Profiles in Courage: Andrew Tarsy, Stewart Cohen, and Mike Ross

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.

•  Tip Jar

  Courtesy of Jewcy.com:

  

  by Red Sox on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 05:33:54 AM PDT

•  When I was in college

  (oh, how I wish I could even remember how many years ago that was)

  I worked closely with the ADL on a national and a local level on some specific anti-semitism issues, and they were wonderful.  Clearly, things have changed.  I think, like many large organizations, certain people (Foxman, for instance) have become enamored with the power, but have forgotten the purpose.

  Well done, Red Sox!  (and, good to see ya back)

  by dfb1968 on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 05:56:40 AM PDT

•  "Scandalous" is the right word

  The ADL leadership's behavior is appalling. Foxman has to decide whether the ADL is a group providing moral leadership or one that engages in politics to achieve its aims.

  I feel like we have a hard enough time convincing unsympathetic people that "never again" means never again with genocide wherever it happens, and not "everyone pay attention to Jews who keep talking about stuff from 65 years ago." Foxman's not helping the cause.

  by brittain33 on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 06:28:52 AM PDT

•  Sadly, this has been mostly ignored

  Apart from the Boston Globe, no major newspaper or other news outlet has picked up on Foxman's appalling stance. I am afraid that apart from losing some credibility in New England, the ADL is going to be able to walk away from this relatively unscathed.

  by HRs Kevin on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 06:45:29 AM PDT

  •  Google news says

    It's been picked up by UPI and media outlets in Turkey and Iran, but you're right, it hasn't broken out yet. I'm guessing the news coverage is determined by the prevalence of Armenian-American communities and the popularity of No Place For Hate, which means that this may erupt as a controversy in Los Angeles before long.

    I get the sense that Abe Foxman, like William Donoghue, is running his own show and is very hard to push out except in cases of true scandal or outrage. I don't know how accountable he is to a national board. For this to get mileage, it has to break out of New England and become an issue elsewhere. I doubt it will happen any place other than Los Angeles because the Armenian genocide just isn't a salient issue to many people. We shall see.

    by brittain33 on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 06:51:56 AM PDT

    •  Even the kossak community doesn't seem to care

      so I doubt anyone else will.

      by HRs Kevin on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 09:23:13 PM PDT

      •  Honestly

        I think this headline was a tough sell. I clicked because I live in the area and recognized the names. Unfortunately, you really need some sizzle to draw in readers... but fortunately it's been rescued.

        by brittain33 on Tue Aug 21, 2007 at 05:46:11 AM PDT

        •  Yeah, I thought about that

          I should have come up with a snazzier title. Lesson learned.

          by Red Sox on Tue Aug 21, 2007 at 09:17:05 AM PDT

•  Foxman's message seems to be

  "If we think you're a friend of Israel, we'll lie on your behalf."

  That does nobody any good.

  by zemblan on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 06:48:03 AM PDT

  •  Yeah, the thing I don't get is,

    why does Turkey need anyone to lie over this?  The government that committed the genocide hasn't existed for almost 100 years.  It wasn't even called Turkey then.

    by unfounded on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 09:14:08 AM PDT

    •  Not an attack on modern Turks

      It's doubtful that any Turks who perpetrated the genocide are even alive today. Germany does not have a problem recognizing what it did, even though people who were involved (willingly or unwillingly) are still alive. The U.S. apologized for interning Japanese-American citizens during the war, although Japan seems a bit hesitant to acknowledge its own misdeeds during the conflict.

      I am going to call ADL and tell them what I think of them, and also that I am going to encourage everyone I can reach to ostracize them.

      by WingedHussar1683 on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 12:04:07 PM PDT

    •  WWI trauma

      To summarize a long series of events: Turkey recovered from its massive losses in World War I through intense nationalism and secularism. After losing a multinational empire. they rediscovered their identity as Turks and defined their nation within their current borders. Anything that threatens control of their territory and their ideal of a 100% Turkish nation that embodies positive ideals is to be crushed. This is why they have a hard time acknowledging the Kurds, this is why they don't handle religious movements well, and this is why they absolutely do not want to talk about the Armenians and would prefer to pretend that Turkey has always been Turkish.

      by brittain33 on Tue Aug 21, 2007 at 05:53:58 AM PDT

      •  Thanks, good post n/t

        by unfounded on Tue Aug 21, 2007 at 10:09:53 AM PDT

•  ADL is totally without honor

  My father had a lot of respect for the ADL. So did I, when I was younger.

