On Monday Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt addressed the group’s National Leadership Summit and spent most of his speech attacking critics of Zionism.
In many ways his talk echoed his remarks from last year’s summit, where anti-Zionism was also the predominant theme. However, that speech referenced former president Donald Trump and the extreme Right. This year Greenblatt eschewed any mention of right-wing antisemitism save an acknowledgment that any ideology can fuel violence.
Greenblatt set the tone of his speech right away. “Just last week, we celebrated Israel’s 75th Independence Day. I know there are challenges in Israel right now. For many there — and here — this historic Yom Ha’atzmaut is filled with pride but also with complexity…worry…anxiety…and concern about the future of the Jewish state,” he told viewers. “And I know that for bigots — especially those who self-style as “anti-Zionists” — Israel’s Independence Day is a day to redouble their efforts to make sure it is Israel’s last Independence Day.”
He went on to warn supporters about the growing impact of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. “Indeed, over the past few years, the BDS movement has moved from college campuses and into corporate boardrooms — like when Ben and Jerry’s announced that they would not sell ice cream in the West Bank…or when rating agencies like Morningstar adopted policies that would make doing business with the Jewish State a black mark on their profile,” he explained.
Greenblatt’s speech also cites a recent ADL poll on attitudes toward Jews that shows one-in-five Americans believe antisemitic tropes and antisemitic acts in the U.S. have increased by 500% in just a decade.
However, a closer look at the statistics reveals that the organization’s methodology is questionable. The group counts anti-Zionist protests as antisemitic acts, vastly inflating the final numbers. “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,” write the report’s authors. “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 survey documents 241 incidents, 70 of which are actions from anti-Zionist activist groups.
The group’s findings faced no pushback in the mainstream media. The New York Times covered the report and printed the ADL’s claim that it “does not conflate general criticism of Israel or anti-Israel activism with antisemitism” without any caveats. Greenblatt also touted the report on PBS Newshour and was allowed to sound off about “hardened anti-Zionists activists on college campuses” without any critical follow-up questions. Host Geoff Bennett even repeated the ADL’s talking points. “I too was struck by reading this report about the 41% increase of antisemitic activity reported on college and university campuses,” he told Greenblatt. “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.”
For years activists have insisted that the ADL should not be understood as an organization focused on antisemitism, “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,” reads a 2020 open letter from a coalition of organizations calling on progressives to sever their ties with the group. “More disturbing, it has often conducted those attacks under the banner of “civil rights.” 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.”
The ADL’s growing focus on anti-Zionism coincides with recent polling suggesting that Israel is losing support among Democratic voters. A new University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll found that 44% of Democrats think Israel is a state with segregation similar to apartheid, and 34% said it was a flawed democracy. Among Democrats who had heard of BDS 41% said they supported the movement. Only 20% said they opposed it. An April poll from the Pew Research Center showed that just one-in-ten liberal Democrats has a positive view of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is at best a nonsense, and at worst, a vicious slur. Zionism itself is inherently anti-semitic. If a non Jew said to American Jews “This is not your home, you don’t belong here. Your home is Israel/Palestine, you should go and live there, in the Jewish homeland, the nation state of the Jewish people”, I would quite rightly be condemned as an anti-semite. However, I would simply be saying what Zionism says. As far as I am concerned, the homeland of Jewish Americans is America, not Palestine. I fail to see how that makes me an anti-semite.
I am anti-Zionist – a perfectly moral stance. The Eastern European Zionist colonists of the early 20th century had no intention of sharing Palestine. They intended to achieve a Jewish majority in Palestine, a country that was 95% Arab, turn it into a Jewish state, and displace as many of the resident Arabs as they could. Land purchased by Jewish colonists became the “inalienable property of the Jewish people” and could not be sold or rented to Arabs, who were also mostly excluded from employment on it. As the King-Crane Commission, sent to Palestine by US President Wilson in 1919 stated “The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission’s conference with Jewish representatives that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various forms of purchase”.
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947/48 was Zionism in action. The land grab of the 1967 war was Zionism in action. The Occupation is Zionism in action. The confiscation of Palestinian land, the building of Jewish only settlements, and demolition of Palestinian homes is Zionism in action. Zionism is not a benign movement.
While I accept Israel’s existence – it’s not going away – I believe that the Jewish claim to Palestine has no rational basis. To suggest that the presence of some sort of Jewish entity in part of Palestine over 2,000 years ago gave Jews from Eastern Europe a right to sovereignty in Palestine in the 20th century is an insult to the intelligence of any rational person. As the King-Crane Commission of Inquiry stated “For the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a “right” to Palestine based on an occupation 2000 years ago, can hardly be seriously considered”.
