Saturday 1 September 2007

Israel's Peres Reassures Turkey Over Ties


Israeli President Shimon Peres phoned Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday to assure him of Israel's desire to maintain close ties with its Muslim ally, an aide to Erdogan said.

The call followed a decision on Tuesday by a prominent U.S. Jewish group, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), to term as genocide the mass killing of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, a label Ankara fiercely rejects.

"Peres emphasized the importance Israel places on relations with Turkey," Erdogan's aide told AFP. "It was a very fruitful discussion."

On Wednesday, the Israeli embassy in Ankara said the Jewish state acknowledges the "horrible events" and the "terrible suffering" the Armenians endured, but urged Jews not to take sides.

"Over the years the subject, undesirably, has become a loaded political issue between the Armenians and the Turks. Israel, therefore, asks that neither one side nor the other be taken and that no definitions be made of what happened. We hope that both sides will enter into an open dialogue which will enable them to heal the wounds," it said.

Turkey has been Israel's main regional ally since 1996 when the two signed a military cooperation deal, much to the anger of Arab countries and Iran. But the U.S.-led war in Iraq and Israel's relations with the Palestinians have led to a rise in anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli sentiment
in the Turkish public opinion. Erdogan's Islamist-rooted government also angered Israel in 2006 when it hosted Hamas officials in Ankara in what it defended as a bid to convince the radical Islamist group to renounce violence.

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ADL'S Foxman sends letter to Erdogan
The New Anatolian / Ankara
24 August 2007

I feel deeply sorry over discussions that erupted after the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) changed its stance on the incidents of 1915, said Abraham Foxman, President of the ADL, in a letter sent to Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday.

"We have utmost respect for you and the Turkish people. We had no intention to put the Turkish people or its leaders in a difficult position. I am writing this letter to you to express our sorrow over what we have caused for the leadership and people of Turkey in the past few days," told Foxman in his letter.

Foxman added in his letter that "the ADL will work to strengthen relations with Turkey. It makes our pain worse to see that the recent discussions have caused tension in our friendly ties.

ADL President Abraham Foxman indicated in a statement posted on the group's web-site on Wednesday that his organization had come to share the view that the incidents of 1915 "were indeed tantamount to genocide," but added that the organization maintained its opposition
against bringing the issue to Congressional floor.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said earlier that the American-Jewish lobby had corrected its "mistake" by sending the new letter, saying that the ADL shared Turkey's sensitivities over the issue.

"They expressed willingness to extent support in their full capacity just as they had done before," he told reporters after casting his ballot for the second round of presidential election on Friday.

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PARSING GENOCIDE
Worcester Telegram
Aug 22 2007 - MA
New England ADL got it right on Armenian slaughter

Andrew H. Tarsy, director of the New England chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, should not have been fired for urging the national ADL organization to acknowledge the Armenian "genocide." By any sensible definition, the systematic slaughter between 1915 and 1923 of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks qualifies for that horrific designation.

We can understand why the national ADL strives to preserve the Holocaust as a uniquely appalling event. In its scope and in the systematic manner in which the Nazis carried out the mass killings, it indeed may be unique.

Sadly, however, other campaigns of systematic mass murder, before and after the Holocaust, also warrant the designation of "genocide" - including the campaign targeting Armenians, the "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims in Bosnia and the ongoing displacement and slaughter of non-Arab Sudanese in Darfur, among other such atrocities.

That such events have occurred throughout history does not diminish their horror, nor the painful realization that such brutality against fellow human beings has continued into the 21st century. Recognizing genocides for what they are, wherever they may occur, is a firstnecessary step toward bringing them to an end.

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Diplomacy: The politics of principles
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Herb Keinon , THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 23, 2007
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The political work of the mainstream American Jewish Organizations is, for the most part, seen in Jerusalem as a valued asset - often as an extra "man" on the diplomatic playing field. These groups help open important doors and clear high hurdles in Washington.

In fact, Jerusalem turns to some of these organizations from time to time to deal quietly with issues that Israel doesn't formally want to dirty its hands with - such as protesting anti-Semitic manifestations in various countries, or dealing with Holocaust restitution issues - due to a concern about negatively impacting various bilateral relationships.