  It is clear that any money that people give ADL may as well be thrown in the trash. In fact, throwing it in the trash would be better, because then ADL could not use the money to make a national jackass of itself, shill for organizations that exercise editorial control in favor of hate speech, damage Jewish-Armenian relations, and feed the "Holohoax" crowd ammunition with which to blanket-attack Jews.

  The latter is not speculation. If you Google on site:stormfront.org, "foxman," and "armenians," you come up with quite a lot of delightful comments from white nationalists. Abraham Foxman has made himself a useful idiot for Stromfront.org and other genuine hate groups.

  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.

  is 100 percent correct. Foxman has a habit of saying the ADL is neutral, and then deciding on whose side ADL wants to be neutral. That doesn't cut it. You can't say "I don't have a dog in this fight" after you sic your pit bull on someone else's pet.

  by WingedHussar1683 on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 11:56:34 AM PDT

•  New York Times so far has ignored the story

  I find it bizarre that the New York Times has totally ignored this story despite several stories and an editorial in the Boston Globe ( owned by the New York Times). We'll see if they cover it tomorrow.

  by bobvm on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 08:24:31 PM PDT

  •  It's more of a regional dispute

    that's taking place in a Boston suburb. It's just that the regional dispute has larger, international implications. I'm sure that there are organizations of ADL's size/stature that have failed in the moral arena. Perhaps NYT doesn't consider that news...I don't know.

    More surprising is that the LA Times hasn't picked up on the story, given that Glendale, CA has the largest Armenian population in the US (I believe the only one larger than Watertown, which is the center of this storm).

    by Red Sox on Tue Aug 21, 2007 at 02:13:15 AM PDT

•  random speculation

  might foxman carrying water for turkey be peripherally related to the stuff sibel edmonds was talking about?

  by wu ming on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 09:56:00 PM PDT

  •  it's certainly related

    exactly how peripherally/directly is unclear.

    the folks at the heart of sibel's case are a) desperate to deny the genocide and b) very close to israel

    by lukery on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 11:59:31 PM PDT

•  I hadn't even heard about the ADL...

  ...helping Turkey with this.

  Wow.  Just... Wow.

  by WayneNight on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 10:02:50 PM PDT

•  Armenian Genocide

  I lost the majority of my Armenian family to the Turks. My great-grandfather was a photographer, he and other men were marched into the desert, told to dig their own graves and shot "Execution Style" in the back of the head and thrown into the mass grave.
  Why? Because Armenians were Christian and the Islamic Turks thought the Armenians were a threat. Armenians were very prominent in Turkish culture. They were doctors, teachers, artists, actors, bankers, philosophers... the list goes on and on. The jealous Turks seized their holdings and executed them.

  We only know of these events because of German observers. Watch the movie "Ararat" it really tells the story well. Hitler was quoted saying, "Who remembers the Armenians?" when he was justifying the Jewish Holocaust. And to some degree, he was right, who does remember the Armenians? Well I for one do. I am Armenian and feel a close affinity to the fallen.

  I once had a dream with 4 grandmother figures. I was introducing them to my current girlfriend. One of them had what appeared to be a mal-formed arm. At first I was aghast, but I saw in her eyes that she was family and I approached her. I was not scared after the first impression. And she had love and kindness in her heart.

  When I awoke I told my mom, who in turn told my Armenian Grandmother. Tears welled up in my Grandmother eyes, "How could you have known that?" she said. That grandmother, who in fact had a shorter arm was indeed a distant family member. She was mercilessly killed by the Turks when her village was wiped from the face of the earth. My grandmother never told my mother or I about her, but somehow she came to me in a dream.

  Listen, we wouldn't be having this conversation if Turkey wasn't our ally. During the Cold War Turkey was pivotal in preventing the Russians from having a warm-water port for their submarines. Our "ally" helped us essentially bottle up the Russian Navy in the Baltic. It was politically insensitive to bring up the Armenians, because America "needed" the Turks.
  What America needs to do is kick the Turkish government in the ass and make them acknowledge what they did.

  Let us not forget the Byzantine Empire. Long after the fall of Rome, the Eastern Orthodox Church flourished despite a growing Islamic Storm in the East. Let us not forget the fall of Constantinople in 1453. This great city was sacked by jealous bloodthirsty Turks and has become the city of today known as Istanbul. This WAS a Christian city, until the Muslims came and murdered.

  As a primarily Judeo-Christian Nation today in the USA we can't forget these atrocities of the past at the hands of Turks and other Islamofaciasts.

