The ADL recently came under heavy fire from leading pro-Israel voices, most notably Caroline Glick. The ADL was criticized for backing Keith Ellison, a former Nation of Islam supporter who defended anti-Semitism and who has called Israel an apartheid state. I have repeatedly criticized the ADL for its alliances with anti-Israel groups, including providing a forum for defending BDS and attacking Israel at its latest conclave. This change has been linked to Jonathan Greenblatt, its left-wing CEO who has shown a willingness to whitewash and ally with anti-Israel figures while attacking the Jewish State.
After Caroline's article, the ADL appears to have gone into damage control mode. Greenblatt ran a piece in defense of Israel and mildly critical of Obama. The ADL blog now lists Islamic terror attacks on Jews. And Greenblatt fired off a hysterical conspiratorial letter to the organization's members.
“Over the past year, certain columnists and elements of the US Jewish community have engaged in a full-scale assault on ADL and its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt,” read a letter sent out to the organization’s membership and reviewed by POLITICO. “We came back from Thanksgiving to find that an organized, concerted effort to delegitimize ADL was underway. These charges against ADL are a significant and deliberate misrepresentation of our positions and actions.”
The "We came back from Thanksgiving" is an absurd victimhood pose from a massive and extensive organization with a nationwide presence. Greenblatt sounds like a homeowner who has been burgled instead of the head of a large organization dealing with sustained criticism over a long period of time.
Not to mention that it was the ADL which chose to target some pro-Israel figures, including Caroline Glick, and is now whining when they struck back.
Jonathan Greenblatt engages in conspiratorial language "an organized, concerted effort to delegitimize ADL" instead of honestly addressing the issue. That's the sort of behavior that the hate groups the ADL used to monitor, before it began allying with them, engage in.
In the letter, the ADL put forth what they characterized as five “myths” about the organization, from accusations that the organization does not support Israel (“False. ADL always has been and always will be a fierce advocate for the Jewish State of Israel,”)
That "fierce advocacy" has included
1. Attacking Israel
2. Attempting to silence pro-Israel voices
3. Providing a forum for anti-Israel voices, including the anti-Israel pressure group T'ruah at a panel titled "Is Delegitimization of Israel Anti-Semitism?”
4. Whitewashing BDS
Myth: So fierce
“Myth: ADL attacked Steve Bannon but gave Keith Ellison a pass,” the letter read. “Fact: False. We voiced our concerns about the placement of Steve Bannon in a senior White House role based on his statements about the “Alt-Right” and the writing at Breitbart. As for Representative Ellison, we also expressed concerns: ‘it is very disturbing that someone who has been excessively critical of the State of Israel at key junctures in recent history might become the titular head of the Democratic Party.’”
The ADL originally endorsed Ellison before backpedaling. It utterly rejected Bannon, but whitewashed Ellison.
He noted that a recent conference the ADL hosted “explored [anti-Semitism] from all angles, including discussions of manifestations of anti-Semitism from the radical Left in the form of the [Boycott, Divest, Sanction] movement as well as extreme Right in the form of white supremacy.”
Except that while the ADL utterly rejected the Alt Right, it hosted panelists who offered defenses of BDS and the anti-Israel movement. This the rottenness of the ADL in a nutshell. It equivocates with left-wing anti-Semitism.