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Critics of the Anti-Defamation League have long argued that the organization has been problematic from its very inception.
They point out that the group has sold itself as a civil rights
organization primarily dedicated to combating antisemitism, but its
actual record has consistently contradicted that mission.
“Even though the ADL is integrated into community work on a range of
issues, it has a history and ongoing pattern of attacking social justice
movements led by communities of color, queer people, immigrants,
Muslims, Arabs, and other marginalized groups, while aligning itself
with police, right-wing leaders, and perpetrators of state violence.
More disturbing, it has often conducted those attacks under the banner
of ‘civil rights’, explains an open letter
from the Drop the ADL campaign in 2020. “This largely unpublicized
history has come increasingly to light as activists work to make sense
of the ADL’s role in condemning the Movement for Black Lives,
Palestinian rights organizing, and Congressional Representative Ilhan
Omar, among others.”
A 2020 In These Times piece by Sarah Lazare and Adam Johnson details some of this history:
In 2017, the ADL accused the
Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a grassroots Black Lives Matter
organization founded in 2014, of anti-Semitism, a form of hate speech,
because M4BL’s platform read,
in part, “The U.S. justifies and advances the global war on terror via
its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place
against the Palestinian people.” It follows that if the M4BL were to
post this statement on social media, it’s likely the ADL would view it
as hate speech and demand Facebook take it down. If the ADL views the
foundational documents of the M4BL as including hate speech, how can the
ADL possibly assert itself as a moral authority in this moment? Has the
ADL’s position changed since 2017, or does the ADL still to this day
consider the M4BL’s platform anti-Semitic?
The ADL smearing Black activists who oppose Israel isn’t new. In the 1960s, the ADL harshly criticized the Black-led Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panthers for their criticisms of Israel, equating these “negro extremists” with the KKK and American Nazi Party. The ADL also worked with the Israeli government in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s to spy on Arab groups, as well as leftwing anti-South African apartheid activists.
Despite this reality, the ADL used to at least pretend that its main
function wasn’t pro-Israel advocacy. Just a few years ago, its website
still conceded that anti-Zionism “isn’t always necessarily antisemitic.”
That’s never been the opinion of CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who has been running the group since 2015.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” he declared in November 2021.
“Denying the right of Jews — alone among all peoples of the world — to
have a homeland is antisemitism. Singling out just the Jewish state for
condemnation while ignoring others, is prejudice.”
“Anti-Zionism as an ideology is rooted in rage,” he told
the ADL’s annual leadership summit in 2022. “It is predicated on one
concept: the negation of another people, a concept as alien to the
modern discourse as white supremacy. It requires a willful denial of
even a superficial history of Judaism and the vast history of the Jewish
people. And, when an idea is born out of such shocking intolerance, it
leads to, well, shocking acts.”
The group’s website was quietly changed to reflect this public strategy.
“Anti-Zionism is antisemitic, in intent or effect, as it invokes
anti-Jewish tropes; is used to disenfranchise, demonize, disparage, or
punish all Jews and/or those who feel a connection to Israel; exploits
Jewish trauma by invoking the Holocaust in order to position Jews as
akin to Nazis; or renders Jews less worthy of nationhood and
self-determination than other peoples,” reads the most recent, edited
version.
The ADL releases an audit of antisemitic incidents every year.
The 2022 audit claimed that antisemitic incidents had increased by
500% over the past decade. That staggering number was embraced by the
mainstream media without pushback, and Greenblatt did his usual cable
news tour to talk about the findings.
When we see hardened anti-Zionists activists on college campuses
openly, aggressively, and almost gleefully intimidating Jewish students,
something is fundamentally broken in our society,” Greenblatt told PBS Newshour host Geoff Bennett.
“I too was struck by reading this report about the 41% increase of
antisemitic activity reported on college and university campuses,”
Bennett replied. “And doing more reading about it what I learned is that
Jewish students often say that harassment is often compounded when
criticism of Israel arises. Tell me more about that.”
Bennett presumably didn’t read an explanation of the audit’s
methodology, which effectively reveals that any pro-Palestine act can be
interpreted as antisemitic.
“Public statements of opposition to Zionism, which are often
antisemitic, are included in the Audit when it can be determined that
they had a negative impact on one or more Jewish individuals or
identifiable, localized groups of Jews,” it explains.
“This is most commonly the case on college campuses, where studies have
shown that vociferous opposition to Israel and Zionism can have a
chilling effect on Jewish student life and compound on pressures felt by
Jewish students added to the incidents accounted for in this Audit.”
The group’s 2023 audit brought more dire news. Antisemitic
“harassment, vandalism and assault” had allegedly gone up by 140% since
the 2022 numbers were released. Again, the media dutifully shared the numbers without any further context.
