A senior editor at Jewcy is calling for the firing of Abraham Foxman, the chief of the Anti-Defamation League who has angered many Jews for denying the Armenian Genocide. 

 

Foxman‘s statement is in every way that matters equivalent to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s claim that he takes no position on the historicity of the Jewish Holocaust, but only hopes to see the matter resolved by dispassionate study. Throughout the Congressional saga surrounding the resolutions, virtually no one other than Turkish lobbyists had explained their opposition by challenging the nearly undisputed consensus among historians that a genocide did indeed take place.

It is a scandal of unprecedented proportion when one of the most prominent figures in our community, a man who claims to speak on our behalf, publicly challenges the historicity of another community’s genocide. Foxman’s ADL no longer represents the interests of the Jewish community.

The article has already encouraged a call by The New York Times Magazine writer and Huffington Post blogger Mark Oppenheimer to fire Foxman:

There are so many reasons to hate Abraham Foxman, the executive director of the once-proud Anti-Defamation League, but surely the best reason has to be his collusion with the Turkish government to perpetuate denial of its genocide against Armenians nearly 100 years ago. The Israeli government has long been part of this historical fudge, but at least it has the excuse — however meager — of Realpolitik: Bush goes boating with Putin, Israel dallies with genocide-denying Turks, China and Somalia do their petro-dance…and so it goes. But for a non-profit like the ADL, which in fact has done important work to combat not just anti-Semitism but other forms of ethnocentrism and racism, to shill for Holocaust-deniers (yes, the Armenian genocide can fairly be called a Holocaust) is inexcusable. He should be fired.

My photograph from USA TODAY, published for my membership to the All-USA Academic First Team, has appeared in the anti-Armenian TallArmenianTale.com – a website that hatefully denies the Armenian Genocide.

Holdwater, the ghostwriter of the hatesite, is apparently pissed off at my blogging about Turkish historian Taner Akcam’s findings that Holdwater is Murad Gumen, an ex-Disney cartoonist of Turkish desent.

Hilariously enough, Holdwater is now denying that he is Murad Gumen by saying his communication with the United States Holocaust Memorial Council he wrote about wasn’t really his because somebody else had written it and in order not to get somebody else in trouble he said he had written it. (It was through this communication that Akcam made Holdwater’s identity public). Mr. Gumen, stop embarrassing yourself.

The idiot, who continuously claims he has proven the Armenian Genocide never happened and is now saying he is not who he said he was, is even unable to find the source that first wrote about his comparison of Armenians to rodents.

The fact of the matter is that “Armenian genocide” photos are undocumented, even Armin Wegner’s; some Armenian sites have sunk so low as to use documented photographs of Ottoman Muslims slaughtered by Armenians, in order to represent Armenian victims. While I don’t know which photograph The Jewish Advocate made use of, if the source of the photograph cannot be verified, an ethical journal must use a word such as “alleged.”

There are lots of things that Mr. Gumen doesn’t know, including the fact that he can be embarrassingly ignorant and stupid. The webpage he refers to has a link to my actual letter that he failed to read (oh, what a researcher).

If the idiot opened that link, he would see the photo I had written about (in fact, The Jewish Advocate acknowledged its mistake in silence by removing the ridiculous article from its website and its archives). And guess what the photo is?

I wonder if anything else on Earth can be more convincing to Murad Gumen than an old photograph with skeletons and a banner mentioning “Armenian cranes.” But again, genocide denial is not a simple rejection of the word “genocide” to describe the destruction of Ottoman Turkey’s native Armenian population. Denial is the micro-level refusal of accepting that a crime was committed against Turkey’s Armenian population.And to understand how embarrassingly short-sighted Mr. Gumen is, consider his unchallenged acceptance of a Turkish nationalist’s comment at this blog that “the recently discovered cave with the mass grave said to be of Armenian victims has been confirmed by European scientists to have been a Roman site.”If the idiot were to do a little bit research, he would find out that the Roman site had been reused during World War I as a mass grave. Whether used for Armenians or others, though, it will never be known. Because for some reason Mr. Gumen’s beloved Turkish Historical Society covered up the destruction of the mass grave by the Turkish military.We are not talking about a 90-year-old document, Mr. Gumen. This is a documented, photographed mass grave from last year that has been erased from the face of the Earth. Even if you don’t think there was Armenian Genocide, one wonders why would deniers like you not even accept the possibility of even one small mass grave of Armenian victims in Turkey.

