Power & Pushback: Greenblatt compares student protesters to ISIS

Last week, The Forward obtained audio of Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt addressing Republican attorney generals.

Recently, Greenblatt has been all over cable news. First, he was touting the ADL’s annual Antisemitism Audit, which periodically claims that such incidents have skyrocketed because the organization classifies anti-Zionist sentiment as bigotry.

Interviewers never challenge Greenblatt on the audit’s methodology, but CNN did ask him about the Trump administration targeting student protesters. Greenblatt, who ostensibly runs a civil rights group, voiced support for the the kidnappings and detentions.

“Look, at the ADL, it’s our job to protect the Jewish people,” he explained. “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.”

After the killings at the Israeli embassy and the attack in Colorado, Greenblatt made another round of appearances, calling for further censorship of pro-Palestine speech.

He wants Twitch to suspend left-wing streamer Hasan Piker for expressing solidarity with Gaza. He thinks MIT class president Megha Vemuri committed a “blood libel” by condemning her school’s connection to the genocide. He blames student activists for developing an antisemitic environment that leads to violence.

His speech to Republicans was, predictably, even more direct. In addition to his usual attacks on Palestine activism, he condemned other recent protest movements.

“There is a throughline from Occupy Wall Street to BLM to ‘defund the police’ to ‘River to the Sea,’” he told the attorney generals. “They are the same people, these are the same kind of nihilists.”

Greenblatt’s views are consistent with the ADL’s history, as the organization has consistently embraced cops, anti-immigrant groups, and surveillance programs. It’s smeared black activists, spied on anti-apartheid organizers, and partnered with authoritarian governments.

“Despite its public portrayal of itself, the ADL isn’t a civil rights group in any meaningful sense, but rather, a veiled pro-Israel lobbying organization that uses superficial language of inclusiveness and anti-racism to defend Israel from criticism from the left,” explains a 2020 In These Times piece.

During his remarks, Greenblatt also implied that detained Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil has connections to shadowy, foreign organizations.

“Mahmoud Khalil, the man who was detained or whatever by DHS, he was a 27-year-old from Jordan — or, yeah, from Jordan or Syria, forgive me — but this was not some child. I am sure we’re going to find out about his ties to groups overseas,” said Greenblatt, who provided no evidence for these claims.

Greenblatt believes that masked student protesters are like ISIS because they are “terrorizing their classmates.” He says the “convergence” of “Islamist groups” and the left has resulted in the worst expressions of hate against any group in the country over the last 100 years.

“I have never seen anything like this before, ever — ever,” he declared.

Once again, Greenblatt voiced his support for the Trump administration’s crackdown on dissent.

“I don’t agree with everything the Trump administration is doing, I don’t want to shut down these schools altogether,” he said. “But you know what? God bless Secretary McMahon.”

Greenblatt’s comments were made before the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles began.

The Trump administration has escalated that violence by sending in the National Guard and the Marines, but pundits and lawmakers have condemned the protesters for defending their community from raids. This includes a number of pro-Israel commentators.

In Commentary, Seth Mandel laments the fact that some LA protesters are waving Palestinian flags. He insists that Gaza and ICE raids are unrelated issues. “Free Palestine” is simply a cheap slogan being embraced by the “progressive Blob” that is allegedly terrorizing Los Angeles and forcing cops to beat activists.

“Pretty soon, everywhere someone is denouncing the United States or assaulting a police officer or torching cars or vandalizing houses of worship, the Palestinian flag and keffiyeh will be there,” Mandel claims. “Not because Palestinians want it that way, but because the Blob’s merchandizing department does. Meanwhile, any capital spent on the Palestinians will be spent defending and buttressing Hamas, the fascist death grip currently squeezing the life out of everything it finds in Gaza. But cool shirt, bro.”

Speaking of fascist death grips, Israeli soldiers just killed 17 Palestinians, as thousands attempted to approach an aid distribution site.

