The Anti-Defamation League and the Armenian Genocide

Commenting upon Franz Werfel’s 1933 historical novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh), which dramatized the Armenian uprising against Ottoman Turks on Musa Dagh (Mount Moses) in 1915, the writer Dov Kimchi remarked, “We Hebrew readers – for whom the problems which Werfel presents are our daily bread, the essence of our existence – read into his book on the Armenians our very own tragedy of the Jews." (1) A Central European Jew, Werfel seized on a lexical and historical affinity between Masada and Musa Dagh to help cultivate an empathic solidarity between Jews and Armenians, a powerful sense of fellow-feeling that would inspire, for example, fighters in the Jewish underground in Bialystok in 1943 to conceive of their ghetto as their “own Musa Dagh." (2)

Recent events are testing this solidarity in the Boston area. Last week, the town of Watertown, Massachusetts (Armenian-American population: 8,000) rescinded a two year-old resolution supporting the “No Place for Hate” campaign coordinated by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the U.S. advocacy group founded in 1913 to fight anti-Semitism and bigotry. The unanimous decision of the town council to break ties with the ADL over “No Place for Hate” – a campaign that mobilized local volunteers against area hate crimes, among other things – came soon after Watertown residents discovered that the ADL does not recognize the massacre of the Armenians during World War I as genocide. Indeed, while it mourns the events of 1915-18 as a profound tragedy, the ADL withholds the term "genocide" in reference to them. In the wake of Watertown’s decision, the regional director of the ADL, Andrew Tarsy, attempted to defend the ADL’s official line. But only days later, on August 16, he dramatically reversed his position, announcing that his regional office would break ranks with the ADL’s national leadership and call on it to change its policy. “I have been in conflict over this issue for several weeks,” Tarsy said in the Boston Globe. “I regret at this point any characterization of the genocide that I made publicly other than to call it a genocide. I think that kind of candor about history is absolutely fundamental.” This “candor” was swiftly punished by national ADL director Abraham Foxman, however, and Tarsy was fired the next day.

In response to the controversy, the national leadership of the ADL is publishing an open letter to the New England community in various periodicals this week. It can be accessed here: http://www.adl.org/ad_new_england.asp. While it rightly calls on the Republic of Turkey to pursue reconciliation with the Armenian people, the letter wholly ignores the consensus among historians that the brutal acts perpetrated against the Armenian population of Ottoman Turkey constitute the first genocide of the 20th century. Moreover, it gives no consideration to the effect of the ADL’s policy on the Armenian-American community today, coming off as preachy, defensive, even insensitive. Absent is any trace of the solidarity that Werfel, among many others, helped foster between Jews and Armenians after World War I. Perhaps most disconcerting, however, are the reasons that the letter outlines for the ADL policy - reasons that betray, quite explicitly, more of a concern for realpolitik than for historical justice. “Turkey is a key strategic ally and friend of the United States and a staunch friend of Israel,” it reads. “[In] the struggle between Islamic extremists and moderate Islam, Turkey is the most critical country in the world.” The message is clear: the ADL will avoid alienating Turkey no matter the cost in principle. Its ethics seem sadly captive to its politics.

Let us hope this changes soon. In the meantime, here is Levinas in reply: “It is […] attention to the suffering of the Other that, through the cruelties of our century […], can be affirmed as the very nexus of human subjectivity, to the point of being raised to the level of supreme ethical principle – the only one it is impossible to question – shaping the hopes and commanding the practical discipline of vast human groups.” (3)

*Update: As it turns out, a welcome change did come soon. On August 22, the national leadership of the ADL amended its policy and formally recognized the Armenian genocide. On August 27, Andrew Tarsy was rehired as ADL's New England director.

1. Qtd. in Yair Auron, The Banality of Indifference: Zionism & the Armenian Genocide (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2000), 294.

2. Ibid., 302.

3. Emmanuel Levinas, Entre nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 94.

This was a perceptive and concise account of the problem highlighting the real reasons for the national JDL's refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide... the realpolitk. It is clear and penetrating analysis like this that brought about the JDL's "change of heart."

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As far as I remember, Armenians have tried to attract attention to their version of events, yet have never wanted to hear the other side. I wondered, why?
Comparisons to the Holocaust makes me angry as Holocaust earned its place in history after a thorough investigation and court trials, even when there was clear physical and scientific evidence, in addition to un-disputed documentary evidence. What has the Armenian community done in this regard? All I have heard and seen is that they have censored the Turks and prevented them from any debate or inspection of the "evidence against them." WHY?
In America we are innocent until proven guilty. Why the double standard when it comes to Ottomans (and Turks)? They have never been proven guilty. Just condemned based on unproven Armenian claims! Moreover, there are plenty of historians around the world who disagree with the Armenian claims.