Posted on 08/22/2007 5:46:38 AM PDT by SJackson
An Anti-Defamation League (ADL) statement on Tuesday saying that Turkey's actions against Armenians between 1915-1918 "were tantamount to genocide" could negatively impact Turkey's close relationship with Israel, Turkish sources said Tuesday night.
"This might impact the relationship because the Jewish community and the lobby in Washington have supported Turkey in the past, and countered the Armenian lobby," the sources said. "This could have a negative impact."
ADL National Director Abe Foxman issued a statement Tuesday, saying that "in light of the heated controversy that has surrounded the Turkish-Armenian issue in recent weeks, and because of our concern for the unity of the Jewish community at a time of increased threats against the Jewish people, ADL has decided to revisit the tragedy that befell the Armenians.
"We have never negated, but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities," the statement read. "On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. [the US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I], that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide. If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide."
Amid turmoil in his organization over the firing of the ADL regional director in Boston for saying publicly that the group's policy line on this issue was "morally indefensible," Foxman said in the statement that he had consulted with "my friend and mentor" Elie Wiesel and other respected historians, "who acknowledge this consensus. I hope that Turkey will understand that it is Turkey's friends who urge that nation to confront its past and work to reconcile with Armenians over this dark chapter in history."
The ADL and some other Jewish organizations have long been opposed to moves in Congress to adopt a resolution characterizing the events of that period as genocide. Foxman said that the ADL "firmly believes that a congressional resolution on such matters ... 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."
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Foxman said he did not think that this new position should impact relations with Turkey, since the ADL still believes that congressional action on this matter would be counterproductive.
Turkey's position has long been that judgment of the events from this period should not be made in parliaments around the world, but rather by historians.
Foxman told the Post that he and Wiesel were "ready to call for an international conference of scholars, both Turkish and Armenian," to deal with the issue.
Foxman, who has excellent contacts both in Ankara and Jerusalem, said he had not consulted with either capital city before issuing his statement.
Neither Jerusalem nor Ankara had any official comment on the matter, with the respective foreign ministries taken completely by surprise by the statement.
Turkish authorities have said plainly that one of the reasons for Turkey's close ties with Israel is the Jewish lobby in Washington and the help various Jewish organizations have given Ankara in fending off potentially detrimental legislation over the years.
The ADL's position on this matter has also been motivated in the past by a concern for the Jewish community in Turkey. Asked whether he was worried that this position would now lead to a backlash against the Jewish community in Turkey, Foxman said, "I hope not, because we have not changed our basic position" against congressional legislation on this matter.
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New York, NY, August 21, 2007 … Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued the following statement:
In light of the heated controversy that has surrounded the Turkish-Armenian issue in recent weeks, and because of our concern for the unity of the Jewish community at a time of increased threats against the Jewish people, ADL has decided to revisit the tragedy that befell the Armenians.
We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities. On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide. If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide.
I have consulted with my friend and mentor Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and other respected historians who acknowledge this consensus. I hope that Turkey will understand that it is Turkey's friends who urge that nation to confront its past and work to reconcile with Armenians over this dark chapter in history.
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.
They didn’t support Irgun or the Stern gang?
I agree, so who ultimately will decide how to characterize the intent and motivation of what took place in Armenia? That sure seems to be what all this fuss is about presenting a truth... what the intent was and the motivation... fitting an already prescribed criteria.
There is contention because
(1) the Turkish government's policy is to deny the historical facts of the Armenian genocide, and because
(2) other governments find it expedient as a matter of diplomatic policy to adopt the Turkish government's view in order to ingratiate themselves to a country that is 50 times wealthier and 20 times as populous as Armenia.
I haven't a clue, though I don't see the connection to genocide.
I assume you're attempting to establish a moral equivalency between Israel and Islamic terror. You won't convince me, but I acknowledge there's all sort's of folk who'll agree with you.
So what does Foxman have in this debate? Isn't he an American citizen, what difference does it make to him and his organization what the Turkish government does or does not accept? I am not buying that he has an authentic concern for to gain reparations for the survivors of those Armenians massacred.
It has nothing to do with reparations, though of late Armenians have been successful in a few cases of reclaiming life insurance policies and financial assets.
See the link in post 33. The ADL has been criticized for not supporting Congressional action condemning Turkey. They're clarifying their position because of that. IMO this (the resolution) is a political question they shouldn't be involved with, but they stick their nose into things like gun control, gay marriage and abortion, none of which relate to their mandate, so I suppose it's reasonable to expect them to take a position on this legislation.
If the Turkish government apologised, do you really believe there would be true remorse with it, or are they saying it to please other parties? When a teacher makes a bully apologise, do you really think he's sorry, or just saying it to get teacher off his back, and go after his prey again after school. (Admittedly, this is a simple example of a much more complex problem, but the principle remains the same). The Armenians would be fooling themselves to think that a Turkish recognition of genocide would improve regional stability.... it would make the Turks less friendly (loss of face, so to speak) and they'd be just aching for a new opportunity to stick it to the Armenians.