  The bottom line is they hate us, they are willing to do whatever it takes to seize our lands, destroy our culture and spread Islam by the sword, just like Muhammad did. You cannot candy coat or rewrite history, it already happened and the facts are incontrovertible. The blood is on the Turks' hands and until Turkey owns up to their blood-lusting past and acknowledge the fact that they have literally killed hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of Christians in the last 500 years.

  All holocausts need to be brought out in the open and only after the crimes are acknowledged can the healing begin.

  I for one will never trust Turks, it has been ingrained in my blood. We Armenians have been terrorized by these people for 100's of years and it is no wonder that parents use the word Turk and "Boogie Man" interchangeably. Because they literally rounded up whole villages in the night and executed us for no reason other than they felt threatened by living side-by-side with Christians. It is a sick and twisted justification and truly there needs to be a lot more discourse on the Armenian Genocide.

  Please read as much as you can on this subject, Armenians are Christians, not some strange olive skinned culture. We were the first nation to adopt Christianity and we are closely tied to the Greeks. For all I know the Armenians could be descendants of the Trojans, geographically at the very least. But please remember that Armenians are Christians NOT Muslim. Thank you.

  Thank you God for giving me the courage to share my experience and stories with you all today, and may God have mercy on the Turks responsible for the Genocide and the Turks continuing the cover up this Atrocity. I have zero tolerance for any group that denies the facts, we have too many delusional people in the United States these days.

  by wonderbunnie on Mon Aug 20, 2007 at 10:10:31 PM PDT

•  I expect this kind of crap from AIPAC

    but I had a higher regard for the ADL. It is so wrong both morally and strategically for the so-called "anti-defamation" group to deny history for the perceived benefit of Israel sucking up to Turkey.
     I am not a hardcore Armenian like the poster above, but as a Californian of half-Armenian descent I know that I had some relatives perish in the first major genocide of the 20th century. We cannot change the past; we can only learn from history and never forget it (to borrow a phrase from my Jewish friends). I'm still shocked by the ADL's position; I had heard that Foxman was a prick, but I didn't realize what a stupid prick he is.
     A word on our common humanity: We are all sisters and brothers whatever ethnic tribe we may belong to. We have more in common with each other than we may believe. I may be half-Armenian and half-Anglo but am more often perceived as Jewish. (Maybe I should move from Sherman Oaks to Glendale, which is the hometown of my non-Armenian father though it is now the new Yerevan). I could as well be Turkish, German, Arabic or any other nationality and still be the same human being. I don't hate Turks; I am glad that some of them are starting to reexamine their nation's history. I hope their government gets past their stubbornness and recognizes their history. It would be in modern Turkey's interest to do so (and also to stop the blockade of Armenia).
     On the other hand, I wouldn't buy Turkish products if I had an alternative, especially raisins. Cheap imports from Turkey are undermining the livelihoods of Armenian-Californian raisin growers from Fresno. My grandfather's dream was to have a small farm. He died in the vineyard on my eleventh birthday. He survived the genocide because he was living in Alexandria, Egypt at the time, which was under British control, not in the Ottoman empire.

  by Zack from the SFV on Tue Aug 21, 2007 at 12:59:47 AM PDT

  •  Solidarity

    With all of the genocides and all of their survivors is the best way to assure that "never again" truly happens going forward. The Shoah was horrible and evil, but if the only genocide acknowledged institutionally is that one, then when the last survivor passes away (the youngest is now 61 or so), then the lessons learned may be forgotten and people may say "that was unique" and go back to sleep.

    But in solidarity with Armenians, Roma, Gays, Jehovah's witnesses, Rwandans, Cambodians, and so many more survivors of ethnic cleansing and religous hate, the lessions of the ultimate end of prejudice will never be forgotten.

    And from what I have read so far on this site, it looks like the Germans learned from the Armenian massacre. We need solidarity so that when the folks from the Rwandan, Cambodian, Yugoslavian massacres try to reapply those lessons, the world recognizes it as a common problem and unites to stop them.

    by CarolDuhart on Tue Aug 21, 2007 at 06:20:05 AM PDT

  •  Strangely Enough

    This would be disappointing but somewhat more excusable from AIPAC. AIPAC's mandate is advocating policy that benefits Israel, and one could argue that using their might to persuade Congress to sidestep the Genocide issue would be to Israel's extreme benefit. ADL, on the other hand, purports to fight hate and intolerance, neither of which it is doing by whitewashing Trukey's crimes against humanity.

    by Red Sox on Tue Aug 21, 2007 at 09:19:36 AM PDT