Last month, I diaried about national ADL director Abraham Foxman's incorrigible aiding and abetting of Turkey's denial of the Armenian Genocide. Since then (though certainly not as a result of my efforts), the Watertown (MA) Town Council voted to sever ties with the ADL's "NO Place for Hate" Campaign. And Jewcy.com has initiated a petition to demand the ADL acknowledge the Armenian Genocide.
When the Watertown council took up the issue of the town's involvement with the ADL's "No Place for Hate" campaign (a laudable program, if slightly empty because of their position on the Armenian Genocide), the ADL's regional director Andrew Tarsy came to the meeting. He defended the ADL at the Watertown meeting, but reading his remarks, one can tell how half-hearted his effort was.
The Watertown meeting was on August 14th. On August 16th, Mr. Tarsy rightfully and publicly reversed his stance with the full support of the New England ADL. The next day he was fired.
Tarsy was apparently overcome by his good sense of right and wrong and was unwilling to shill for such a morally indefensible position. "I strongly disagree with ADL's national position...It's my strong hope that we'll be able to move forward in a relationship with the Armenian community and the community in general."
The national ADL reacted quickly, terminating Mr. Tarsy for insubordination.:
The national ADL leaders also said employees who do not agree with the ADL's position should not differ pubicly, but should resign. "No organization can or should tolerate such an act of open defiance," the letter said.
Asked how they would resolve the difference of opinion, both local and national leaders said they did not know.
"They've taken a position," Foxman said in an interview. "We've taken a position. I hope they will read our position and hopefully we'll have conversations."
New England Jewish leaders were predictably outraged:
"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.
[Grossman is a former chair of the DNC, the Dean for President campaign, and AIPAC. -ed.]
"I'm devastated to hear the news," said Ronne Friedman, senior rabbi at Temple Israel, the largest synagogue in Boston. "I think he's really a quality professional and a wonderful person of conscience. I think it's an inexcusable behavior on the part of the national office."
James Rudolph, the ADL's regional board chairman and partner at a Boston law firm, said he would miss working with Tarsy.
"I'm disappointed," Rudolph said. "He was an extraordinary leader and I'm sure that a lot of people affiliated with the board and affiliated with the ADL share my disappointment."
On the heels of Tarsy's dismissal, two very prominent members of the New England ADL's board have resigned in protest. Stewart L. Cohen, former chairman of Polaroid, and Boston City Councilman Mike Ross let the national ADL know that they found their position on the Armenian Genocide and subsequent firing of Tarsy indefensible.
"I'm devastated by that and it's not something I can support," said Ross, whose father is a Holocaust survivor. "So I have to take this step. I can only hope that it helps to send a message and that the very good people of the Anti-Defamation League can reconsider their position."
Cohen, who resigned in frustration hours after Tarsy was fired, said the entire affair has been a blow to the ADL membership. "Everyone is incredibly sad," he said. "Some I would describe as heartbroken."
Sensing a brewing storm, the ADL took out a newspaper ad in several Boston newspapers. In my opinion, they will wind up doing more harm than good. Some choice excerpts:
Clearly, whatever one’s views on the issue, it is regrettable that such an important program as ADL’s No Place for Hate® Program, which provides a framework for fighting hatred and bigotry while increasing diversity awareness and fostering respect, has been mired in a controversy having nothing to do with the program, its goals, or its objectives.
We cannot let a disagreement on how to proceed on one issue undermine all our joint good work.
Let us recommit ourselves to working together to achieve our shared goals.
Imagine there was a prominent civil rights organization that declared that Congress should take no position on the Holocaust so as to appease someone like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Could anyone imagine the Jewish community being receptive to a group that offered such mealy-mouthed defense of such gross denial of a historical atrocity? I know I would have nothing to do with them, nor would anyone at my synagogue.
"We cannot let a disagreement on how to proceed on one issue undermine all our joint good work"? If that one issue was the Holocaust, you can be damned sure that the ADL would react the same way the Armenian community is reacting. And they would be 100% right for doing so.
One of the Boston Globe articles noted that the national ADL reacted to the New England ADL's actions with a three-page letter:
The letter, signed by Foxman and Glen S. Lewy, the ADL's national chairman, said "we have acknowledged the massacres of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire and called on Turkey to do more to confront its past and reconcile with Armenia. We will continue to press Turkey, publicly and privately . . ." But the letter also makes clear that the national ADL feels the safety of Israel, which considers Turkey a rare Muslim ally, is paramount.
The ADL claims that "[t]he Armenian controversy was thrust upon ADL, we did not seek it out. Whatever the heartfelt position people may have on this difficult issue, there can be no compromise on how national policy is set."
OK. If you didn't want a part of this controversy, you could have done exactly as AIPAC did, and said "leave us out of this." It would not have been a shining moment for moral clarity, but it would not be as monstrous as the current stance.
The ADL has made its bed. It's now time to make things right. That Foxman still has his job while Tarsy does not is downright scandalous.