But every so often the extra "man on the field" not only doesn't effectively run interference, he just gets in the way - from an Israeli diplomatic perspective. The flap this week over the Anti-Defamation League's reversal of its policy on whether to characterize Turkish actions against the Armenians in World War I as genocide is a case in point.

It's fascinating, actually, how a seemingly local brouhaha in a Boston suburb called Watertown could conceivably have an impact on Israel's relationship with what is arguably its most important strategic ally after the US - Turkey. The incident sheds light on the relationship between the Jewish organizations and Israel, and illustrates how their interests sometimes collide.

Watertown, home to a large Armenian population, withdrew last week from the ADL's "No Place for Hate" anti-bigotry program because of the organization's long-standing refusal to recognize the massacres of the Armenians as genocide. The issue snowballed after ADL head Abe Foxman fired the organization's regional director, Andrew Tarsy, for saying in a *Boston Globe* article that he strongly disagreed with the ADL's position.

Although unpleasant, this was as yet of no great interest to Israel. But the firing created controversy in the Boston Jewish community, with some questioning how an organization dedicated to fighting bigotry and anti-Semitism could refuse to recognize the massacres of Armenians as genocide. ADL board members quit, others threatened to resign, and there were calls for Foxman's head. He then issued a statement reversing ADL policy.

"We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians asmassacres and atrocities," Foxman said in his statement. "On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. [the US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time] that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide. If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide... Having said that, we continue to firmly
believe that a congressional resolution on such matters is a counterproductive diversion and will not foster reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and may put at risk the Turkish Jewish community and the important multilateral relationship between Turkey, Israel and the United States."

This is when the matter moved from being an internal ADL issue, or an issue between ADL and Watertown, to becoming an issue with ramifications impacting heavily on Israel.

DIPLOMATIC OFFICIALS in Jerusalem contacted Tuesday night to react to Foxman's reversal were stunned by the announcement.

"Unbelievable," one official said, after muttering a curse. Another senior Foreign Ministry official, who deals daily and intimately with the Turkish-Israeli relationship, wouldn't respond because he couldn't believe it, doubting the very veracity of the statement.

Well, it was true. And the reason for the stunned response to what an American Jewish organizational leader had to say about a historical event 90 years ago is because of its ability to cause problems in the Israel-Turkish alliance.

This is a clear case of principles vs. politics, with the American-Jewish community having the luxury of opting for principle, and Israel living very much - too much, some would argue - in the world of real politics.

"I think the ADL should support the congressional bill. As much as I understand taking into consideration relations between Israel and Turkey, this is something you have to do even though it is politically difficult,"Samuel Mendales, director of Hillel Council of New England, was quoted as saying this week in the *Jerusalem Post*.

Mendales was not alone in saying that this was a clear case of principle trumping politics. The problem with this, however, is that it is relatively easy to say this in Massachusetts, bordered by Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York. American Jews can take the high moral ground on issues such as these, because there is no real consequence; they
don't have to pay any tangible cost.

Not so in Israel, where taking the high moral ground often comes with paying a real political price. And in the cost-benefit analysis on this issue, Israel's position - and that of the key Jewish organizations active in Washington up until this point - has been that the profit of a close strategic relationship with Turkey outweighed the benefit of taking what some argue is the right and principled stand on the issue.

This is why the Knesset, like the US Congress, consistently shoots down attempts to pass a Congressional resolution on this matter, something that is a red flag for the Turks.

But just as the American Jews don't see things through Israel's realpolitik prism, Israelis might not fully understand the position of American Jews, for whom taking the high moral ground is key to their sense of identity - a deeply ingrained sense that because of Jewish history, they have a responsibility to take ethical stands on these types of issues.

Someone looking on from the outside could reasonably ask, "Who cares what Jewish organizations say about this? Why does it matter?"

Which brings us back to the idea of Jewish organizations as an additional player on Israel's diplomatic field. It matters because, in the constellation of Israel's diplomatic relations with Turkey - as well as in its relations with some other countries, such as India - the mythical power
of the "Jewish lobby" in Washington is central. This perceived power is not only fodder for Israel-bashers and anti-Semites, but also an asset in dealing with foreign governments.

