The Jewish group Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reversed itself and called a World War I-era massacre of Armenians a genocide, a change that comes days after the league fired a regional director for taking the same stance.
League director Abraham Foxman's statement that the killings of Armenians by Muslim Turks "were indeed tantamount to genocide" came after weeks of controversy in which critics questioned whether an organization dedicated to remembering Holocaust victims could remain credible without acknowledging the Armenian killings as genocide.
The New York-based organization had called the deaths of up 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of Muslim Turks between 1915 and 1923 an atrocity, but stopped short of saying it was genocide -- a planned extermination of the Christian Armenian minority.
Last week, the town of Watertown, home to a large Armenian population, withdrew from the ADL's "No Place for Hate" anti-bigotry program because of the organization's refusal to call the massacres genocide. The ADL also fired New England regional director Andrew Tarsy after he said he agreed the killings were genocide.
The towns of Acton and Newton were among those considering breaking ties with the ADL, and several Jewish organizations, led by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, signed a letter urging the ADL to acknowledge the killings as genocide.
In a statement on Tuesday, Foxman said he consulted with historians and his friend, Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel, after the controversy began and became convinced genocide had occurred.
In an interview, Foxman said the letter from the Jewish groups revealed divisions Jews cannot afford to have at a time of increased threats to them around the world.
But Foxman said his group would not support a pending Congressional resolution that calls the massacre a genocide, saying it was "a counterproductive diversion and will not foster reconciliation between Turks and Armenians."
Foxman would not comment on whether Tarsy would be rehired.
Nurten Ural, president of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, said she was disappointed by the ADL's decision. Turks and Armenians both suffered during the war, and calling it genocide by the Turks is like being accused of a crime you did not commit, she said.
Ural said many historians do not believe a genocide occurred, and said if the Congressional resolution passes it would damage relations with Turkey, which is valued in the West as a friend of Israel in the hostile Middle East.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS