“Under pressure from local board members, the national Anti-Defamation League will reconsider its refusal to support a congressional resolution on the Armenian genocide, the organization’s national director said yesterday.

The decision to reexamine this issue was made a day after the director, Abraham H. Foxman, issued a statement saying that the ADL believed the congressional resolution to be “a counterproductive diversion.”

But the ADL regional board forced the issue to the forefront yesterday when it met at a synagogue in Chestnut Hill and voted in favor of bringing back its fired regional leader, Andrew H. Tarsy, as well as placing the congressional resolution on the national policy-making agenda.”

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/08/23/genocide_issue_still_in_flux_for_adl/

but David- you don’t know what the Russians did and how they played off Armenian desire for their own land - you don’t seem to understand this at all. It’s not the same as Jewish suffering - it’s completely different - we managed to live fine alongside Muslim for centuries - Armenians have not been able to do this. When i say ‘not death warrant to whole race’ I mean that when Ottoman cast out Armenian Turks, they probably knew well that Kurd soldiers would massacre them - meanwhile, before that happened, Andronik had massacred thousands & thousands of Kurds in Eastern Armenia and this had been happening for some time - the Russians and Armenians were amassing on the border - this was not Ottomans breaking up because of it’s own repression of ethnic groups - but a planned attack on that empire by another empire - a war of super-powers. You’re looking at it all too simply. Those empires don’t exist anymore - reconciliation therefore comes differently - but bear in mind that Armenia is still looking to gain territory in two regions.

Do you recognise Nabka? For crying out loud - Our Shoah = Their Nabka = a terrifying legacy.
I see suffering of innocents on both sides - on all sides in the struggle to nationalist self-determination - do you?
Not just us, but them also? I abhor Nationalism - when a peoples’ territory stretches across several modern national borders, there should be a better way of assuring their culure/rights/belonging thatn what we have at present. Look at what happen to the Baja - thousands and thousands of years they’ve been roaming - now they are confined to territory - laws placed on their fishing/farming/roaming. These problems aren’t going to disappear with the formation of nation states.

, your cut and paste from a hate site is EXACTLY the way the Nazi assigned collective guilt to us!

What cut and paste from a hate site? According to you, I am to blame for Nazis assigning collective guilt to us? Eh lech me po! Hitler embraced Ford-the-oil-man’s antisemtic tract - what do you think his purpose in gaining Armenian nationalists to his side was, David? Come - I await your historical explaination!

Both Armenian and Turk to look to reconciliation - the slaughter of Armenian ethnic minority by Kurds on Ottoman orders was wrong, but has little to do with today’s modern Turkish people - likewise, the Armenian slaughter of ethnic Kurds/Azari/Yezid on their territoies prior to and after the Armenian genocide deserve admission but again, more ethnic cleansing happen in 1990s in Nagorno-Karabakh at the hand of Dashnak - it’s still ongoing yet both sides have reconciliations to attend to, however, do you think Dashnak will give up their drive to annex more Azeri territory?

Jews are sensitive to genocides and massacres - because of the Nazis - therefore, as the article in the Jewish Times in 1990 says - the Azari/Kurdish/Yazidi genocides by Armenians from 1914-1920 of 2.5 millioin ethic Muslim deserve same recognition/reconicliation process as the Armenian genocide of up to 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey by Ottomans - can’t have one without the other.

Congratulations Tangentlamna,

You have cut and pasted directly from a rabid site that makes david irviing look good!
You have also explained why the Holocaust needs context and didn’t happen in a vaccum!

Which hate site was this, David? Jewish Times? Utah University? History Books? Wikipedia?
Italian traveller in Baku 19th Century who observed Tsarist oppression and use of ethnic Armenians against Azari Tats in attempt to gain control of Baku oil? Which hate site, David? Am I wrong about the Andronik massacres of Kurdish villagers only days before the order to oust the Armenian population from Turkey?
What happend to those citizens was wrong, but wrongs were being committed against ordinary people by Armenian militias on the other side of the border too - that is what I meant by not happening in a vacuum. Foxman is right to push for reconciliation on both sides, and a final rest to “this dark chapter in history”.

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.

I agree with this statement - if you look at this period in history closely, you will see atrocities committed on all sides - there can be no real atonement for those periods in history.

the ADL’s case it involved weird contortions that prevented it from acknowledging that the Armenians suffered genocide in 1915 at the hands of the Turks. Abe Foxman’s calculations are that Turkey is perhaps the largest Muslim country to have relations with Israel and that such relations are too important to jeopardize over an issue like whether Armenians were exterminated sometime in the deep dark past.

Perhaps the ADL is aware of the May 1915 slaughters on both ’sides’ and was reluctant to be drawn into modern geo-political machinations. This whole Russian empire/Armenian/Nazi vs. Ottman lands thing is exceedingly messy - makes Israel-Palestinine look like a skirmish.

There is a need for both modern Armenia and modern Turkey to face up to their shared past - atrocities were committed by both sides in the struggle to a post-empire statehood, and what of Kurdistan? And what of the struggle by Armenia to annex Karabakh region? It’s all very very messy, from where I’m sitting. Only days before the Ottoman round up of Armenians, Armenians were slaughtering ethnic Muslims (Turks?) in Van.

You have cut and pasted directly from a rabid site that makes david irviing look good!
You have also explained why the Holocaust needs context and didn’t happen in a vaccum!

Genocide is as old as mankind. Your statement that the genocide against the Armenians needs context and is different from the Shoah is morally and factually bankrupt exceptionalism. The Shoah mirrors other genocides. It follows other genocides on a model of justification (and you are doing some justifying right there!).

It is simple. The Ottoman Turks occupied Armenia, an area known historically for the Armenians long before any other group laid claim. There was genocidal forced conversion to Islam (eg the Child tax, which involved the taking of millions of children under Ottoman domination over the centuries, and converting them to Islam at age 12.), the were regualr massacres, and when the Ottoman Empire began to breaks up due to its own extreme repression of ethnic groups the Ottomans commited mass genocide.

The great majority of the victims of the Armenian Genocide, 1.5 million, were women children and old men, your cut and paste from a hate site is EXACTLY the ay the Nazi assigned collective guilt to us!

I smell ‘oil’ beneath this - attempts to remove the claim of ethnic peoples from oil/gas rich regions - Jews and ethnic Muslims whose claims stretch back way before any of these oligarchs from Russia or USA. Why else would oil-men like Ford and modern Christian right-wing take so much trouble to delegitimise Ivrit/Arabic peoples in their own homelands? They are playing us off against each other - they fear a strong middle eastern union between Israel and Iran/Turkey/Syria etc. We should give them what they fear, and keep our ancient alliances ;)