Since the 1990s, Turkey has turned into a key strategic ally. What Israel gets from Turkey is clear: a friendly Muslim face in a sea of hostility; a geographical asset; a huge market for military wares and other products; a nice place to vacation. We are a country that longs for acceptance by our neighbors, and have found it in Turkey.

And what do the Turks get? Firstly, they benefit from our geography, just as we do from theirs. Both countries box in Syria for the other, and Syrian-Turkish relations, put mildly, have known their ups and downs.

Secondly, they buy our arms. Because of Turkey's conflict with Greece, and its image in the West as a tentative democracy with the military lurching menacingly in the background, Ankara has not always been able to find vendors for state-of-the-art military equipment. While US arms sales to its NATO ally has often been bogged down in congressional riders and amendments, Israel could provide the goods with fewer hurdles. Over the last few years Turkey has undergone an enormous military modernization program, with Israeli arms playing a substantial role.

Another component of the military relationship is intelligence cooperation. It is widely believed, for instance, that Israeli intelligence helped leadn to the capture in 1999 of Abdullah Ocalan, head of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, who led a terror campaign against Turkey in the 1980s and '90s And the final thing the Turks "get" from Israel is access to the Jewish lobby in
Washington. Talk candidly to Turkish academics, politicians and journalists and they will say that one of the reasons Israel is valuable to Turkey is because of the ADL, the American Jewish Congress, B'nai Brith and similar organizations. Without a strong lobby of its own in Washington, Turkey looks to these organizations to put in a good word in Congress or with the administration when issues of importance to Ankara - such as issues regarding the Armenians or Cyprus - make their way to those bodies.

The relationship has even grown in importance recently, since Turkish-US relations have become strained as a result of the war in Iraq.

In addition, the issue is playing itself out at a less than fortuitous time from Israel's point of view. The ADL reversal, which played prominently in the Turkish press, comes as Israel's best friends in Turkey - the army and the secular foreign policy bureaucracy - are largely in retreat.

The Islamic-based AKP party is very much on the rise, and its foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, whose wife wears the traditional Islamic headscarf, is poised to become Turkey's president next week - something of huge symbolic importance in a country that has zealously guarded public trappings of secularism. An impression that the Jews have reversed course on the Armenian issue could give ammunition to those voices in Turkey already calling for a reassessment of ties with Jerusalem, even as Israel's staunchest friends there are losing some of their clout.

WHICH EXPLAINS why there is concern in Israel following Foxman's statement. Granted, the Jewish groups are just one of the pillars supporting strong Israeli-Turkish ties, but even when one pillar of a building weakens, action is taken to strengthen it. In the coming days and weeks, therefore, the aim will be to reinforce this pillar.

Turkey's ambassador to Israel, Namik Tan, rushed back here on Thursday, cutting his vacation short by two weeks, to deal with the matter. He will speak to Foreign Ministry officials and seek clarifications, and - most likely - also seek Israel's help in ensuring that Foxman's statement remains just that: a statement, and not one that is used by other Jewish organizations to change their opposition to a US congressional resolution on the matter.

Foxman himself said that the ADL would continue to oppose as "counterproductive" efforts to bring this to Congress. The diplomatic moves in the coming weeks will likely be aimed at enshrining that as the policy of all the main US Jewish organizations.

For the Turks, however, this commitment is little consolation. Ilnur Cevik, a columnist for the English-language *New Anatolian* newspaper, wrote, "The fact that the ADL said it will continue to oppose the congressional bill accepting the 'Armenian genocide' is little comfort. Because the ADL said it took the decision to reverse its former position because it consulted historians and experts and came to the conclusion that what happened was actually genocide. Now many people in the US Congress who had doubts will
start thinking in a different manner. This is bad news for Turkey."

Israel's efforts in the coming days will be to ensure that what is "bad news" for Turkey is not necessarily deleterious to the Israeli-Turkish relationship.

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Genocide and Holocaust Scholars Criticize ADL Position on Armenian Genocide
By Khatchig Mouradian
August 24, 2007

WATERTOWN, Mass. (A.W.)-On Aug. 23, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released a statement that reiterated its objection to the Armenian Genocide Resolution pending in Congress and continued to unambiguously recognize the Armenian genocide by calling "for further dispassionate scholarly examination of the details of those dark and terrible days."

