Photo composition: Joe Biden (left) and Jonathan Greenblatt (right), in the background the Star of David. Photo: Mint Press News.
By Miko Peled – Jun 20, 2023
The Biden administration has released the country’s first national strategy for combating antisemitism, a landmark plan aimed at addressing a growing problem.” This is from a piece in NPR titled, “The first national strategy for fighting antisemitism is finally here. What’s in it?” Spoiler alert: it is not about fighting antisemitism or any other sort of racism; it is a strategy to silence Palestinian voices in the U.S. in the service of Israel.
The article starts with an outline of the Biden administration’s commitment to fighting Antisemitism. It then quotes the president, who referred to the plan as the “most ambitious and comprehensive U.S. government-led effort to fight antisemitism in American history.”
But then, about four short paragraphs into the piece, it becomes clear that a large part of the data regarding antisemitism in the United States is coming from the Anti-Defamation League or ADL.
Dedicated to racism preaching on antisemitism
The Anti-Defamation League is a dedicated Zionist, anti-Palestinian organization that has support for Israel as a declared part of its mission. A page on the group’s website demonstrates that what began in the early twentieth century as a gutsy civil rights network dedicated to combating racism has morphed into a racist organization committed to Zionism and the state of Israel.
The following are a few choice examples of “accomplishments” the organization highlights on this very page:
1970’s
The agency exposes and takes the lead in combating the Arab boycott of companies that do business with Israel.
ADL exposes Palestinian Liberation Organization and Arab links to terrorism and highlights the hypocrisy of a United Nations General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism.
2000’s
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.
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.
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In his newly published outstanding book, Weaponizing Anti-Semitism, journalist Asa Winstanley says,
The ADL has long had a close working relationship with the Israeli state and its intelligence agencies. In 2002 the ADL settled out of court when it was revealed that it had for years organized a spy ring to infiltrate leftist solidarity groups in the US, feeding the information back to Israel and apartheid-era South Africa.” (pp. 180-1).
The call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel is essential for all Palestine solidarity and resistance groups worldwide. This is what the ADL report has to say about it:
NOTE ON BDS: ADL has not counted incidents of BDS resolutions on or off campus as antisemitic incidents in our audit, because they do not target individuals. However, these are antisemitic and contribute to the pressures faced by Jews on campus.”
On student activism, the report states that:
In 2022, Jewish students on college and university campuses were subjected to radical anti-Israel sentiment that sometimes veered into antisemitism, often by anti-Zionist groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).”
The ADL twist
At a national leadership summit held in May 2022, ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt said: “SJP, Jewish Voice for Peace and the Council on American–Islamic Relations – these groups epitomize the Radical Left, the photo inverse of the Extreme Right that ADL long has tracked.”
In case this is not clear, he is comparing organizations and student groups who speak up and stand up for Palestinian rights to the extreme racist right.
An article published on the ADL website states that SJP, or Students for Justice in Palestine chapters,
…[F]ail to see that because large percentages of American Jews have stated that Zionism or a connection to the State of Israel are important parts of their religious, social, or cultural identities, SJP’s wholesale demonization of Zionism and Zionists amounts to the demonization of a significant number of their fellow students.”
In other words, Jewish students who feel a connection to a racist ideology, in this case, Zionism, and an affinity to a state accused of committing the crime of apartheid, in this case, Israel, get a pass because they are Jewish. Thus, according to the ADL, calling out Jewish people who chose to identify with a racist, genocidal ideology is antisemitic. This is, of course, outrageous.
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Again, according to the ADL, students who demand that their institutions show no tolerance to all forms of racism, including Zionism, are antisemitic. Here the ADL report again gives several examples:
In March, following the release of a statement by an anti-Israel organization at CUNY calling for protest, a CUNY Law SJP speaker declared at an off-campus rally: ‘Demand that Zionist Professors are not welcome on your campus, demand that Zionist students are not in spaces where Palestinian students are, because Zionism is a threat, Zionism is a genocidal threat to us.’ The crowd chanted ‘we don’t want no Zionists here.’”
Replace Zionism with any other racist ideology or movement, and the ADL has no problem. But when it comes to Israel, they claim, “Expelling Zionists from campus would likely result in the removal of a large percentage of Jewish students and calls like this have a deleterious effect on Jewish campus life.” The ADL leaves out that the issue is not Judaism but Zionism and contends that Jewish people should be allowed to be racist as long as the racist ideology they profess is Zionism.
Another example from the ADL report mentions something that occurred in August at the University of California, Berkeley.
Law Students for Justice in Palestine announced that they and nine allied student groups had adopted a bylaw stating they ‘will not invite speakers that have expressed and continue to hold views or host/sponsor/promote events in support of Zionism.’”
Once again, the ADL has a problem, “As Zionism is a fundamental component of many Jews’ identities, overtly excluding Zionists from campus or communal spaces has a disproportionately large and negative effect on the Jewish community.” Again, according to the ADL, Jewish people should get a pass if racism is, as they say, “a fundamental component” of their identity.
The Biden administration’s strategy for combating antisemitism is not about fighting racism at all; it is another war being waged on Palestinians in the United States. Once again, the United States is serving Israel by silencing legitimate voices.
Miko Peled is MintPress News contributing writer, published author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. His latest books are”The General’s Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine,” and “Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five.”
