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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">ADL Data on Rise of Anti-Semitic Incidents Doesn’t Add Up</h1>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">November 10, 2023<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><p>A
new, highly publicized report from the Anti-Defamation League claims
that anti-Semitic incidents across the United States have skyrocketed by
more than 400%. But these ADL numbers do not add up – unless one
equates opposition to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza with hatred of
Jews.</p>
<p>The Anti-Defamation League’s findings that anti-Semitic incidents in
the United States have risen exponentially have made headlines, both in
America and worldwide (e.g., <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-antisemitic-incidents-up-about-400-since-israel-hamas-war-began-report-says-2023-10-25/" target="_blank">Reuters</a>, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/antisemitic-incidents-spike-following-hamas-attack-israel-anti-defamation-league/" target="_blank">CBS News</a>, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/israel-hamas-war-leads-to-increase-of-antisemitic-threats-on-college-campuses" target="_blank">PBS</a>, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/29/us/hate-crimes-antisemitism-anti-muslim-dg/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/10/09/israel-hamas-attacks-antisemitism-america-jewish-communities/" target="_blank">Washington Post</a>).
American Jews are purportedly facing a wave of hatred and violence like
never before, leaving many terrified at the prospect of merely leaving
the house.</p>
<p>In the month since Hamas’ surprise attack, the Israeli bombardment of
Gaza has killed more than 10,000 people, including well over 3,000
children. Dozens of hospitals, schools and places of worship have been
destroyed, as Israel has openly announced its plan to drive the
densely-populated strip’s population into Egypt’s Sinai Desert,
ethnically cleansing them from their land. In response to Israel’s
actions, the United States has seen an unprecedented wave of
demonstrations calling for a ceasefire.</p>
<h2>Dodgy Data</h2>
<p>As proof of this wave, the ADL published an interactive (and regularly updated) <a href="https://www.adl.org/stand-with-israel" target="_blank">map</a>
of hundreds of incidents nationwide. Yet included in this map of
anti-Jewish hate were 153 rallies and demonstrations for Palestine,
which the influential NGO reflexively labeled as problematic, providing
no further evidence. There were also 84 further rallies across the U.S.
that the ADL claimed “supported terror.” These protests, the
organization insisted, included “explicit or strong implicit support for
Hamas,” although, again, the map does not explain further.</p>
<p>Together, these demonstrations represent essentially every major
outburst of public solidarity for the people of Gaza, meaning that the
ADL has tarred the entire movement as anti-Semitic. This is a highly
controversial position, yet none of the news outlets referencing the
ADL’s findings informed their readers of this.</p>
<p>Other episodes included in the ADL list are also potentially
questionable. For example, one incident in Chicago was described as
such: “Individuals at a pro-Palestinian rally chased and physically
assaulted an individual holding a picture of an Israeli flag.” From the
description, it is far from clear whether this was an anti-Semitic
attack or a skirmish between rival groups protesting. If an individual
showed up to a pro-Israel rally with a Palestinian flag and was
assaulted, would this necessarily constitute an Islamophobic hate crime?</p>
<p>Nor does the list differentiate between trivial matters and extremely
serious events. A large percentage of the incidents noted were simply
racist signs being spotted. For instance, in Medfield, MA, “a swastika
was carved into a portable toilet at a school,” while in Warrington, PA,
“A swastika was spray painted on a utility pole.” It is unlikely,
however, that toilet graffiti is the sort of incident that comes to many
Americans’ minds when they read headlines about a shocking and
dangerous rise in anti-Semitism.</p>
<p>There certainly have been extremely serious anti-Semitic incidents in
the United States in the wake of Hamas’ surprise attack and Israel’s
bombardment of Gaza. For example, in Albuquerque, NM, a man phoned in a
(phony) bomb threat, <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/albuquerque-police-no-explosives-bomb-030200747.html" target="_blank">claiming</a>
he was in a messianic synagogue with a backpack full of explosives,
causing the building to be evacuated. The ADL effectively puts incidents
like this on par with marches calling for a ceasefire, thereby tacitly
equating the rejection of Israel’s murderous war with a desire to kill
Jews.</p>
<p>Some cynics might say that is precisely the point. Historian Norman Finkelstein, for example, has <a href="https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/725672/mod_resource/content/1/Norman%20Finkelstein%20%E2%80%93%20Beyond%20Chutzpah.pdf" target="_blank">claimed</a>
that the ADL regularly announces the arrival of a new wave of
anti-Semitism and that these pronouncements often coincide with
international condemnation of Israeli violence, and has suggested that
these amount to attempts to run interference for the State of Israel,
changing the subject to distract from its crimes.</p>
<p>Miko Peled, an Israeli-American activist and son of a former top Israeli general, went further, <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/no-matter-how-you-frame-it-the-adl-is-a-racist-organization/285078/">writing</a> that:</p>
<blockquote><p>The ADL is clearly a racist, Zionist, anti-Palestinian
organization that makes it its mission to delegitimize the Palestinian