"The force and passion of the debate today leaves us more convinced than ever that this issue does not belong in a forum such as the United States Congress," the statement read.

"We must encourage steps to create an atmosphere in which Armenia will respond favorably to the several recent overtures of Turkey to convene a joint commission to assist the parties in achieving a resolution of their profound differences," it continued.

Several genocide and Holocaust experts expressed outrage over the idea of convening with Turkish state historians who have made a career out of denying and trivializing the Armenian genocide. When Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested the idea of a "joint commission" a few years ago, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) sent an open letter to Erdogan saying, "We are concerned that in calling for an impartial study of the Armenian Genocide you may not be fully aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on the Armenian Genocide. . We want to underscore that it is not just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian Genocide but it is the overwhelming opinion of scholars who study genocide: hundreds of independent scholars."

Genocide and Holocaust scholars in the U.S. and Europe, contacted by the Armenian Weekly today, harshly criticized the ADL's statement as well as its hypocritical approach to the Armenian genocide in general.

"ADL is getting into the issue a bit late to be of any substance," said Dr. Stephen Feinstein, director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. "Furthermore, by Foxman saying there was a need to protect the Turkish-Jewish community, the question is, Protect from what if they have lived as a loyal minority for 500 years? This suggests that the ADL is missing the point and cannot be part of the discourse," he added.

"A commission now would be a disaster. The Turkish state must make clear that they have a very strong intention to resolve this issue. The rhetoric of the Turkish authorities is not conducive of a solution. As long as people like Yusuf Halacoglu - a very radical, nationalist, even racist historian-Gunduz Aktan and Sukru Elekdag give the tone for the policy of Turkish government, I don't think that you can reach any result from a commission," said Turkish-born historian and sociologist Taner Akcam, author of A Shameful Act: The Armenian genocide and the Question of Turkish responsibility. "For them the commission would be the continuation of the war they are waging against the Armenians, whom they consider as the enemy," he added.

"We don't need a historical commission. We need historians to have completely free and open access to the archives in Turkey so scholars and anyone else can research, write and talk about this history without fear of intimidation," said Professor Eric Weitz, author of A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation. "That is the key issue: free and open debate without intimidation from the state and from anti-democratic
organizations that are allowed to operate with the tacit support of the state."

"Furthermore, not the regional ADL leader [Andy Tarsy] but Abraham Foxman should be fired," Weitz added. "He should have been fired a long time ago for many other statements and comments in addition to his long-standing refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide."

"I'm entirely in agreement with Eric Weitz on the access [to archives] and free debate," said Dr. Donald Bloxham of the University of Edinburgh who was recently awarded the 2007 Raphael Lemkin prize for his book The Great game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians.

"And I reject the silly commission idea," Bloxham added.

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THE POLITICS OF HYPOCRISY
By Evan R. Goldstein
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896916.html
24 Aug 07

Abraham Foxman has become a menace to his own legacy. That is a shame because it is a good and decent legacy. Over the course of a career spanning 42 years at the Anti-Defamation League, Foxman has been an ardent champion of civil rights, a tireless defender of the separation between church and state against those who insist on tearing it down, and a consistent watchdog of the fever swamps of extremism, into which he has shined the bright lights of opprobrium on bigots of all stripes. These achievements should all be applauded.

And yet Foxman has also shown himself to be both morally obtuse and ethically challenged. One of the more egregious instances of such impropriety occurred in 2001, when a congressional probe revealed that Foxman had helped orchestrate fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich's controversial pardon from then president Bill Clinton. Rich had fled the country in shame to avoid federal charges that he had cheated the government out of $48 million and had traded with the enemy. The timing of Foxman's personal appeal to Clinton on Rich's behalf was no coincidence. A few months prior to that, the ADL had received a $100,000 pledge from Rich. In short, Foxman had prostituted the ADL's credibility for a deep-pocketed - and exceedingly shady - donor.

All of which takes me back nearly nine decades to Ottoman Turkey, where over one million Armenians perished in a horrific spasm of organized slaughter.

This historical episode has become a political flashpoint in Washington, D.C., where all kinds of influence peddlers have been engaged in a fierce struggle over whether Congress should officially codify the Armenian massacre as genocide. The Turkish government has spent millions of dollars and twisted countless arms in an effort to trounce this resolution. More troubling, it has been able to enlist the support of the ADL - along with other Jewish organizations - in its campaign of denial.