Shane Burley and Naomi Bennet dissected the report in detail at Jewish Currents at the time. Here’s a relevent part of their analysis:
“Our assessment of incidents diverged from the ADL’s most often
when it came to analyzing pro-Palestine demonstrations. The ADL says
that antisemitic incidents revolving around Israel or Zionism accounted
for 3,162 incidents—about 36% of the total—and that 1,352 of these
(about 15% of the total) involve the use of specific slogans that the
ADL considers inherently antisemitic. The audit mentions the use of the
phrase “from the river to the sea”—usually
as part of the protest slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine
will be free”—as an example of antisemitism more than 600 times.
“Respect existence or expect resistance” is listed as a form of
antisemitic harassment in 21 separate incidents, and the slogan “when
people are occupied, resistance is justified” is flagged 35 times. In
all previous years, the ADL did not include pro-Palestine protests in
its audits, but the group says in the audit that it has employed “new
methodology” since October 7th that identifies language that expresses
“opposition to Zionism” or is “perceived as supporting terrorism or
attacks on Jews, Israelis or Zionists” as antisemitism. If signs or
slogans using such language appear at a rally, the ADL includes the
rally in its audit. This characterization assumes that all references to
an occupied people’s resistance against their occupiers can only be
motivated by ethnic hatred. (People may disagree about what constitutes
legitimate ”resistance,” particularly in the context of armed militancy,
but such debates have surfaced across history in varied political
contexts. Militancy does not inherently reflect antisemitism.) In doing
so, it inflates both the total number of antisemitic incidents and the
share of them attributed to the Palestine movement.”
Now, the ADL is out with its audit for 2024. They’re claiming 9,354
antisemitic incidents took place in the United States last year. That’s a
5% increase from 2023, a 344% increase over the past five years, and an
893% increase over the past 10 years. It’s the highest number since
they began compiling the data 46 years ago.
You don’t have to dig into the group’s methodology to understand this
report. The audit’s Executive Summary clearly states that 58% of
incidents are connected to Israel or Zionism.
Chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,”
referencing the intifada, or holding a sign that criticizes Zionists, is
liable to get you on the incident report, so it’s not surprising that
the ADL is claiming antisemitism has jumped by 84% across college
campuses.
The Boston-area group Concerned Jewish Faculty and Staff put out a
statement on the audit, pointing out that many of the local “incidents”
were not antisemitic.
“In Somerville, MA, for example, the ADL records 5
acts of ‘antisemitic hate’ in 2024,” it reads. “Their records reveal
that none involved active hate or antagonism directed toward Jewish
people, but rather signs or slogans at political protests referring to
Palestinian resistance, liberation, or criticism of Zionism in the
context of mounting deaths in Gaza.”
“The problem could not be more stark,” the group continues. “Somerville is the same city where masked federal agents shackled and detained Tufts
student Rümeysa Öztürk on the street outside her home for writing an
op-ed critical of Israel. Rather than correct the record, the ADL
doubles down on the very conflation of legitimate political speech with
antisemitism that provides the pretext for Öztürk’s ongoing detention.
Stoking panic about protest signs and slogans that criticize Israel or
call for Palestinian equality further normalizes the fraught narratives
that the Trump administration now wields against our communities. It
also minimizes the alarming incidents of real harassment and violence
against Jews that the ADL elsewhere records.”
These are valid concerns, but it’s safe to say that the ADL could not possibly care less.
During his annual audit tour, Greenblatt made a stop at CNN,
where he sounded the usual alarms to absolutely no pushback from anchor
Dana Bash. However, she did ask Greenblatt what the ADL is doing to
pressure the White House into giving students due process after being
scooped up off the street by ICE, perhaps confusing her guest as someone
extremely concerned about such a thing.
This was Greenblatt’s response:
“Look, at the ADL, it’s our job to protect the Jewish people.
We’re not sort of public defenders for some of the Hamasniks on these
college campuses, and I don’t want to be and I think I really need to
say that.
“You take Mahmoud Khalil, who is one of the ringleaders at
Columbia. Based on his conduct, we thought he was a very problematic
individual. I don’t know if he lied on his visa application or anything
like that. But on his conduct, not his speech, the challenge comes when
the administration doesn’t substantiate or clarify the specific of the
charges.”
“So that’s where this due process thing comes into the works. Now
again, it’s not my job at the ADL to find due process for of these
young people.”
To call this criticism of the administration “tepid” is probably
overselling it. I am reminded of the recent interview with Biden’s
antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt, where she said she doesn’t oppose Trump’s unconstitutional crackdown on students, she just wishes it “would be done more deftly.”
The reality is that pro-Israel advocates like Greenblatt have been
pushing for Palestine activists to be targeted for years and now they
have administration that is carrying out their vision.
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