NEW YORK, September 6, 2007–Abe Foxman’s limo circled the 92nd Street Y warily a couple of times to give him a chance to survey the scene across the street. A group of 40 to 50 young Armenians and Jews were protesting the Anti-Defamation League’s continued lobbying to have HR/SR 106 (a symbolic Congressional resolution that recognizes the Armenian Genocide) die without a floor vote, at the behest of Turkey.
Finally, Foxman ducked into the building to participate in a panel discussion on “anti-Semitism in the modern world and its implications.” Ironically, the discussion was moderated by Fordham Law Professor Thane Rosenbaum, author of “The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What’s Right.” The event had been sold out for days, so The Stiletto does not know whether Rosenbaum asked Foxman why he failed to do the right thing in recognizing the Armenian Genocide until several communities in MA refused to accept the ADL’s tolerance promotion program, “No Place For Hate” in their schools.
Some protestors were holding handmade signs demanding that the ADL fire Foxman over his Armenian Genocide denial, others were holding signs demanding that Foxman support HR/SR 106. Among the slogans they chanted non-stop for more than an hour:
“Fox’s bargain is a shame!
No more denial in our name.”“Gars, Auschwitz, Rwanda Sudan.
Many a murder, when will it end?”“What did Hitler say?
Who remembers the Armenians?
We do. We do. We do.”“ADL must support Resolution 106”
And the ever-popular:
“What do we want? Justice.
When do we want it? Now.”
The Stiletto caught up with a woman who gave her age as “60ish,” just as she was about to enter the Y to hear Foxman. She was interested in what Foxman had to say about “contemporary anti-Semitism.” Asked what she thought about the crowd protesting the ADL’s Armenian Genocide denial, she mused, “Does ‘never again’ mean for everybody or just for Jews?” She answered her own question: “It is important for Jews to recognize the Genocide. We are conscious of other people’s oppression, not just our own.”
As it was nearly 8:15 pm and the rest of the ticket-holders were scurrying inside so they could take their seats before the evening’s program got under way, The Stiletto crossed the street to meet some of the protesters and find out why they opposed Foxman’s positions on the Armenian Genocide and on HR/SR 106.
“I am Jewish,” said documentary filmmaker Lauren Kesner, 30, “but I have very strong Armenian connections because I lived in Armenia for several years working on a film” about the 1994 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno Karabakh region. That film, “A Story of People In War & Peace,” had its U.S. premiere (video link) at the Tribeca Film Festival a few weeks ago.
Kesner believes the ADL’s position on the Armenian Genocide is realpolitik, plain and simple: “Turkey is Israel’s most important ally in the Middle East. Because the Jewish community supports Israel, they don’t want to get on Turkey’s bad side.” Recognizing that the Armenian Genocide is “a sensitive issue” for supporters of Israel, she nevertheless insists that, “Jews – of all people – need to stand up to the injustice of genocide, because of how the Holocaust traumatized the Jewish community worldwide.”
The Armenians she lived amongst are still haunted by the Genocide, and “it rubs salt in the wounds to deny it.”
The anti-Foxman protest is the first of many that will bring Armenians and Jews together to fight for justice, said Doug Geogerian, 38, who sits on the board of the Eastern Region of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), a grassroots lobby that promotes Armenian-American issues. He marvels at how Foxman “is using the ADL and its reputation of having fought the KKK and neo-Nazis, to collaborate with the Turkish government and deny the Armenian Genocide.”
Geogerian added, “Supporting Turkey benefits Israel. But there is also a cost – a cost in public integrity. Many Jews are starting to feel that the cost is too great.”
Note: The Stiletto writes about politics and other stuff at The Stiletto Blog.
16 users commented in " ADL’s Abe Foxman Picketed At The 92nd Street Y "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThere is going to be high cost for israel’s credibility if it continues down this road of shoring up pariah regimes such as turkey’s and helping to whitewash their behavior. although it may not be apparent to them at first glance because of their extremely shortsighted approach.