Jonathan Greenblatt will no doubt be following the debate on May 4 in the French National Assembly!
https://orientxxi.info/magazine/israel-palestine-from-colonisation-straight-to-apartheid,6407
The debate scheduled to be held on 4 May in the French National Assembly on a resolution condemning the ‘institutionalisation by the State of Israel of an apartheid regime consequent upon its colonial policies’ has aroused outraged protests, roars of indignation and predictable accusations of anti-Semitism. These reactions can often be explained by an ignorance of the colonial reality of Zionism.
Has the not so honorable Jonathan Gleenblatt ever shown the same outrage, and railed at the ultra right wing, religious leaders in the apartheid country, when racists like Ben Gvir called for an entire Arab town to be erased, and when Avichai Buaron called for Israel’s enemies to be put into extermination camps? I highly doubt it. That seems to be acceptable by him.
Greenblatt’s outrage is always directed at those who criticize Israel’s racist and apartheid policies, and he seems to shy from ever showing outrage, and railing against the real antisemitic groups found here, like the white supremacists, proud boys, and right wing groups. He should stop being a hypocrite and direct his outrage at those who are truly anti-semitic.
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A modest proposal for Mr. Greenblatt’s consideration:
Given that you and your fellow Zionists are given to counting legitimate, non-violent political dissent as ipso-facto instances of antisemitism and given that Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress why not combine these two useful developments to advance ADL’s anti-Palestinian domestic political agenda by urging the Speaker to launch a House Un-Israeli Activities Committee (HUIAC)?
The HUIAC would be modeled on the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) made (in)famous by Senator Joseph McCarthy (no relation). That committee was committed to ferreting out “Communists” and their “sympathizers” from the Federal government, Hollywood, the military, academia and other cesspools of subversion. The HUIAC could do the same thing with, say members of BDS, JVP, SJP, PYM, Adalah and Samidoun. Even Mondoweiss and its subscribers could be a rich vein of potential targets.
HUIAC might usefully issue subpoenas to The Squad as well, demanding access to any internal communications that touch on Israel or Zionism.
And like HUAC the HUIAC would have subpoena powers, plentiful and strong links to the media, plus the obvious powers of professional intimidation and retaliation as well as the old stand-by’s of character and reputational assassination. In this regard the activities of Canary Mission, Stand With Us, Amcha Initiative and a host of other Zionist domestic surveillance operations could be of enormous assistance in that they have been carrying out this very sort of Zionism-on-private American reconnaissance for years.
Their databases could provide the springboard for the HUIAC and allow it to hit the ground running. In fact, Canary Mission is the perfect model for an HUIAC national “blacklist”, a much-favored feature of the HUAC.
Moreover, the HUIAC has the potential to generate some much-needed-but-sorely-lacking bipartisanship given that any number of “pro-Israel” Democrats might see some benefit in affiliating with HUIAC. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Senators Chuck Schumer and Ben Cardin come to mind immediately. President Joe “I am a Zionist” Biden might be moved to bless the HUIAC if for no other reason than to demonstrate his continued fealty to all-things-Israel. In for a dime…
(cont.)
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Each session of HUIAC would begin with the solemn recitation of the IHRA “definition” of antisemitism thereby anchoring the proceedings in purely democratic and civic-minded methodologies.
Perhaps the best part of the HUIAC’s work would be that, just like the HUAC – and by extension ADL, et. al. – it never has to prove anything to damage the job prospects or destroy the reputations of the people or institutions it targets.
Time-tested principles of Israeli hasbara would undergird the HUIAC’s operating practices and classic HUAC tactics would be resurrected such as to predicate all accusations and questions so that the accused are instantly put on the defensive and then not allowed adequate time to respond or to present any exculpatory evidence.
And just as the ADL and the entire galaxy of Zionist operatives active in the US have always functioned, mere insinuation of antisemitism will suffice. Simply by mentioning in social media post that some academic or elected official is a “person of interest” to the HUIAC will be sufficient to intimidate, co-opt or wound them.
In fact, the possibilities for expanding domestic Zionism’s reach and effectiveness via the House Un-Israeli Activities Committee (HUIAC) especially now during these fraught times in Israel, appear endless. Given that nothing Zionism has yet implemented has had the least effect on the growing popularity of BDS, SJP and JVP no time should be lost in establishing this important new Congressional committee.
Should Mr. Netanyahu actually visit Washington as the guest of the Republican Party he would be well advised to read up beforehand on the Citizen Genet Affair. There he will learn that he is not the first foreign diplomat to openly disparage the President of the United States and come to regret it. He will learn that even at the very beginnings of this nation’s life its people did not take kindly to those who violated its principles of domestic sovereignty and insulted its most senior elected officials.
Question for Any Zionist: Is it antisemitic according to IHRA to suggest that the Israeli government would irreparably harm its relations with the American people should it allow Prime Minister Netanyahu to visit the US given the deliberate absence of an official invitation from the White House?
View:
364 Israel Independence Day posters
And:
440 Palestinian Al Nakba/The Catastrophe posters