It's a lose-lose battle, and the real reason it's been brought up is to put the brakes on any forward motion until a more superior opportunity comes up.
Given the recent leftward movement of our 'high' court, who publicly have demonstrated they consider world law as foundation for their supreme decisions, a Congressional resolution would give that movement 'gravitas'.
Now personally I am not too pleased with the Turkish government stonewalling and roadblocking US into Iraq, when we finally decided that UN resolutions actually did have meaning. So that bit of clarity in the event that it appears I am taking a 'Turkish government' side on this debate.
Foxman entering himself and his organization into this debate for me only muddies the waters, he has a history of making outrageous accusations and it sure was not about presenting "TRUTH"!
BINGO. This is tiresome. What relevance is this to anything? Should we not deal with Angela Merckle and the German Government due to the Holocaust?
Actually, I am referring to particularly sound historical work by Bernard Lewis and Gunter Lewy among others, not the Turkish government.
The historical evidence is still the historical evidence. No one is disputing the deaths of thousands of Armenians, what is in dispute is the similarity to the Holocaust, and the events put into perspective within the circumstances of the period.
Let me put it another way, it’s not an exact analogy, but it helps. Let’s say during WW2, the Germans and Japanese were winning, and it looked like the US would lose after a very long and costly and bloody war. And let’s say that several SW states at the time had very large Mexican American populations, populations that had been restive in the past, and that just when things looked really bad (scarcity, death, etc), these states held a rebellion demanding independence from the US. How do you think the rest of the US populace would view such an uprising? Mass deportation would certainly follow. Frankly, I think the historical record shows the Turkish government showed considerable restraint, if may local officials did not.
It is unwise for a people who have survived genocide to sit idly by while another people who have been victims of genocide have their past belittled or erased. It behooves Foxman to publicly opine in his official capacity.
Moreover, all decent human beings have an interest in these historical facts being acknowledged.
No, I am trying to establish an equivalancy between front groups for foreign interests in the US. I'd throw the Boston based crowd that fronts for the IRA in the same bucket, as well as the Mexico cheerleaders down in Texas and California.
Not the first thread on this and not the first to confabulate the historical method.
Yes, I am still awaiting our 60's liberals to own up to that mass slaughter they orchestrated by losing the Vietnam War.
Further it was NOT a pretty picture to see what happened to those Kurds when we left old Saddam in power at the end of the Gulf War.
The resolution, for reference.
Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution (Introduced in House)
HRES 106 IH
110th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 106
Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 30, 2007
Mr. SCHIFF (for himself, Mr. RADANOVICH, Mr. PALLONE, Mr. KNOLLENBERG, Mr. SHERMAN, and Mr. MCCOTTER) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs
RESOLUTION
Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.
Resolved,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This resolution may be cited as the `Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution’.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
The House of Representatives finds the following:
(1) The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland.
(2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, England, France, and Russia, jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever another government of committing `a crime against humanity’.
(3) This joint statement stated `the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres’.
(4) The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the top leaders involved in the `organization and execution’ of the Armenian Genocide and in the `massacre and destruction of the Armenians’.
(5) In a series of courts-martial, officials of the Young Turk Regime were tried and convicted, as charged, for organizing and executing massacres against the Armenian people.
(6) The chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide, Minister of War Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat, and Minister of the Navy Jemal were all condemned to death for their crimes, however, the verdicts of the courts were not enforced.
(7) The Armenian Genocide and these domestic judicial failures are documented with overwhelming evidence in the national archives of Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States, the Vatican and many other countries, and this vast body of evidence attests to the same facts, the same events, and the same consequences.
(8) The United States National Archives and Record Administration holds extensive and thorough documentation on the Armenian Genocide, especially in its holdings under Record Group 59 of the United States Department of State, files 867.00 and 867.40, which are open and widely available to the public and interested institutions.
(9) The Honorable Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, organized and led protests by officials of many countries, among them the allies of the Ottoman Empire, against the Armenian Genocide.
(10) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the United States Department of State the policy of the Government of the Ottoman Empire as `a campaign of race extermination,’ and was instructed on July 16, 1915, by United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing that the `Department approves your procedure . . . to stop Armenian persecution’.
(11) Senate Concurrent Resolution 12 of February 9, 1916, resolved that `the President of the United States be respectfully asked to designate a day on which the citizens of this country may give expression to their sympathy by contributing funds now being raised for the relief of the Armenians’, who at the time were enduring `starvation, disease, and untold suffering’.
(12) President Woodrow Wilson concurred and also encouraged the formation of the organization known as Near East Relief, chartered by an Act of Congress, which contributed some $116,000,000 from 1915 to 1930 to aid Armenian Genocide survivors, including 132,000 orphans who became foster children of the American people.
