by Eli Clifton
An internal Anti-Defamation League (ADL) document acquired by LobeLog shows the 103-year-old group, founded “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment for all,” grouping “U.S. Civil Rights Organizations” under broad, and seemingly misleading, labels.
The presentation, prepared last summer by a research assistant to the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt before Greenblatt took over as CEO of the group, offers an overview of the social media outreach of 73 organizations and breaks them into five categories: “Jewish organizations,” “special interest groups,” “broader civil rights organizations,” “anti-Israel groups,” and “human rights organizations.”
Surprisingly, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a group that defines itself as opposing “anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, and anti-Arab bigotry and oppression,” and “inspired by Jewish tradition to work together for peace, social justice, and human rights” isn’t included in the list of “Jewish organizations,” a group defined in the presentation as “committed to servicing the Jewish people and/or a cause related to Judaism.” Instead, JVP is listed as an “anti-Israel group,” which the presentation describes as supporting “anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and/or pro-Palestinian efforts.”
Indeed, the ADL labeled JVP as “anti-Israel” in the past, citing as evidence the group’s efforts to end U.S. aid for Israel and its support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
When presented with the document, JVP Media Coordinator Naomi Dann told LobeLog:
This is a classic example of the ADL’s attempt to define what is in the interest of the Jewish people, in an effort to maintain control over a narrative about Israel that is out of touch with reality. Jewish Voice For Peace is one of the fastest growing Jewish organizations. The fact that the ADL refuses to see human rights for Palestinians as in the interest of the Jewish people is a clear indication of their disconnect from reality and a betrayal of the values they claim to represent. If working for dignity, freedom, and equality for Palestinians is “anti-Israel” then perhaps the ADL has some self-reflection to do.
Even more surprisingly, the presentation placed the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) in the “anti-Israel” section, despite NIAC never taking a position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. NIAC’s only possible overlap with the ADL’s areas of interest was its work supporting the P5+1’s negotiated agreement with Iran to constrain the country’s nuclear program, an agreement that the ADL encouraged Congress to vote against.
According to the ADL’s Director of Communications Todd Glutnick, the document was “not produced or vetted by [the ADL’s] staff, and as a volunteer student research project was never intended for public dissemination.”
But Glutnick defended the positions taken by the document, telling LobeLog:
Having said that, we would not disagree with the characterization here of Jewish Voices [sic] for Peace or the National American Iranian Council [sic] as anti-Israel. We have publicly identified JVP as such in previous reports, and, if asked, would put NAIC [sic] in that category as well.
Photo: The ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt
UPDATE
Several readers requested that we publish the presentation. A copy can be viewed here. We have redacted the name of the author, an undergraduate student.
I wonder how many people feel as I do when they contemplate the contemporary ADL – or even the B’nai B’rith – that is, slightly out of phase. I once was a huge fan of the ADL and a great admirer of the B’nai B’rith, but when I think about that fan and admirer, I don’t recognize myself.
But that is, of course, precisely the transformation that the right wing of the Zionist community wants me and others to make. In order sympathetically to embrace the paranoia and the uncertain grasp on reality that these two institutions – along with that of several other Jewish diaspora organizations – we must conclude that our support and admiration for these organizations in their previous incarnations was naïve and mistaken; the whole goyishe world, together with several self-hating Jewish organizations, is antisemitic. How could it be otherwise? The new New Antisemitism is even worse than the old New Antisemitism was – which was, in turn, worse than the Nazis. What makes it worse than worse is its pro-Palestinianism. Who could possibly be free of anti-Israelism without despising the Palestinians for being the inconvenient, indigenous peoples of the Levant? After all, Israel wants only peace and quiet. Peace in Israel; quiet in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.
The ADL, the B’nai B’rith, the American AIPAC – and all the anti-Palestinian Zionist organizations that make up the Israel lobbies in Canada, the US, Britain, and Australia constitute a kind of Jewish Mafia that runs a protection racket, threatening to ruin the careers and reputations of all politicians who do not – for example – officially condemn the burgeoning international BDS movement as dangerous and antisemitic. And it works. The new prime minister of Canada ended his honeymoon yesterday by supporting the Conservative Opposition’s official declaration of condemnation. Like a trained parrot, Justin Trudeau stood and condemned the movement as the latest variation on antisemitism.
What a humiliating day it was for this and many other Canadians.
That old lament “Next year in Jerusalem” rings hollow when the city and the culture have changed so much.
It makes sense that “Act Now to Stop War & End Racism” is considered an anti-Israel organization. The government of Israel has been worried for years how its blatant racism would affect its image.