Abe Foxman, genocide denialist
[well, the another genocide, that is]
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896916.html
The politics of hypocrisy By Evan R. Goldstein
Abraham Foxman has become a menace to his own legacy. That is a shame
because it is a good and decent legacy. Over the course of a career
spanning 42 years at the Anti-Defamation League, Foxman has been an
ardent champion of civil rights, a tireless defender of the
separation between church and state against those who insist on
tearing it down, and a consistent watchdog of the fever swamps of
extremism, into which he has shined the bright lights of opprobrium
on bigots of all stripes. These achievements should all be applauded.
And yet Foxman has also shown himself to be both morally obtuse and
ethically challenged. One of the more egregious instances of such
impropriety occurred in 2001, when a congressional probe revealed
that Foxman had helped orchestrate fugitive commodities trader Marc
Rich’s controversial pardon from then president Bill Clinton. Rich
had fled the country in shame to avoid federal charges that he had
cheated the government out of $48 million and had traded with the
enemy. The timing of Foxman’s personal appeal to Clinton on Rich’s
behalf was no coincidence. A few months prior to that, the ADL had
received a $100,000 pledge from Rich. In short, Foxman had
prostituted the ADL’s credibility for a deep-pocketed - and
exceedingly shady - donor.
All of which takes me back nearly nine decades to Ottoman Turkey,
where over one million Armenians perished in a horrific spasm of
organized slaughter. This historical episode has become a political
flashpoint in Washington, D.C., where all kinds of influence peddlers
have been engaged in a fierce struggle over whether Congress should
officially codify the Armenian massacre as genocide. The Turkish
government has spent millions of dollars and twisted countless arms
in an effort to trounce this resolution. More troubling, it has been
able to enlist the support of the ADL - along with other Jewish
organizations - in its campaign of denial.
Let us be clear from the outset: This debate is not about the
veracity of scholarship or the merits of comparative historical
interpretations. Academic authorities agree on this matter, and the
evidence that the campaign against the Armenians constituted the
first genocide of the 20th century is overwhelming and
incontrovertible. Instead, the debate is about politics, in
particular the important multilateral relationship between Israel,
the United States and Turkey - one of the world’s few Muslim-majority
countries that is also a democracy. As the ADL put it in a recent
statement: “Turkey is a key strategic ally and friend of the United
States and a staunch friend of Israel, and in the struggle between
Islamic extremists and moderate Islam, Turkey is the most critical
country in the world.”
Foxman has particularly distinguished himself by indulging in
spineless acts of rhetorical ambiguity, declaring that “this is not
an issue where we take a position one way or the other. This is an
issue that needs to be resolved by the parties, not by us. We are
neither historians nor arbiters.” This from a man who rightfully
claims that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial
amounts to an attempt to destroy Jewish identity! This from the
leader of an organization that has rightfully called on the world not
to avert its eyes from the genocide underway in Sudan’s Darfur
region! (One wonders what Foxman would do if Khartoum were on
friendly terms with Jerusalem.)
[…]