In a dramatic reversal, the Anti-Defamation League\’s (ADL) national director has issued a statement describing the massacres perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as \”tantamount to genocide.\”
South L.A. will, hopefully, have a hospital that won\’t have the term \”killer\” in front of its name, because of the very difficult steps that have been taken over the past two weeks and the hospital is reborn. Perhaps, Turkish governmental leadership will begin to confront its dreadful past vis–vis the Armenians when they realize they can no longer successfully bully organizations to ignore history to its benefit.
All the attention is flattering, but its underlying cause confronts the Jewish community with choices that — perhaps oversimplified — pits its moral values and sympathies against the realpolitik of American and Israeli policymakers.\n
Top Turkish officials and Turkish Jewish leaders in recent weeks have sought help from U.S. Jewish leaders to stave off an effort in the U.S. Congress to define World War I-era massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide.
Jewish and Christian leaders were optimistic when the Turkish Parliament began debating a bill regulating minority foundations and organizations.The draft version — part of a reform effort driven by Turkey\’s bid for European Union membership — contained provisions making it easier for minority groups to operate and reacquire properties that had been confiscated by the state. But after a heated debate on the measure, with many parliamentarians objecting to its liberal approach, the version that passed Parliament offered little improvement over the past.
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In the Turkish film, \”Valley of the Wolves: Iraq,\” former \”A-list\” American actor Gary Busey plays a Jewish U.S. Army doctor who cuts out organs of Iraqis at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and sells them to wealthy foreign clients. The movie is breaking all box office records in Turkey.
It\’s not every day that people affiliated with a strident animal rights group talk turkey with those who oversee kosher slaughter.
But that\’s exactly what happened this week, when an unpaid adviser to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) discussed allegations of improper slaughtering practices at an Iowa kosher meat plant with the head of the Orthodox Union\’s kashrut division.
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