In Mondoweiss, Ahmad Ibsais draws a direct connection between Israel’s violence and that of the United States:

The Israeli military’s response, deploying drones to spray unknown chemicals, jamming communications, and ultimately seizing the vessel in international waters, demonstrates the same authoritarian impulse Trump displayed in Los Angeles. Both actions send the same message: dissent will be crushed, moral courage will be punished, and the status quo will be maintained through violence if necessary.

Raids in Los Angeles deployed the same tactical arsenal: military weaponry and use of drones for aerial surveillance, a domestic deployment of the same military power and tactics refined through decades of Israeli operations in occupied Palestine. Israel’s decades-long use of Gaza as a laboratory for weapons testing has created a pipeline where surveillance technologies battle-tested on Palestinians are exported to over 130 countries, including the United States, where they are deployed against immigrants, protesters, and other marginalized communities. The same companies profiting from Israel’s automated killing in Gaza are now enabling Trump’s crackdown on American streets. 

The parallels extend beyond tactics to ideology. Both Israel’s blockade of Gaza and Trump’s immigration crackdowns represent forms of collective punishment designed to terrorize entire populations. Both rely on dehumanization—Palestinians as “terrorists,” immigrants as “invaders”—to justify policies that violate international law and basic human decency.

Khalil filing

The legal team of Mahmoud Khalil has filed extensive new evidence detailing the harm caused by his detention.

In a press release, the ACLU cited some of those filings:

• Mr. Khalil’s wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, tells the court about the heartbreak and fear of not having him next to her in the first weeks of their son’s life.
• Students and professors at Columbia and beyond write about the extreme fear and chill on their ability to stand up for Palestinian rights stemming from his arrest and detention.
• A former State Department official declares Mahmoud’s detention for advocacy runs counter to basic democratic values and is the kind of “arbitrary detention” seen in autocratic regimes.
• An expert writes about the stigma and pain from the Islamophobic depictions of Mr. Khalil and his family.
• Legal service providers detail the spike in requests for legal assistance from frightened community members since his arrest.

“I have suffered — and continue to suffer — as a result of the government’s actions against me,” said Khalil, in a declaration that was included in the filing.

“The most immediate and visceral harms I have experienced directly relate to the birth of my son, Deen. Instead of holding my wife’s hand in the delivery room, I was crouched on a detention center floor, whispering through a crackling phone line as she labored alone,” he continued. “I listened to her pain, trying to comfort her while 70 other men slept around me. When I heard my son’s first cries, I buried my face in my arms so no one would see me weep.”

“When you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, take over buildings and deface property, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told NBC News in response to the filing.

The Trump administration has provided no evidence that Khalil has supported terrorists, relished the killing of Americans, harassed Jews, taken over buildings, or defaced property.

This week, a group of local residents protested outside the Jena, Louisiana detention facility where Khalil is being held.

“Mahmoud Khalil and other detainees have had their rights stripped away all because of the color of their skin or the content of their conviction,” declared one of the protesters. “Why? For peacefully protesting a genocide in Gaza. If we allow this to happen to Mahmoud, we’re all in danger of losing our constitutional rights to free speech, due process, and liberty and justice for all.”

Further Reading

• Dartmouth students launch hunger strike in support of Gaza
• Leqaa Kordia: The forgotten prisoner
• ‘You are proof of irrepressible life’: An open letter to Mahmoud Khalil and Noor Abdalla’s newborn child
• Israeli forces commandeer aid boat on its way to Gaza, detaining activists including Greta Thunberg
• Gothamist: Mayor Adams signs executive order adopting antisemitism definition, urges Council to make it law
• Jonathan Cohn: 75 Dems Join GOP in Resolution Praising Trump’s Mass Deportation Regime
• Vox: How a little-known law became Trump’s weapon of choice against immigration
• The Guardian: University of Michigan using undercover investigators to surveil student Gaza protesters