cue from his eloquent fan, I'd like to state for the record that the Kurtz is indeed 100% halachically Hebrew. More than that, his speech patterns and sweat glands practically herald the coming of the Moshiach.

For the record, Joey's reference to "mongrel" or "FrankenJews" in his dialogue with Jack Wertheimer applied to only a few of us at Jewcy who were born of virgin Gentile mothers (myself included). That's just the kind of Chosen Joe is: always choosing others over himself to speak from authority.

Anyway, some fuckwits are more interesting to read than other fuckwits:

The larger issue beyond the Armenian genocide (I am sure we can all agree at the very least it makes us uncomfortable for any American Jewish leader to do or say anything calling it into question) is where Joey Kurtzman - or Jewcy for that matter - gets off presenting himself as some kind of spokesman for Jewish authenticity. A self-described "mongrel" Jew among a bastion of fellow mongrels, who says that his own Jewishness has at best a vote in his conception of his compartmentalized identity, has no call to criticize any Jewish leader for not sufficiently representing his views. If you can not bring yourself to associate unreservedly with the Jewish people, to cast your lot with the fate of its people and none other, then you have forfeited your right to complain about its leadership. Jews whose Jewishness is not up for debate, who understand that identification with Judaism is of far greater substance than eating a bagel and lox or wearing a Jew-fro, can handle the discussion just fine without you.

The large issue beyond the Armenian genocide is whether Jewcy is the house organ of "Jewish authenticity," whatever that means. Now we're getting somewhere. What's the larger issue beyond the Darfur genocide? Whether Nick Kristof is a boxers or briefs man?

On Friday, I posted a comments solicitation, pegged on Joey's much-discussed "Fire Foxman" editorial: Does The ADL Diminish the Threat of Muslim Anti-Semitism?  Of the three responses posted, this was the best, by Michael Pine (a.k.a, mhpine):

The problem is that the ADL is increasingly getting caught up in Israel advocacy at the expense of its core mission.  (And I say this as a proud Zionist who supports the work of Jewish and interfaith Israel advocacy groups.)  If you go to the ADL's webpage, you can see a clear example of this.  The homepage is dominated by a campaign to free the Israeli soldiers held hostage by Hamas and Hezbollah.  A very worthy campaign for every American Zionist from MeretzUSA to the ZOA to get behind, but should it really be the top priority for the ADL?   The homepage also features Foxman's inagural blog post, in which he pontificates on how the U.S. and Israel should relate to Fatah in light of Hamas' takeover of Gaza.  When did Foxman become an expert on Middle East diplomatic and security issues?  (Around the same time David Brooks because an expert on pop music?) 

Its understandable how the ADL began its mission creep into Israel advocacy.  Part of the ADL's core mission does involve policing the attacks on the Jewish state.  The ADL should, and does, monitor anti-Semitism in Arab and Iranian state media.  The ADL should unmask anti-Semitism cloaked in anti-Zionist rhetoric.  (Which is why the ADL's efforts to oppose selective boycotts of Israeli academics is appropriate, if not beyond questioning.)  But the ADL has gotten significantly offtrack when its agenda becomes virtually indistinguishable from the AJC or the JCPA - and in the case of the Armenian genocide, AIPAC and JINSA.  What has made the ADL such an effective organization in comparison to the rest of the American Jewish Alphabet Soup (AJAS) is that it had a clear mission and stuck to it, and that clearly placed the Jewish struggle for anti-Semitism in the context of the larger struggle against bigotry and discrimination.  It needs to get back to that mission.

Points for indicating the bait-and-switch tactics of Foxman's apparat, and for using wit and humor to drive the message home. Well done.  Michael has a blog, Off the Pine, worth checking out here.

Jewcy routinely plucks promising bloggers and writers from its comments section, not least because encouraging such familiar interactivity is wolfbane to anonymous trolls. In fact, after I click "Submit" on this post, I'm going to offer Michael a paid guest blogging gig for us.

If you haven't already done so, register a user name, fill out a profile, and spill your guts already. Because narcissistic bloviation is much better when it's remunerated. And we're listening. 

I was interested to read Joey Kurtzman’s critique of Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League, and their position on the resolution of the Armenian question in Turkish history.

Before turning to the Armenian-Turkish controversy, let me say that I agree with Kurtzman that Foxman has focused unproductively on an alleged threat to American Jews from believing Christians. It is true that some Christian activists slip into the long-established and repellent tropes of historic Jew-baiting (I dislike the unscientific and anachronistic term “anti-Semitism”), especially when dealing with “the new world order.” But nobody serious can argue that American Christians have been swept by “conversion fever” toward Jews. I have much greater concerns about increased Jew-baiting in the guise of criticism of the neoconservatives, a matter Foxman and ADL have ignored.

One poster, however, asserted that “Foxman has consistently ignored or worse, appeased actual, real and arguably much more dangerous examples of Muslim anti-Semitism here in the U.S.” As a moderate Muslim, I consider this statement partially incorrect. Abe Foxman cannot be accused of appeasing Muslim Jew-baiting. Indeed, I was alarmed not long ago when Foxman was alleged to have declared that ADL cannot undertake dialogue with moderate Muslims because there are no moderate Muslims.

Jew-baiting has long been a problem in the American Muslim community. It is time Muslims admitted the negative character of this phenomenon, mainly caused by the domination in American Islam of ethnic groups among which hatred of Jews has been cultivated by extremist ideologues. African-Americans, Arab-Americans, and Pakistani-Americans make up the overwhelming majority in American Islam. Many African-Americans bring hostility to Jews with them into Islam. Arabs have obviously been saturated with paranoia about Jews, and Pakistanis have come under the spell of Judeophobia thanks to the financial and other penetration of their native country, and its military and intelligence institutions, by Islamist radicals.

