October 1, 2007
Dear Board of Selectmen:
We are writing on behalf of Lexington’s Armenian-American community to urge you, once again, to decide expeditiously to sever Lexington’s ties with the Anti-Defamation League.
While you are engaging in process and discussions, Abraham Foxman and the ADL are actively doing harm. Each day you delay your decision, we are associated with that harm.
This week, Mr. Foxman, along with representatives from other Jewish organizations, met with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erodgan, who told them Armenian “genocide allegations had no basis and that they were not supported by any scientific or historical document . . . [and] . . . Turkey expected the Jewish community in the US to continue their support, as it has done to date.”
Thus, on Wednesday, September 26, Mr. Foxman, working once more to prevent discussion of the Armenian Genocide in the US Congress, told reporters that the Armenian Genocide “should not be debated at the US Congress or the French National Assembly . . . US congressmen are not historians. Therefore, they cannot judge what happened in history.”
We find these words ironic – indeed hypocritical – given the over 600 resolutions on the Holocaust proclaimed by Congress.
Even more egregious, Mr. Foxman is endeavoring to sow doubt about the already established facts of the Armenian Genocide, saying, “he hoped Armenians would somehow respond to calls from Turkey to set up a joint commission of academics to investigate what happened in the past.”
This is genocide denial in its most insidious form. According to the ADL’s own web page:The denier strategy is simple and familiar. They distort, even fabricate, history and then broadcast their creations. They have learned from Hitler that "a lie is believed because of the insolent inflexibility with which it is propagated." Smith and his cohorts are engaged in what historian Deborah Lipstadt has termed an "assault on truth and memory."
On the surface, Holocaust deniers portray themselves as individuals and groups engaged in a legitimate, dispassionate quest for historical knowledge and "truth."
Dressing themselves in pseudo-academic garb, they have adopted the term "revisionism" in order to mask and legitimate their enterprise. After all, the ongoing challenge to and revision of previously accepted historical interpretation is one of the hallmarks of the professional historian's craft.
Holocaust deniers seek to plant seeds of questioning and doubt about the Holocaust in their mass audiences.
Holocaust denial is a contemporary form of the classic anti-Semitic doctrine of the evil, manipulative and threatening world Jewish conspiracy. It was this doctrine that was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the Holocaust. What is on the surface a denial of the reality of genocide is, at its core, an appeal to genocidal hatred.
Mr. Foxman knows very well that Turkish calls for joint commissions are ludicrous given that scores of Turkish historians, scholars, and writers have been charged under the country’s notorious Article 301 of the penal code for “denigrating Turkishness” when they have written about the Armenian Genocide.
Further, Mr. Foxman cynically proposes this “scholarly examination” with the knowledge that such calls are nothing more than propaganda. Indeed, addressing Holocaust denial, the ADL’s web page states:Perhaps most significantly, in December 1991, the governing council of the American Historical Association (AHA), the nation's largest and oldest professional organization for historians, unanimously approved a statement condemning the Holocaust denial movement, stating, "No serious historian questions that the Holocaust took place." The council's action came in response to a petition circulated among members calling for an official statement against Holocaust-denial propaganda; the petition had been signed by more than 300 members attending the organization's annual conference. Moreover, in 1994, the AHA reaffirmed its position in a press release which stated that "the Association will not provide a forum for views that are, at best, a form of academic fraud."
Just as the American Historical Association condemned such movements as “a form of academic fraud,” the International Association of Genocide Scholars repudiated Turkish calls for such commissions as “propaganda,” not scholarship. The full statement to Prime Minister Erdogan is attached at the end of this letter. We believe it is highly unlikely that Mr. Foxman is not aware of this letter, and yet he advances the Turkish denialist line.
To conclude, the Anti-Defamation League not only continues to define the Armenian Genocide in a way that fails to meet the international legal definition of genocide, but it is actively aiding the Turkish government in its genocide denial by advocating scholarly examination to create doubt about settled history – a tactic used by global warming deniers, tobacco companies, and intelligent design advocates. Further, they continue to lobby against consideration and passage of the Congressional resolutions to affirm the Armenian Genocide.
Every day that Lexington delays a decision to dissociate itself from such actions is a day of deep pain for its Armenian-American residents.
Sincerely,
Laura L. Boghosian
Michael Kouchakdjian
Alan V. Seferian
Nora Aroyan
Follow-up Letter to Lexington Selectmen
