The New Anatolian

OPINION

Friday 25th of July 2008 11:27:51 PM GMT+2

Jews in US let the cat out of the bag

It is meaningless to try to push the Anti-Defamation League to reverse its position again. What we need is do crisis management and prevent American Jewish groups to follow the ADL line and accept the events of 1915 as an act of genocide against the Armenians. We have to work on Jewish lobby in the U.S. and on Israel.

Ilnur Cevik

23 August 2007

Font Size: default medium large

ilnurcevik@yahoo.com

The decision of the Anti-Defamation League to reverse its position and decide to acknowledge the acts against the Armenians between 1915 and 1918 by the Ottoman Turks as “genocide” has changed the equation dramatically and it will have serious consequences for Turkey in the U.S. if the government cannot mobilize its resources to change the tide.

It is no use trying to convince the Anti-Defamation League to reverse its position again because it is clear that short of the executives accepting they have made a terrible mistake and resigning accepting responsibility for this mistake there is not much anyone can do to put the cat back in the bag…

All that we can now do is to contain the damage and see to it that the decision of the ADL does not spread to the other organizations of the American Jewish community.

If it does then it is a foregone conclusion that the American congressmen who are strongly influenced by the strong Jewish lobby will support a congressional resolution to acknowledge “Armenian genocide: as soon as September or October…

The American Jewish community should be told the fact that it is clear that the ADL mishandled the whole issue and ended up with the current mess. The firing of an ADL official for saying that what the Ottoman Turks did against the Armenians boiled down to genocide put immense pressure on the organization to rehire the fired official and the Armenian lo9bby made good use of this. They exploited the discord and got the ADL executives to reverse their policy position on the genocide claims…

In a rather empty gesture the ADL said it will continue to oppose the Armenian genocide resolution in Congress… But the reason they showed was so bad and so misplaced. ADL said it feared if it did not take such a stance it would jeopardize the well being of the Turkish Jewish community.

This is what we have to tell the American Jews is very clear terms: Any actions in the U.S. will never hurt our special relations with Israel which serves the mutual vital interests of the Jewish state and Turkey and the Turkish Jewish community is safe aand sound as it has been for centuries.

The American Jews have to remember that it was the Ottoman Turks who saved the Jewish community from the hands of the Christian zealots by givng them sanctuary in Anatolia and it was Turkey that saved many Jewish lives during World War 2.

Turkish Ambassador Namik Tan who was on a holiday in Turkey rushed back to Israel for crisis management. Prime Minister Recep tayyip Erdogan is expected to call his Israeli counterpart to seek his help.

All these are positive moves. This is a chess game that the Armenian lobby is playing very efficiently. We have to beat them in their own game. This requires a cool headed approach.

All Artices of Ilnur Cevik

TNA SUPPLEMENTS