The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), founded in 1913, was long one of the nation’s foremost civil rights organizations. Primarily established to fight anti-Semitism, it became revered for combating hate and bigotry in many forms. In its later years, however, it got mixed up in clandestine spying on American civil rights organizations, which made headlines after law enforcement seized thousands of intelligence files in its San Francisco and Los Angeles offices. Today, it is cashing in its legacy for a full-time lobbyist position on behalf of the Israeli government.
This year the ADL’s descent careened dangerously: it opposed a UC Berkeley student senate decision to divest the university from weapons manufacturers profiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory; failed to defend the rights of Muslims to build a community center near Ground Zero; and honored Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch whose stock in trade is widely viewed as race-baiting and xenophobia.
Last month, the ADL released a list of the “Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in America.” The ADL charged that these groups seek to delegitimize the Jewish state; a loaded rhetorical device which the late Tony Judt exposed as “just another way to invoke anti-Semitism as a silencer, but sounds better because delegitimizing is less exploitative of emotional pain.” This list included the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and the Muslim American Society (MAS), in addition to ANSWER antiwar coalition –an interfaith list if ever there was one.
Justin Elliot commented at Salon.com, “ADL beclowns itself, again,” while CAIR-Chicago executive director Ahmed Rehab described it as “[a]nother head-scratching moment.” Indeed, its previous run-in with fellow civil rights organizations has not deterred the ADL from monitoring reputable groups for the purpose of publicly demeaning their work. While monitoring and research are legal, one would expect the ADL to tread with special care due to its past missteps, for which it paid to settle out of court. Some Israelis are left scratching their heads as well. In a recent interview of ADL national director Abraham Foxman, Ha’aretz writer David Sheen questioned the motives for these recent ADL actions, prompting Mr. Foxman to lose his temper repeatedly and threaten to end the interview.
One sign of the changing times, however, is that several organizations missing the cut were disappointed at being excluded from a blacklist so reminiscent of the infamous McCarthy and Nixon enemies’ lists. Some were so disappointed they produced a hit online video expressing their frustration. “There was something perversely pleasing about being included on the ADL list,” was Jewish Voice for Peace’s executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson’s cutting response. JVP “support[s] the aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians for security and self-determination,” and “opposes anti-Jewish hatred, Islamophobia, and anti-Arab racism.” For young Jewish Americans this increasingly represents the future to the ADL’s past. This was evident in last week’s repeated disruption of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to the Jewish Federation in New Orleans by a coalition of young Jewish peace activists declaring that Israel delegitimizes itself by its policies, and in Vilkomerson’s first-time inclusion in the Jewish Daily Forward’s 2010 list of 50 leaders in the Jewish community.
The ADL list even targeted the independent college campus groups known as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). After pursuing civil rights organizations, it is deeply troubling that the ADL is now placing college students on a national blacklist. The report wrongly suggested that SJP groups represent a national organization, citing this as the principal reason for their influence and placement on the list. “The irony of the ADL’s action is that … [it] has provoked us to organize on a national level, building potentially in the direction of a national coalition,” intimated Yaman Salahi, of Yale SJP. Over 60 SJP groups nationwide issued a joint statement rejecting this attack. Affirming, “Complexity [of the conflict] can never be an excuse for complacency,” and anchoring its facts to findings by the UN and leading international human rights organizations regarding violations of Palestinian rights, the statement concluded: “We will continue to work for a just peace where Palestinians are free in their homeland and equals to Jewish Israelis. We invite the ADL to reflect and to choose to build this world, rather than to stop it.”
One month later, the ADL issued press releases denouncing the Christian mob harassment of Muslims observing Eid-ul-Adha Holiday prayers in Greece, and the Muslim mob torching of homes belonging to indigenous Christians in Southern Egypt over rumors of a Romeo-and-Juliette-type affair. The ADL’s “stances” mean little to the oversees perpetrators of these hate crimes, and steer clear of addressing the matters that matter: the systematic absentation of mosques in the Greek capital –home to some 700,000 Muslims; and the irresponsible policies that foster Muslim-Christian prejudice in Egypt in the name of “containing” it –attested to by the yet-unknown fates of Camilia Shehata and Wafaa Constantine. The ADL’s dismay did not extend to the Bedouin villagers of al-Araqeeb, whose “unrecognized” homes in the Negev were repeatedly demolished then razed earlier this year by the Israeli army, cheered on by Israeli high-school students who were allowed to invade the houses then execute a mob trashing and defacement of their contents.
However, this duplicity fails to detract. Grassroots American support for Palestinian rights is on its way to reprising the successes of the anti-apartheid movement. The ADL’s approach has lost sight of the grass and the roots for too long to realize that its rhetoric, which once intimidated advocates for Palestinian rights into silence, no longer works. Undermined by its moral blind spot to Israeli wrongdoing, scrutiny by the ADL now generates ridicule and pride, instead of worried concern.
When it insists on defending the indefensible, and mislabels crucial work for Palestinian human rights as bigotry, the ADL only undercuts its ability to respond to genuine threats of hate and anti-Semitism. Instead, the ADL should summon the courage to reclaim its legacy of confronting discrimination against anyone, anywhere.
Mohammad Talat is an alumnus of UC Berkeley and assistant professor of civil engineering at Cairo University, Egypt. Tom Pessah is a graduate student in the sociology department at UC Berkeley and has been an Israeli member of Students for Justice in Palestine for four years.