(13) Senate Resolution 359, dated May 11, 1920, stated in part, `the testimony adduced at the hearings conducted by the sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly established the truth of the reported massacres and other atrocities from which the Armenian people have suffered’.
(14) The resolution followed the April 13, 1920, report to the Senate of the American Military Mission to Armenia led by General James Harbord, that stated `[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages’.
(15) As displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to attack Poland without provocation in 1939, dismissed objections by saying `[w]ho, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ and thus set the stage for the Holocaust.
(16) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term `genocide’ in 1944, and who was the earliest proponent of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, invoked the Armenian case as a definitive example of genocide in the 20th century.
(17) The first resolution on genocide adopted by the United Nations at Lemkin’s urging, the December 11, 1946, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96(1) and the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide itself recognized the Armenian Genocide as the type of crime the United Nations intended to prevent and punish by codifying existing standards.
(18) In 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Commission invoked the Armenian Genocide `precisely . . . one of the types of acts which the modern term `crimes against humanity’ is intended to cover’ as a precedent for the Nuremberg tribunals.
(19) The Commission stated that `[t]he provisions of Article 230 of the Peace Treaty of Sevres were obviously intended to cover, in conformity with the Allied note of 1915 . . ., offenses which had been committed on Turkish territory against persons of Turkish citizenship, though of Armenian or Greek race. This article constitutes therefore a precedent for Article 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters, and offers an example of one of the categories of `crimes against humanity’ as understood by these enactments’.
(20) House Joint Resolution 148, adopted on April 8, 1975, resolved: `[t]hat April 24, 1975, is hereby designated as `National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’, and the President of the United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, especially those of Armenian ancestry . . .’.
(21) President Ronald Reagan in proclamation number 4838, dated April 22, 1981, stated in part `like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians, which followed it—and like too many other persecutions of too many other people—the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten’.
(22) House Joint Resolution 247, adopted on September 10, 1984, resolved: `[t]hat April 24, 1985, is hereby designated as `National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’, and the President of the United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, especially the one and one-half million people of Armenian ancestry . . .’.
(23) In August 1985, after extensive study and deliberation, the United Nations SubCommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities voted 14 to 1 to accept a report entitled `Study of the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,’ which stated `[t]he Nazi aberration has unfortunately not been the only case of genocide in the 20th century. Among other examples which can be cited as qualifying are . . . the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916’.
(24) This report also explained that `[a]t least 1,000,000, and possibly well over half of the Armenian population, are reliably estimated to have been killed or death marched by independent authorities and eye-witnesses. This is corroborated by reports in United States, German and British archives and of contemporary diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, including those of its ally Germany.’.
(25) The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an independent Federal agency, unanimously resolved on April 30, 1981, that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum would include the Armenian Genocide in the Museum and has since done so.
(26) Reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression (later retracted) by the United States Department of State asserting that the facts of the Armenian Genocide may be ambiguous, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1993, after a review of documents pertaining to the policy record of the United States, noted that the assertion on ambiguity in the United States record about the Armenian Genocide `contradicted longstanding United States policy and was eventually retracted’.
(27) On June 5, 1996, the House of Representatives adopted an amendment to House Bill 3540 (the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1997) to reduce aid to Turkey by $3,000,000 (an estimate of its payment of lobbying fees in the United States) until the Turkish Government acknowledged the Armenian Genocide and took steps to honor the memory of its victims.
(28) President William Jefferson Clinton, on April 24, 1998, stated: `This year, as in the past, we join with Armenian-Americans throughout the nation in commemorating one of the saddest chapters in the history of this century, the deportations and massacres of a million and a half Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the years 1915-1923.’.
(29) President George W. Bush, on April 24, 2004, stated: `On this day, we pause in remembrance of one of the most horrible tragedies of the 20th century, the annihilation of as many as 1,500,000 Armenians through forced exile and murder at the end of the Ottoman Empire.’.
(30) Despite the international recognition and affirmation of the Armenian Genocide, the failure of the domestic and international authorities to punish those responsible for the Armenian Genocide is a reason why similar genocides have recurred and may recur in the future, and that a just resolution will help prevent future genocides.
SEC. 3. DECLARATION OF POLICY.
The House of Representatives—
(1) calls upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide and the consequences of the failure to realize a just resolution; and
(2) calls upon the President in the President’s annual message commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued on or about April 24, to accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide and to recall the proud history of United States intervention in opposition to the Armenian Genocide.
The Armenian Massacres started in the late 19th century, long before the First World War. It had nothing to do with the later, except it was just another Turkish excuse.
The ADL is a front group for foreign interests? Interesting conclusion. You could make a case they spend half their time fronting for the Democrat Party rather than doing their job, but I've not often seen them described as a front group for Zionists/Israel
It does, I don't necessarily support the resolution because, as the resolution acknowledges, the US has addressed the issue before, and it's not clear to me that the problem is arising again, not because of what some judge would mistakenly do.
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