Hrag Vartanian

The ADL issue has now hit the A-list bloggers, as The Atlantic‘s Andrew Sullivan points out that Foxman’s under fire for his Armenian Genocide sidestep and things may get hotter for the ADL honcho.

I should mention one thing though…Sullivan points to a blog (Mideast Youth) which gives a great context for the controversy but inserts a non sequitur that clouds the issue:

Now here is where it gets interesting: the first strong voice of dissent regarding No Place For Hate came from a Watertown native named Mark Charalambous who wrote vitriolic letters to the Watertown Tab asking that he be granted the right to hate homosexuals. No Place For Hate, he argued, interfered with the First Amendment which gives us the inalienable right to hate whoever we choose. (source)

The fact is that Watertown did not discontinue the No Place for Hate program, it simply disassociated itself from the ADL.

Also, since we’re clarifying the timeline, it was David Boyajian’s letter to the Watertown Tab on July 6, 2007 which really started the outcry over ADL’s hypocrisy–though let’s not forget Jewcy.com, the Watertown Tab, the Boston Globe and bloggers all contributed in their own way.