Has the ADL complied with NPFH and Armenian Requests?

No.

The ADL issued a statement on August 21, 2007 regarding the Armenian Genocide. Yet, this statement deliberately used ambiguous language to appear simultaneously to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, appease the Turkish government, and circumvent the actual definition of genocide as stated in the 1948 UN Genocide convention. The hypocrisy of the ADL’s stance and statement is further revealed below:

A. Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:
“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such …”
(Source: http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/genocide.htm)

Legal scholars have long regarded the word “intent” in that definition to be key. That is, to be termed genocide, the deaths, harm, and so on cannot simply be an accident or the “consequence” of conditions beyond the responsible party’s control.

B. The ADL Statement on the Armenian Genocide of August 21, 2007:
“…the consequences of those actions [by Turkey] were indeed tantamount to genocide.”
(Source: http://www.adl.org/PresRele/Mise_00/5114_00.htm)

Notice that this statement uses the word “consequences” rather than “intent”. It is clear that the ADL statement not only avoided the key word “intent” but also worded its statement such that the events of 1915 – 1923 could not fit the UN definition of genocide.

We know that even Turkey admits that Armenians were killed or died in 1915-23. However, Turkey claims that such was not its “intent,” but simply the “consequence” of wartime conditions. Thus, the positions of the ADL and Turkey are, in effect, identical: genocide denial.

The wording of the ADL statement is too exact and legalistic to be other than deliberate. One is led to the conclusion that the ADL retained expert legal advice to craft its disingenuous statement.

C. Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. Ambassador to the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1915 ,wrote in his book, “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story”:

“The Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact…I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this…and with them the one motive was cold-blooded, calculating state policy.”
(Source: http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/comment/morgenthau/Morgen24.htm)

Notice that Morgenthau speaks of Turkish “motive” and “calculating” policy, which are the equivalent of intent. In contrast, the ADL speaks of “consequences” as if the mass murders were not intentional or calculated.