Posted on 08/18/2007 5:42:01 AM PDT by Momaw Nadon
The national Anti-Defamation League fired its New England regional director yesterday, one day after he broke ranks with national ADL leadership and said the human rights organization should acknowledge the Armenian genocide that began in 1915.
The firing of Andrew H. Tarsy, who had served as regional director for about two years and as civil rights counsel for about five years before that, prompted an immediate backlash among prominent local Jewish leaders against the ADL's national leadership and its national director, Abraham H. Foxman.
"My reaction is that this was a vindictive, intolerant, and destructive act, ironically by an organization and leader whose mission -- fundamental mission -- is to promote tolerance," Newton businessman Steve Grossman, a former ADL regional board member, said yesterday.
"I predict that Foxman's actions will precipitate wholesale resignations from the regional board, a meaningful reduction in ADL's regional fund-raising, and will further exacerbate the ADL's relationship with the non-Jewish community coming out of this crisis around the Armenian genocide."
Tarsy, 38, said he had been struggling with the national position for weeks and finally told Foxman in a phone conversation Thursday that he found the ADL's stance "morally indefensible."
The regional board's executive committee backed Tarsy and, according to a source fa miliar with the discussion, even went a step further, resolving to support legislation now pending before Congress to acknowledge the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians during the World War I era as genocide.
The national office's three-page response -- which it provided yesterday to the Globe -- did not mention the local office's intent to support the legislation. But it made clear just how far apart the two sides were on an issue with local, national, and international implications.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Now what exactly is the political issue re whether Turkey should be condemned by Congress for its slaughter of Armenians in 1915? Does Foxman fear that such a condemnation will have ramifications with regard to present-day Turkey and the US-Turkey relationship?
Turkey-Israel relationship, Israel isn’t anxious to join in any international condemnation, as well as the welfare of 25,000 or so Jews in Turkey.
Abe Foxman is a dummie! Period. And a tool of the Democratic party.
In addition to supporting partial birth abortion on “religious grounds”. The chutzpah of the ADL - and if G-d approves of these little murders! They might try reading the Torah on occasion.
Add that to the issues they have no business weighing in on. It's my understanding that ADL policy, ignored, also bars them from commenting on Jewish religious issues. They're to deal with persecution, period.
The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.
Nothing about abortion, nothing about guns, nothing about gay marriage.
Should have included illegal immigration.
And yet they support partial birth abortion. Shame on them!
In the years before the Young Turks took over, Sultan Hamid waged several pogroms against the Armenian population in which several hundred thousand were murdered. The Young Turks merely sought to finish what he started.
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