Remember the United States Holocaust Memorial Council letter Historian Taner Akcam used to bust the identity of racist “Holdwater”?  As Akcam said, these are public records.  Now on, these are virtual too.

This was the letter “Holdwater” used to have at his hate website some time ago (he has removed it now).  His name is censored out from this copy.

Here is the uncensored version from the United States Holocaust Memorial Council archives revealing “Mr. Gumen” as the correspondent.

And here is the response of “Mr. Gumen,” also from the United States Holocaust Memorial Council archives, where we find out the first name of Gumen (Murad) and the signature of the genocide denialist cartoonist.

British archaeology Sam Hardy, who visited Turkey’s Mardin mass grave last month, has set up a blog about Kuru (Xirabeba) where a possible mass grave from the Armenian Genocide was discovered by local Kurds and later destroyed by the Turkish military.

Hardy posts many photographs from the village – including those of a ruined (Armenian or Assyrian?) church – and reflects on his visit to the possible Armenian mass grave.

Kuru building 2a: this photograph shows the empty rock-cut graves of the original Roman tomb; I’m not displaying its entrance.

This tomb was reused as a mass grave, where Armenians killed in 1915 were dumped: before, I collated the most relevant and informative English and Turkish-language sources on the planned forensic excavation of the mass grave and its destruction by the Turkish military; and after, I visited the site, photographed it and examined the indefensible excuses offered by the Turkish Historical Society in their attempt to cover up the Turkish military’s destruction of the site.

A comment by an ultranationalist Turk (Ferit) on our previous post has this to say about the covered-up mass grave:

This site was just confirmed by European scholars as definitely being Roman. Your site looses credibility when it references PKK/terror funded Ozgur Gundem and makes phobic comments that the “Turkish Military”, “Historical Society” covered up. Why is it that everytime the Armenian Genocide lie hits a wall, Armenians cry Foul?

You freely call all who do not believe your depiction of events as “genocide” as being “denialist”, but you fall into the same category without being objective, fair and balanced. I wonder what the Armenian heart thinks of after they are fed all the hate filled stories, most of which are really fiction stories(40 days at Musa, Morgenthau,etc.) and do not have the courage to come out and say, IF THE TURKS KILLED US, WHY DID THEY KILL US AFTER 1,000 YEARS? Or HOW MANY DID WE KILL? Or how many Ottoman troops were used to kill any Armenians? The question should be, HOW MANY ARMENIANS WERE INVOLVED IN THE BURNING OF ANATOLIAN and CAUCASIAN Villages? What was their courage and objective. If they were seeking land, then perhaps you should watch Braveheart, to understand how the Turks might have reacted.

Now you get to see both sides of the story, just like in Shrek III.  I can understand people who avoid using the word “genocide,” but I can’t understand absolute idiots like Ferit who don’t even want to admit that there could be an Armenian mass grave in Turkey.  Swiss courts have the answer – Ferit and deniers like him are racists.

Turkish politician loses first appeal against Swiss racism conviction, says lawyer

June 20, 2007 Associated Press

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) – An appeals court has confirmed the sentence against a Turkish politician convicted of racism for denying that the early 20th century killing of Armenians was genocide, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Laurent Moreillon said Dogu Perincek, the leader of the Turkish Workers’ Party, lost his first appeal at a court in the canton (state) of Vaud, where a lower tribunal in March convicted and ordered him to pay a fine of 3,000 Swiss francs (US$2,450; ¤1,870).
Perincek, who was also given a suspended penalty of 9,000 francs (US$7,360; ¤5,600) and ordered to pay 1,000 francs (US$820; ¤620) to an Armenian association, had repeatedly denied during a visit to Switzerland in 2005 that the World War I-era killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians amounted to genocide.

Moreillon said Perincek would now appeal to the Federal Tribunal, Switzerland’s supreme court.

The case was seen as a test of whether it is a violation of Switzerland’s anti-racism law to deny that the Turks committed genocide in the killings. The legislation has previously been applied to Holocaust denial.

The case has caused diplomatic tension between the Alpine republic and Turkey, which insists Armenians were killed in civil unrest during the tumultuous collapse of the Ottoman Empire and not in a planned campaign of genocide.

