“It’s not critical that the training be done tomorrow, next week or next month,” Escalante said. “So what I need to do is stop, evaluate the situation, get with my staff and make a good decision about where we go from here.”
The Anti-Defamation League has been at political loggerheads with the national Armenian-American community since the town council in Watertown, Mass., a heavily Armenian community, voted in August to cancel its partnership with the league in an anti-racism program called No Place For Hate. The fallout prompted a flurry of other No Place for Hate participants on the East Coast to pressure the Anti-Defamation League to come out in support of House Resolution 106.
The controversy prompted Anti-Defamation League Executive Director Abraham Foxman to issue a statement recognizing the genocide, but in the same statement he called the pending resolution “counterproductive.”
The resolution itself has since lost steam. After passing the House Foreign Affairs Committee in October, support for the bill withered amid concerns that its passage would disrupt diplomatic relations with Turkey, which is billed as a key Middle East ally for the U.S. Major backers of the measure, including Rep. Adam Schiff, whose district includes Glendale, later urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to postpone a vote on the bill.
Armenian political organizations called the Anti-Defamation League, an internationally reputed nonprofit whose motto is “To stop the defamation of the Jewish people . . . to secure justice and fair treatment to all,” hypocritical for its stance on the bill.
