Building bridges

The Anti-Defamation League could use somebody like Lenny Zakim about now.

The late, legendary activist made the ADL's New England office into a civil-rights powerhouse. In his 20 years there, Zakim, who died in 1999, pioneered Jewish-Catholic and Jewish-black alliances, bringing his immense powers of persuasion to fight gender and race discrimination battles, too.

But the past year has gutted Zakim's ADL. The organization has been needlessly mired in a controversy with the Armenian community over the unwillingness of the national ADL to characterize as genocide the Ottoman Turkish massacre of as many as 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 to 1923.

Armenian activists persuaded Watertown to pull out of the ADL's No Place for Hate Program, arguing that the organization was refusing to call the massacres genocide because of Israel's desire to maintain good relations with Turkey. Twelve other Massachusetts cities and towns have also abandoned the hate-crime prevention program.

The controversy has alienated not just Armenians, but also members of the Jewish community who once saw the regional ADL as a beacon.

"There are many of us who are not only reluctant but unwilling to include them in our efforts any more," says Rabbi Howard Jaffe of Temple Isaiah in Lexington.

A few days ago, the ADL named a new regional director, Derrek Shulman. In addition to fractured relations with local communities, Shulman will inherit the rift between the local chapter and the ADL's national chief, Abe Foxman.

Last year, Foxman fired regional director Andrew Tarsy for insisting that the national ADL acknowledge that the massacres constituted genocide.

Foxman, under immense pressure, issued a statement last August calling the "consequences of" the massacres "tantamount to genocide" and reinstated Tarsy.

It was a cynical half-measure, carefully worded to leave open the key possibility that Ottoman Turks did not intend to wipe out the Armenians. His mealy-mouthed concession didn't even come close to satisfying his critics, particularly because the national ADL has also lobbied against a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide.

Tarsy resigned after it became clear the national chief was unwilling to go further.

Many in the community are rightly incensed at what they see as the hypocrisy of a Jewish organization failing to recognize genocide for political reasons.

"By taking a morally bankrupt position, they have rendered the voice of the ADL hollow," says Jaffe, the rabbi from Lexington.

Understandably, Shulman won't comment on this till he starts his new job in October. But in the interim, the standoff has gotten more complicated.

On Friday, a statement by Foxman appeared on the regional ADL's website saying the ADL is being "demonized" even though "we have referred to those massacres and atrocities as genocide." Perhaps Foxman thinks no one will recall how he hedged the "acknowledgement" he finally coughed up last year?

But Armenian activists haven't let up. They are trying to convince Mashpee to follow other cities and towns out of the No Place for Hate program. And they're urging Blue Cross-Blue Shield, which supports the program, to pull its funding.

They reacted to Foxman's latest statement with caution yesterday.

"We first want to see how this is going to manifest itself before we embrace this," said Anthony Barsamian, public affairs chairman for the Armenian Assembly of America, a Washington advocacy group.

Zakim, so good at building bridges that they named one for him, was known not just for saying what was right, but for backing up his words with action.

If Shulman is going to honor that legacy, he's going to have to move Foxman beyond a statement buried on a website. He has his work cut out for him.

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com