Dear Lexington Board of Selectmen:
As a 20-year resident of Lexington, I am writing to offer my views on the current controversy surrounding Lexington's participation in the ADL's No Place for Hate program.
I would like to begin by emphasizing that I have nothing but admiration for the efforts of the members of the NPFH committee over the years. When my son's 2005 LHS graduation ceremony was disrupted by a bigoted and homophobic hate group called the Westboro Baptist Church, I was proud of the efforts of our NPFH committee in coordinating our town's response. This is a valuable service which I wholeheartedly support, and I think that it is critically important that it continue in our town.
What concerns me now is the association of Lexington's NPFH committee with the Anti-Defamation League. While the ADL's stated goals are lofty, for the last thirty years it has engaged in a cynical campaign of placing politics ahead of those goals. While this campaign has had many ugly facets, the one that began the current controversy concerns the ADL's active denial of the Armenian Genocide. Quite simply, because Turkey is an ally of Israel, the ADL adopted the Turkish position that the events of 1915-1923 should not be labeled a genocide. Indeed, they went so far as to help the Turkish government lobby for this position within the United States.
As a descendant of three grandparents who lost their entire families in the Armenian Genocide, the ADL's position on this issue offends me on many, many levels. My grandmother, who recently celebrated her 100th birthday, lost her father, mother, and both of her sisters in the Armenian Genocide. She remembers the day when the soldiers came for her father, and she remembers being forced to march into the desert until her mother and both of her sisters died. She has known the reality of the Armenian Genocide for her entire life, and the overwhelming consensus of historical scholarship validates her story. Ten years ago, the International Association of Genocide Scholars unanimously passed a resolution affirming the Armenian Genocide. They also branded a 2005 call by the Turkish prime minister for “impartial study by historians” as not scholarship, but propaganda, intended “to absolve the perpetrator, blame the victims, and erase the ethical meaning of this history.”
An organization that denies the reality of the Armenian Genocide has no moral credentials to certify our town as a "No Place for Hate" community.
When this controversy first erupted, the ADL first responded with a heavy hand, firing its regional director who initially acknowledged the validity of the Armenian position. When it became clear that this was a public relations disaster, they reinstated him, ostensibly changing their position. The ADL's national director, Abraham Foxman, issued the following statement: "We have never negated, but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities. On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. [the US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I], that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide. If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide."
This statement is perhaps the most disingenuous bit of verbal gymnastics that I have seen in quite some time. I would ask you to note three things about it:
-- It refers to the events of 1915-1918, rather than 1915-1923. You can be sure that this is not a typo. The idea is to keep the dates as far as possible from the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. In fact, the modern Turkish republic was built directly on the ashes of the Armenian presence in eastern Anatolia -- a presence with a 3000-year history that was effectively terminated by the genocide. It would not have been possible to found the Turkish republic without the land and wealth confiscated from the Armenians, and many of the first political leaders of the Turkish republic were complicit in the genocide.
-- The ADL did not change its position of opposing a pending congressional resolution affirming the Armenian Genocide.
-- It labels as "tantamount to genocide" not the actions taken by the Ottoman government, but rather only "the consequences of those actions." To the uninitiated in this business, this distinction may seem semantic and unimportant, but it is critical. The ADL is effectively insinuating that the Ottoman government set events into motion that resulted in a genocide. It thereby avoids saying that they set out to commit genocide. Organization and preparation, however, are two of the defining stages of genocide. If the Ottoman government had not organized and prepared for the Armenian Genocide, it could not technically be called a genocide. Again, the historical record on this matter is clear, the ADL's verbal gymnastics notwithstanding.
In fact, scholars of the phenomenon of genocide point out that genocide proceeds in eight identifiable stages:
1) Classification of a category of people
2) Symbolization to better distinguish the category
3) Dehumanization of the group
4) Organization
5) Polarization of the society by extremists
6) Preparation, including ghettoization or the construction of death lists
7) Extermination
8) Denial
All of these stages were present in the Armenian Genocide. Indeed, 92 years later, we are still in the eighth stage - Denial. For the ADL to take part in this denial -- this eighth stage of genocide -- while still claiming to have the moral authority to certify Lexington as a "No Place for Hate" town is grotesque.
For all these reasons, I encourage you to do whatever it takes to terminate our town's relationship with the ADL. Our town's committee can still continue its laudable activities, but without the association with the ADL. I would like my grandmother to live long enough to see our town, our country's Congress, the ADL, and indeed the present government of Turkey do the right thing and simply acknowledge the truth.
Sincerely,
Bruce Boghosian
Resident, Lexington Massachusetts
Professor and Chair, Department of Mathematics
Tufts University
Letter to Lexington Selectmen