All one needs to do is look at what has happened to the long decline america’s reputation throughout the world. NO ONE is looking up to her any longer. People of the world are NOT stupid and no matter how much propaganda they try shoving down their throats they see through a lot. this extreme lack of trust will carry very negative consequences in the future.
Very well put. Judging from The Stiletto’s experience with previous articles on this subject, prepare yourself to get defensive, Armenian Genocide-denying responses from Turks in the US and in Turkey. With all the effort they put into denying the historical facts, it would be so much simpler just to give it up and admit the crime against humanity that their Ottoman forebears committed.
Paradoxically though the more energy they put in denying the Genocide the more exposed their lies become. they end up with the exact opposite result. They know people throughout the world are not buying their lies any longer. they are becoming even more desperate and paranoid than before. they’re betting that the jewish orgs in america are able to carry their water for them. but they are sadly mistaken.
The media/propaganda system is fast loosing credibility in this country. it is taking more and more dollors to propagandize fewer and fewer people with each passing year. it is increasingly becoming an empty shell that people from all walks of life in this country are starting to see through.
At what point do the ADL, B’nai Brith and other groups expending vast amounts of political and real capital on a losing lobbying effort on Turkey’s behalf decide enough is enough?
well its hard to say. The tide has definitely turned. if i made a guess i’d say maybe within the next 10-15 years.
world has been changing fast after the fall of soviet union all the countries interests and relationships are going through radical changes. the US/UK/Israel/turkey axis is increasingly coming under strain. they are frantically trying to preserve the status quo all the making costly mistakes.
I think there is an even bigger question left unaddressed. I think the ADL (and the AJC and all the major groups complicit in the denial) are harming Turkey.
There are many Turkish historians who wold like to explore the genocides (agains t Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks) but who are cowed by our government. We have had our leading writer arrested. we have had journalists murdered for mentioning it. We have had many academics have their careers ruined.
What about us? When will the ADL speak up for freedom of speech in Turkey? Don’t they realize it is not “Turks” they are “supporting” but our worst hard core nationalists and government sycophants in academia teaching our children false history?
You’re asking an important question, Metin. No one has said a peep to Turkey about Article 301 of the Penal Code. And that law has served to oppress Turks. No one – not the US, England, or Israel – is doing the Turkish people any favors by pretending that Turkey is a democracy.
The world at large will only speak of freedom and human rights if and when turks themselves emerge from centuries long disorientation and paranoia.
I would argue that turkey, still to this day, lacks a meaningful political culture that provides the courage to face their terrible past in a truly self critical way, engage in fundamental reforms, and move forward in a constructive way.
This is the route that all legitimate democracies had to take.
John: Unless the rest of the civilized world nudges Turkey in that direction – for instance, cutting the legs out from under its policy of Armenian Genocide denial by passing HR/SR 106 – they will never get there. Instead, Western democracies are cynically playing to Turkey’s vainity by pretending that it, too, is a democracy and worthy of joining the EU.
I don’t believe turkey would ever join EU. The primary reason is turkey mentality and its world view is far differant from Europe’s. people in europe know this at a basic gut level. Unlike in the US, the past and present behaviour are well known to the european public. The us/uk/israel/turkey are the ones pushing for this but it will not happen.
According to Norman G. Finkelstein of the City University of New York, in his book The Holocaust Industry (published by Verso publishers, London and New York, 2000), he notes that ‘The Israeli Prime Minister’s office recently put the number of “living Holocaust survivors” at nearly a million.’ (page 83)
He further notes, ‘If Jews only constituted 20% of the surviving camp population and, as the Holocaust industry implies, 600,000 Jewish inmates survived the war, then fully 3 million inmates in total must have survived. By the Holocaust industry’s reckoning, concentration camp conditions couldn’t have been that harsh at all; in fact, one must suppose a remarkably high fertility and remarkably low mortality rate.. If, as the Holocaust industry suggests, many hundreds of thousands of Jews survived, the Final Solution couldn’t have been so efficient after all exactly what Holocaust deniers argue.’ (pp127-8).
My grandfather, a Genocide survivor from a small village outside Yerevan, an immigrant to the US, never once mentioned to his numerous grandchildren anything of his suffering: Only after his death did I find out the details of what the Jewish dominated, Jewish led “Young Turks” had committed. Yes, you read that correctly.
Abbe Foxman should be aware: The only thing Grandpa told his children was: “I forgive, but I no forget.”
I won’t forget this either, Mr. Foxman. But perhaps I am not the man he is, because I “no” forgive this either.
Ask Sibel Edmonds about the Turkish/Israeli/Neocon conniving and complicity of 9/11/01. Oops, we can’t, she’s been silenced in the “Land of The Free.”
Luckily, most of us realize it isn’t a reflection of how most Jewish people act, think or feel. This is more about Foxman’s CYA of his half million dollar a year job.
He’s Turkey’s whore, albeit a well compensated one.
Thank you to all the Jewish folk showing up to protest this creature.
Quote” Don’t they realize it is not “Turks” they are “supporting” but our worst hard core nationalists and government sycophants in academia teaching our children false history?
They intend to support these people. It’s no accident.
In a compelling and frightening interview given to the Jerusalem Post, Turkey’s Ambassador to Israel has made it crystal clear that he expects Israel to “deliver” the ADL and other Jewish organization on the Armenian Genocide issue.
Turkey expects Israel and the organization to ensure that the US Congress does not pass the resolution characterizing as genocide the massacre of Armenians during World War I.
The Ambassador said:
“Israel should not let the [US] Jewish community change its position. This is our expectation and this is highly important, highly important…. If you want to touch and hurt the hearts of the people in Turkey, this is the issue… This is the No. 1 issue. You cannot easily explain to them any change in this.”
He also told the Post that “in the eyes of the Turkish people, Tan said, his country’s strategic relationship with Israel was not with Israel alone, but with the whole Jewish world. ‘They [the Turkish people] cannot make that differentiation,'”
This is simply mind boggling. Let me enumerate what leaves me speechless here:
1. Turkey resolute fight against acknowledging the genocide. Doesn’t Turkey realize that the world is upset less by the genocide [it’s used to those things] than by Turkey’s denial. [It’s weird but true.]
2. Turkey’s assumption that Israel can determine whether the resolution passes or not.
3. How in Turkey’s mind Israel says jump and American Jews will jump. It just does not work that way. [I hate to disappoint the antisemites who see as all organized in one giant conspiracy but it just ain’t so]
4. While Turkey threatened to cut off French investments in Turkey when it passed a law outlawing Armenian genocide denial, it did not raise the stakes the way it is doing now.
Remember Senator Joseph McCarthy and the anti-communist witchhunts of the early 1950’s? Abraham Foxman and his ADL too often have behaved like the Jewish version thereof. If anyone dares say that they are tired of hearing about Holocaust suffering, they are branded antisemitic and left no peace. Yet now Armenian suffering becomes fair game for cynical expediency?
Somebody has to tell Abe Foxman that other Americans do not need his kind blessings to say whatever they say. If a hate crime has been committed, involve the police. But even if it is hateful, racist, anti-Jewish or whatever, tough noogies. So long as it’s just non-violent speech, SHUT UP and get used to it.
Abe Foxman needs a good slap. He has no business telling us Americans of all religions or stripes what we should or should not think or say. He has no business covering Turkey’s ass for a genocide, whether or not he wants this word or that word to apply specifically and only to the Jewish ordeal in WWII.
Guess what, Mr. Foxman? Other people, humans that is, are also made of the same flesh and blood as Jews are and are capable of feeling the exact same suffering. So Jewish suffering is no different than Armenian, or Rwandan, or Boer (yes you did see that – Boers are being positioned for genocide. Genocide Watch has them at Stage 6 out of 8, the last being the mass murder) sufferings.
This man can be a real hoodlum and he does no service for Jews. Anytime I get a gander at Abe Foxman my stomach churns.
What good does he do for Jews? Get rid of this clown.
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