struggle by equating it first with terrorism and now, since that claim
has proven to be absurd, with extremism and anti-Semitism.”</p></blockquote>
<p>The ADL is not the only pro-Israel NGO attempting to portray
opposition to Israeli violence as inherently racist. Stop Antisemitism,
for instance, <a href="https://twitter.com/StopAntisemites/status/1719685913633018077" target="_blank">posted</a>
pictures of a truck displaying messages reading “Israel kills one child
every 10 minutes. End U.S. aid to Israel” and “Free Palestine,” along
with the truck’s number plate. Another choice piece of “anti-Semitism”
they <a href="https://twitter.com/StopAntisemites/status/1719903020144803911" target="_blank">profiled</a> was the words “liberate Palestine” etched onto a toilet cubicle.</p>
<h2>Playing Defense for Israel</h2>
<p>That one of the Anti-Defamation League’s core aims is to defend
Israel is not in doubt. The data on anti-Semitic attacks in the United
States appears on a <a href="https://www.adl.org/stand-with-israel" target="_blank">page</a> titled “Stand with Israel,” after all. Furthermore, the ADL has published strategy <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/tools-and-strategies/six-proactive-strategies-deal-anti-israel-activity-campus" target="_blank">guides</a> groups can use to “deal with anti-Israel activity on campus” and recently printed a <a href="https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/2023-10/ADL-Israel-Crisis_Media-Guidelines-2023.pdf" target="_blank">handbook</a> of guidelines for media to use when covering Israel’s attack on Palestine.</p>
<p>This handbook instructs journalists to:</p>
<ol><li>Refer to Hamas as “terrorists” rather than militants or fighters;</li><li>Describe Israel’s campaign in Gaza as a “legitimate
military action in response to [the Hamas] massacre and to prevent
future acts of terror”</li><li>Make sure that their readers understand that
pro-Israel protests are morally far superior to their pro-Palestine
equivalents. After all, they insist, “the Israeli Army does everything
it can to limit and prevent civilian casualties.”</li></ol>
<p>More evidence of the ADL’s true goals can be found on the ADL’s own
“Mission and History” page, where it lists its most important moments
and achievements. Many of these achievements are clearly just advancing
the State of Israel’s interests, including the following:</p>
<ul><li><i>The World Conference Against Racism, a
U.N.-sanctioned conference held in Durban, South Africa in 2001, turns
into an anti-Israel and antisemitic hate fest. ADL convinces the U.S.
government and others to withdraw in protest.</i></li><li><i>ADL exposes the inherent antisemitism in Stephen
Walt and John Mearsheimer’s published accusations that an “Israel lobby”
is forcing the U.S. government to adopt policies that are counter to
American interests. ADL further renounces similar accusations in former
President Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.</i></li><li><i>ADL advocates for strong international sanctions
to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, exposes European business
dealings with Iran and launches the “Stop Nuclear Iran” information
campaign.</i></li><li><i>In an effort to help address antisemitic and
anti-Israel intimidation in schools and on campus, ADL lobbies for the
Department of Education to include antisemitism and campus anti-Zionism
within its ongoing civil rights enforcement authority.</i></li></ul>
<p>As can be seen from the final example, the Anti-Defamation League has
gone out of its way to consistently equate opposition to Israeli
government policy with racism. Indeed, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has
gone further than the standard line that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, <a href="https://youtu.be/B2ziyg-eA1w?t=280" target="_blank">stating</a>
on MSNBC last month that “anti-Zionism is genocide.” Explaining this
position, Greenblatt doubled down, insisting that, “Every Jewish person
is a Zionist…it is fundamental to our existence.”</p>
<h2>Boycotting the Boycotters</h2>
<p>Given their stance on anti-Zionism, it is perhaps no surprise that the Anti-Defamation League has <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/boycott-divestment-and-sanctions-campaign-bds" target="_blank">denounced</a>
tactic of boycotting Israel as anti-Semitic. And as the global Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has grown, the ADL has found
creative ways to undermine it. Chief amongst these is to move into the
field of investing in order to shield Israel from being targeted by
ethical investment companies.</p>
<p>Last December, the ADL announced it had acquired financial company
JLens to fight so-called anti-Israel activities in the progressive
investing arena.</p>
<p>“It’s time for the Jewish community to take a seat at the table to
use our power as institutional investors to ensure corporations are
aligned with our values, and don’t fall for antisemitic pressures,”
Greenblatt <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/adl-using-jlens-impact-investing-to-target-bds/283049/">said</a>, announcing the move.</p>
<p>Increasing numbers of people wish to invest their money ethically,
meaning that corporations that pollute the environment or countries with
particularly poor human rights records are off the table. Given the way
it treats its Arab population and how it is occupying two neighboring
countries, Israel stands to lose from any rise in ethical capitalism,
hence the ADL’s attempts to influence the sphere and create an Israeli
exception.</p>
<h2>Training American Cops to be More Like Israelis</h2>
<p>Through its other programs, the Anti-Defamation League has a far
greater effect on American society than many realize. For one, the ADL
is the single largest non-governmental police trainer in the country.
