ADL Needs to Remove “Jewish” from its Mission Statement

 The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is embroiled in yet another controversy, with the hashtag ‘#BantheADL’ recently trending on Twitter. Not for the first time, the group is being accused of defamation, and the irony speaks for itself.

One thing is clear — the ADL is heavily embedded within the radical-left, and its policies are a threat to Jewish values. It helps promote BDS supporters, at least indirectly. It is a secular group, helping to erode and decay the moral fabric of society.

Do they fight defamation? Perhaps. Do they do more good than harm for the Jewish community? It’s a difficult case to make.

In short, the ADL has no connection with anything ‘Jewish’, and it would be appropriate to remove any mention of ‘Jewish’ on its website and mission statement, and cease associating itself with our sacred religion.

Elon Musk recently claimed that the ADL’s aggressive stance on banning social media accounts, even for minor violations, ironically contributed to the proliferation of antisemitism on the platform.

This behavior is nothing new. It has been a trademark of the ADL for a long time, certainly during the tenure of CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.

Here is a brief history of the group’s disturbing and dangerous activities in the past several years:

–In March, the league slammed Chaya Raichik, aka “Libs of Tiktok”, an Orthodox Jew who protects children, calling her an extremist and suggesting she is a bigot.

–Last November, as soon as Musk took over Twitter and appeared extremely open to discussions on improving the platofrn, rather than working alongside Musk to develop new content moderation tools, the ADL is calling on all advertisers to suspend their relationship with Twitter, while offering a harsh critique of Musk’s leadership. Ironically, when Twitter was allowing the accounts of Ilhan Omar, Louis Farrakhan, and the Ayatollah to spew hatred, and they banned President Trump, the ADL was perfectly fine.

–Last year, Fox News highlighted the ADL’s far left ideas, including: materials that use the phrases “intersectionality,” “structural racism” and “white privilege”; its recommendation of articles written by award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Ta-Nehisi Coates; references to gender-neutral pronouns and the Black Lives Matter movement; books about trans and gender non-conforming children, and a post praising the Women’s March, one of whose founders has ties to Louis Farrakhan.

–Last year Greenblatt threw yeshivas under the bus when he attacked a bombshell Supreme Court ruling, forcing the state of Maine to stop discriminating against religious schools. He posted a tweet saying: “We are deeply concerned by yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in #CarsonvMakin. While private religious education can be costly, this ruling weakens the core principle of church-state separation and could set a highly problematic precedent.”

–Rabbi Yaakov Menken of the CJV once slammed the ADL for calling out right-wing hate groups but ignoring the vicious antisemites on the left. “There is…an amazing blind spot…an entire cadre on the left who hears the paraphrasing of Mein Kampf by Ilhan Omar and cannot call it antisemitic. They hear Rashida Tlaib call the only county in the Middle East with Jews and Arabs in its government and they…cannot recognize classic antisemitism.”

He added, “Jonathan Greenblatt…has no background in antisemitism…all he has is a background in left-wing politics.”

–After the BLM riots, the group changed and radicalized its definition of racism. The old definition was fairly straightforward.

“Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics.

The new definition: “The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.” (The definition was changed again, but only after an uproar ensued.)

–In 2021, Greenblatt wrote an op-ed, ‘apologizing without caveat’ for opposing an Islamic Center near Ground Zero. “We were wrong, plain and simple,” Jonathan Greenblatt wrote in an op-ed

–In November 2021, the ADL convened a summit of anti-semites to fight anti-semitism

It would be beneficial for the Jewish community if the ADL would recognize what is already abundantly clear. It is a political organization, not a religious one, and it’s time for that to become official.