Let us be clear from the outset: This debate is not about the veracity of scholarship or the merits of comparative historical interpretations.

Academic authorities agree on this matter, and the evidence that the campaign against the Armenians constituted the first genocide of the 20th century is overwhelming and incontrovertible. Instead, the debate is about politics, in particular the important multilateral relationship between Israel, the United States and Turkey - one of the world's few Muslim-majority countries that is also a democracy
. As the ADL put it in a recent statement: "Turkey is a key strategic ally and friend of the United States and a staunch friend of Israel, and in the struggle between Islamic extremists and moderate Islam, Turkey is the most critical country in the world."

Foxman has particularly distinguished himself by indulging in spineless acts of rhetorical ambiguity, declaring that "this is not an issue where we take a position one way or the other. This is an issue that needs to be resolved by the parties, not by us. We are neither historians nor arbiters." This from a man who rightfully claims that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial amounts to an attempt to destroy Jewish identity! This from the leader of an organization that has rightfully called on the world not to avert its eyes from the genocide underway in Sudan's Darfur region! (One wonders what Foxman would do if Khartoum were on friendly terms
with Jerusalem.)

This bizarre and shameless display of hypocrisy gradually came under fire from Armenian civil rights groups and a small cadre of outraged Jewish journalists, in particular those congregated around the engaging - if unfortunately named - online magazine Jewcy. All this protest came to a climax last week when Andrew Tarsy, the New England regional director of the ADL, publicly broke with the national position, which he characterized as "morally indefensible." (I hasten
to add that Tarsy apparently only took this drastic step after his efforts to quietly work within the organization to change the national position were stymied.)

"I have been conflicted over this issue for several weeks," Tarsy told The Boston Globe. "I regret at this point any characterization of the genocide that I made publicly other than to call it genocide. I think that kind of candor about history is absolutely fundamental." Tarsy's heroic stand has earned the young activist a great deal of admiration in the Boston-area, where the ADL has a rich legacy of combating bigotry. Not surprisingly, it earned him nothing but scorn from Foxman, who promptly fired him.

But the outrage only grew, and Foxman ultimately decided out of "concern for the unity of the Jewish community at a time of increased threats against the Jewish people, to revisit the tragedy that befell the Armenians." And upon "reflection, we have come to share the view
of Henry Morgenthau Sr. that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide." This statement, which the ADL released on Tuesday, is stunning on account of its total lack of integrity.

First, note the disingenuous way Foxman lays the groundwork for his disgracefully belated admission of the obvious, by attributing his reversal to the risk of disunity within the Jewish community. What does the unity or disunity of the Jewish people have to do with distinguishing between historical fact and malicious fabrication?

Second, note how Foxman completely fails to grasp the fundamental significance of Morgenthau's legacy (which he was nonetheless clearly intent on co-opting). Serving as America's ambassador in Istanbul at the time of the genocide, Morgenthau alerted his superiors in Washington that the ongoing persecution of Armenians was "assuming unprecedented proportions," ultimately characterizing Turkish aggression as an "effort to exterminate a whole race." (The word "genocide" was not coined until 1944.) And although the American response to Morgenthau's cables was dreadfully feeble, his actions testify to the ethical imperative of bearing witness and acknowledging inconvenient truths. In contrast, Foxman's statement of contrition diminishes the importance of the truth.

Third, note the weasel words "consequences" and "tantamount" - why not just say it was genocide? Long notorious for running the ADL like a personal fiefdom, Foxman has always resisted calls to plan for his eventual departure. In response to a 2003 effort by regional lay leaders to force Foxman's hand on this matter, he blithely told the Forward that when "I'm ready to retire or do something else, I will notify my lay leadership." As someone who believes in the enduring value of the ADL's work on behalf of a more tolerant and pluralistic America, I hope Foxman realizes the time has come.

Evan R. Goldstein is a writer in Washington, D.C. and a contributing editor at Moment magazine.

1 comment:

Seta said...

I think there should be more humanistic approaches to all sensitive subjects, exercising peaceful means of resolve. Because it is always the weakest who suffer, like the old, or the very young. Thank you for your comment.