Every major metropolitan police department in America has sent officers
to the ADL’s Advanced Training School, which <a href="https://www.adl.org/partnering-law-enforcement" target="_blank">provides</a>
instruction on extremism and terrorism for more than 250 U.S. agencies,
including ICE and the FBI. In fact, ADL training is now mandatory for
all new FBI special agents and intelligence analysts.</p>
<p>The ADL also facilitates American law enforcement officials to train
in Israel and for Israeli and American forces to trade practices with
one another. Thus, the surveillance and intimidation tactics honed on
Palestinians living in open-air prisons find their way back to the
United States, where police increasingly treat low-income neighborhoods
and communities of color similarly to how Israel suppresses its
indigenous population.</p>
<p>A perfect example of this is Ferguson, MO and the killing of Michael
Brown. In 2014, police officer Darren Wilson shot the unarmed
18-year-old black male while he had his hands up and was begging him not
to fire. The event sparked nationwide protests.</p>
<p>Police Chief Timothy Fitch, the head of the county police department, had <a href="https://www.ebony.com/the-fergusonpalestine-connection-403/" target="_blank">received</a>
an ADL-funded trip to Israel, where he met and was trained by Israeli
counterinsurgency specialists. Activists have consistently highlighted
the parallels and connections between American and Israeli law
enforcement, from tactics to weapons.</p>
<p>Brown is far from the only American victim of Israeli-trained police
violence. In 2006, Atlanta cops, fresh from a counterterrorism and drug
enforcement exchange program with Israeli soldiers, carried out a
no-knock raid at the home of 92-year-old black woman Kathryn Johnston.
After firing 39 shots, police <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/police-training-programs-twin-us-israeli-racism/9834" target="_blank">handcuffed</a> Johnston, planted drugs on her corpse, and left her to bleed to death.</p>
<h2>A Shameful History</h2>
<p>Training the police is far from the only questionable activity the
Anti-Defamation League has been involved in, however. Although it
presents itself as a liberal, forward-thinking institution, the ADL has,
for nearly a century, been at the forefront of the fight against
progressive change in the United States and around the world.</p>
<p>As early as the 1930s, the ADL <a href="https://droptheadl.org/the-adl-is-not-an-ally/" target="_blank">began</a>
carrying out surveillance against leftist organizations, reporting
their activities to the House Committee on Un-American Activities – a
government organization dedicated to suppressing left-wing thought.