Nevertheless, there are more moderate Muslims willing to participate in serious dialogue with Jews and Israelis than is popularly believed. Another poster, replying to Kurtzman, defended Turkey as one of only three Muslim countries that maintain diplomatic relations with Israel – presumably referring to Jordan and Egypt as the other two. This is also inaccurate. Albania, Azerbaijan (a Shia Muslim country), Bosnia-Hercegovina, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzia, Mauritania, Senegal, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan all have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, and Qatar has never completely cut off its trade relations with Israel. Other Muslim countries, such as Morocco and Oman, have also maintained such back-channel links.

Some of these regimes, e.g. Uzbekistan, have bad human-rights records. But notwithstanding the unhelpful jibes of Sacha Baron Cohen, Kazakhstan, which has made measurable progress toward democratization, is also profoundly committed to Jewish-Muslim dialogue, and has hosted American Jewish religious and community leaders. Most important, Joey Kurtzman’s analysis of Foxman and ADL’s bad posture on Turkey and the Armenians is correct. The term “successful genocide” may be legitimately limited to the Jewish experience, since the Nazi liquidation of European Judaism was uniquely extensive. But it is clear that Turkey has failed to adequately account for its actions against the Armenians during the First World War. This is not a matter of an exclusively Armenian grievance.

Turkish secular Sunni Muslims, members of the Turkish and Kurdish Alevi Muslim minority (as many as 18 million people or 25 percent of the republic’s population, who hew to a fusion of Shia, Sufi, and pre-Islamic Turkish beliefs), other Orthodox Christians in Turkey, and the rest of the Kurds all have a stake in Turkish truth about the Armenians. That is because the Armenians stand for the fate of all religious and ethnic minorities that were submitted to compulsory Turkification by the republic’s government. Even the 500-year old Sephardic Jewish community was forced to adopt Turkish, rather than Judeo-Spanish, as its main medium of culture. The attempt to force all residents of the republic into a single Turkish identity has a complicated history. Suffice it to note here that while they have mainly been identified with Turkish secularism, the same chauvinist attitudes are supported by the Sunni-centric AKP party now in power in Ankara.

And that is the real problem. Turkey has used its relations with Israel and the situation of its Jewish community to blackmail American Jews into silence about the Armenians, to say nothing of the Alevis or Kurds. But Abdullah Gul, who had the arrogance to lobby American Jewish leaders to assist in continued suppression of the truth about the Armenian question, is an AKP Islamist whose party discriminates against all the aforementioned minorities. In addition, the AKP has allowed a dangerous anti-American rhetoric to grow in Turkey, complete with threats to invade Iraqi Kurdistan on the pretext of Kurdish nationalist radicalism. And if that were not enough, a Turkish popular literature proliferates, that is filled with anti-Jewish paranoia. Disreputable accusations had long been taught as history in Saudi Arabian schools: that the Turkish Sephardim, or descendants of those that became Muslim from among the followers of the false messiah Sabbetai Zevi, brought about the fall of the Ottoman caliphate. But such claims are now widely offered in Turkish bookshops.

It has often been said that the treatment of the Jews by a government is a standard by which to judge the civility, stability, and level of human dignity present in a country. By that gauge, Bosnia-Hercegovina is far ahead of some Christian as well as Muslim lands. But in Turkey, the Armenians play this role. The standing of the Armenian victims in Turkish history is the criterion for determining whether Turkey will become truly democratic as well as secular, will grant autonomy to its minorities, and will refrain from pursuing its Kurdophobic tendencies into a disastrous confrontation with the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. American Jews cannot allow their international stature to be compromised by the demands of unreliable allies like Abdullah Gul and the AKP. That alone is an urgent reason to repudiate the unfortunate involvement of Foxman and ADL in Turkish-Armenian affairs.

A recent comment on Joey Kurtzman's piece, "Fire Foxman: Denying the Armenian Genocide should be the last atrocity perpetrated by the ADL chief," makes an interesting point about the real crimes of the Anti-Defamation League's pursuit of trivial cases of perceived anti-Semitism:

It's an interesting article and although I agree with the fundamental point that on Foxman's watch the ADL has become a net negative, I find it curious that the author (and most of the commenters I read, I did not read all) have left out reference to what I believe to be Foxman's greatest crime. In bending over backwards to hyperbolize and vigorously prosecute perceived threats coming from politically correct enemies, (read: Christians) Foxman has consistently ignored or worse, appeased actual, real and arguably much more dangerous examples of Muslim anti-semitism here in the U.S. This is not to say Christian anti-semitism doesn't exist, (I agree with those who spoke out against Mel Gibson's movie) but it is cowardly and disingenious and damaging to legitimate Jewish-Christian partnerships for Foxman and the ADL to steadfastly ignore the threat institutionalized anti-semitism in Wahhabi-funded American Muslim institutions pose to the Jewish American community in favor of beating up on the same old bogeyman just because he knows in so doing he will enjoy the support of liberal media and the greater American Left.

Leave your thoughts on this comment below, and I'll cull the best responses in a subsequent post.

• The rising political stardom and the work ahead for Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni. [The New York Times Magazine] [The Los Angeles Times]
• In Jewcy's feature story, Joey Kurtzman asks why the ADL chief is skirting the Armenian genocide. [Jewcy]
• Last Friday, Metallica singer detained at UK airport for "Taliban-like beard." [Yahoo]
• Roger Federer wins 5th consecutive Wimbleton title. [The Washington Post]
• Leave Iraq. Now. [The New York Times]
• Finding a place to pray in Cairo. [The Los Angeles Times]
• How YouTube is ruining hip-hop feuds. [Slate.com]