Turkey has called the case against Perincek «inappropriate, baseless and debatable in every circumstance.  Source

Turkish Historian Brings Struggle Against Turkey’s Article 301 to European Court

Press Release, Taner Akcam, Payam Akhavan

Montreal, QC, June 20, 2007 – Professor Taner Akçam, a Turkish
scholar and Visiting Associate Professor of History at the University
of Minnesota, filed an application today before the European Court of
Human Rights against the Republic of Turkey.

The complaint is based on the criminal investigation launched against
him earlier this year under Turkish Penal Code Article 301, for
insulting “Turkishness” by having publicly used the term “genocide”
to describe the mass murder of Armenians in 1915.

Despite its changed wording over time, Article 301 remains prominent
among the many enduring obstacles in Turkey’s path to membership of
the European Union. The same law has in recent years been the basis
for the prosecution of other leading Turkish intellectuals, writers,
journalists and academics on similar grounds. The most notable
victims of Article 301 include Nobel Prize winning novelist Orhan
Pamuk, recently assassinated Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink,
and publisher Fatih Tas.

The Court, based in Strasbourg, France, enforces the Convention for
the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It rules
over private individuals’ complaints against human rights violations
committed by signatory States. Turkey signed the Convention in 1954.

“Facing history and coming to terms with past human rights abuses is
not a crime but a prerequisite for peace and reconciliation in the
region,” says Professor Akçam. “My goal is to help Turkey realize its
full potential to evolve into a truly free and democratic society.
This cannot happen if Turkey continues to criminalize academic
discussion.” His legal team is headed by Dr. Payam Akhavan, former UN war crimes prosecutor and professor of international law at McGill
University in Montreal. “In a world where Holocaust denial is a
crime, state-sanctioned denial of genocide is all the more
reproachable,” says Dr. Akhavan. “Limitations on freedom of speech
should apply to hate speech, not to speech against hate.”

The Court will examine Professor Akçam’s application and rule on its
admissibility within one year. If the application is declared
admissible, the Court will then encourage the parties to reach a
friendly settlement. Only if no settlement can be reached will the
Court consider whether or not there has been a violation of the
Convention. Should the Court find that there has been such violation,
it will deliver a judgment which will legally bind Turkey to comply.

Celebrity’s operated hate website is not removed though  

An e-mail from a Blogian reader informs that Google search engine has apparently removed www.muradgumen.org, a website revealing the identity of Murad Gumen – a celebrity cartoonist who has been secretly operating the anti-Armenian hate website tallarmeniantale.com.

Just two days ago, a Google search of “Murad Gumen” listed www.muradgumen.org as the third website about the cartoonist.  But an apparent lobbying by Gumen has removed the link from the Google search engine.

It is interesting that Google removes a website about a racist cartoonist, but doesn’t remove the hate website operated by the same racist pig.

Turkish-American cartoonist Gumen’s argument for his anti-Armenian hate website is that every story has two sides.  What about your “other” side, Mr. Gumen?

John Marshall Evans, the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia who was fired for referring to the Armenian Genocide as such, is still  America’s de jure Ambassador to the Republic of Armenia.

According to the State Department website, Evans is Ambassador from “08/11/2004 to present.”

A discussion at Topix.net links to www.muradgumen.org, a website revealing the identity of Turkish-American celebrity cartoonist Murad Gumen who is the racist webmaster behind TallArmenianTale.com, a website that denies the Armenian Genocide.

Another photo of racist “Holdwater” Murad Gumen

According to Muradgumen.org,

Ex-Disney cartoonist and celebrity illustrator Murad Gumen is quick to take credit for his famous Mickey Mouse cartoons and made-up characters like Wonderguy.

But one thing the Turkish-American celebrity doesn’t want anyone to know is that he operates one of the most vicious hate websites in the Internet – TallArmenianTale.com. Disguised under “Holdwater,” Gumen has been hatefully denying the Armenian Genocide – the murder of Ottoman Turkey’s native Armenian population during World War I. His tactics have included dehumanizing respected scholars of the Armenian Genocide in order to discredit their work. When there is nothing else to write to prove his thesis, Mr. Gumen writes that Armenians are rats.

Until late May 2007, the identity of “Holdwater” remained a mystery. “Holdwater” admitted he would lose his career if his identity was ever revealed.