Although they formally opposed McCarthyism, the ADL also secretly fed
information on a host of organizations to the FBI, becoming, in effect, a
private spying agency.</p>
<p>The ADL stood against the student movement of the 1960s, attacking
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and branding them
as “racist.” But it reserved special vitriol for the black liberation
movement, spying on the NAACP and on Martin Luther King Jr. himself. It
also attempted to keep the racist apartheid government in South Africa
afloat, spying on the African National Congress Party and top
anti-apartheid activists like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, sharing that
information with the white supremacist government.</p>
<p>More recently, the ADL has sought to <a href="https://lasvegas.adl.org/eyes-on-the-prize-in-pursuit-of-racial-justice-stick-to-the-facts-and-avoid-the-fiction/" target="_blank">undermine</a>
the Movement for Black Lives, strongly criticizing it for highlighting
connections between how people of color are treated in the U.S. and how
Israel treats Palestinians.</p>
<p>The longer one looks into the history of the Anti-Defamation League,
the harder it gets to find a progressive institution, organization or
movement that it has not surveilled or attacked. In 1993, it was
revealed that the ADL had collected confidential information on nearly
10,000 activists and more than 700 organizations and had infiltrated
countless more groups. Those surveilled included the United Farm
Workers, the AFL-CIO, Greenpeace and a host of progressive Arab-American
and Jewish-American organizations. The ADL even <a href="https://droptheadl.org/the-adl-is-not-an-ally/" target="_blank">spied</a> on the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and fought to keep homophobia out of anti-bias curriculums.</p>
<p>The ADL’s former research director Irwin Suall <a href="https://droptheadl.org/the-adl-is-not-an-ally/" target="_blank">summed up</a>
his organization’s position: “It’s the American left that’s the biggest
threat to American Jews.” What the “threat” from progressive Americans
was not explained. However, since Israel derives crucial political and
financial backing from the United States, it could indeed be said that
if public opinion turned strongly against Israel, its legitimacy would
be in question.</p>
<p>Throughout the period, the ADL passed sensitive data on to the
government of Israel, acting as its unofficial spy agency. But many
thought this relationship went even further, chief among them the FBI. A
1969 internal FBI <a href="https://twitter.com/Lowkey0nline/status/1699137979736854598" target="_blank">memo</a>
noted that the ADL was very likely breaking the Foreign Agents
Registration Act by acting as an arm of the Israeli state. “It is felt
incredible to assume [the ADL] is not furnished to an official of the
Government of Israel”, the memo concluded.</p>
<p>And while the ADL attacks and defames public figures like Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, <a href="https://twitter.com/ADL/status/1722272628164239714" target="_blank">claiming</a> that she is anti-Semitic, it has <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/civil-rights-groups-waking-adl-right-wing-agenda/271690/">supported</a> many of President Trump’s moves despite his <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/how-trump-new-anti-semitism-bill-criminalizes-dissent/263396/">history</a> of making blatantly anti-Semitic statements. In 2017, for instance, it <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/civil-rights-groups-waking-adl-right-wing-agenda/271690/">praised</a>
him for announcing that the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as the
capital of Israel and move its embassy to the ethnically cleansed city.</p>
<p>American Jews do face increased threats. In 2018, a gunman opened
fire at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11. Only a few
months later, a terrorist opened fire at the Chabad of Poway in
California. But fighting this tide of intolerance is not helped by
conflating sympathy with the Palestinian cause and protesting against
the State of Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza with Jew hatred. Yet
this is precisely what the Anti-Defamation League continues to do,
despite the fact that many of these marches were led by Jewish
organizations. The ADL’s actions represent an increasingly desperate
rear-guard action to shield Israel from legitimate criticism and smear
activists the world over as racists. These attempts are indeed pathetic,
but given the ADL’s long history of defending the indefensible, perhaps
they are unsurprising.</p>
<p>Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News</p>
<p><em><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Alan MacLeod</a> </strong>is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Bad-News-from-Venezuela-Twenty-years-of-fake-news-and-misreporting/Macleod/p/book/9781138489233" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting</a> and <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Propaganda-in-the-Information-Age-Still-Manufacturing-Consent-1st-Edition/MacLeod/p/book/9781138366404?fbclid=IwAR2xQQWJd98C25wapG4ynmlEnGvL5wxG_mp5RwpBwtwPDxInjNZ1Oo7KD-E" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent</a>, as well as <a href="https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/65/56" rel="noopener" target="_blank">a</a> <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306396818823639#articleShareContainer" rel="noopener" target="_blank">number</a> <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/blar.12940" rel="noopener" target="_blank">of</a> <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00064/full" rel="noopener" target="_blank">academic</a> <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0896920518820934" rel="noopener" target="_blank">articles</a>. He has also contributed to <a href="https://fair.org/author/alan-macleod/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">FAIR.org</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alan-macleod" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>, <a href="https://www.salon.com/writer/alan-macleod" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Salon</a>, <a href="https://thegrayzone.com/author/alan-macleod/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">The Grayzone</a>, <a href="https://jacobinmag.com/author/alan-macleod" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Jacobin Magazine</a>, and <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/author/alan-macleod" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Common Dreams</a>.</em></p>
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