The ADL declares war on the anti-Zionist left
JVL Introduction
The Anti-Defamation League was founded in the US in 1913 to ““to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all”.
But, as Emmaia Gelman put it in 2019 in an article The Anti-Defamation League Is Not What It Seems, “Under the guise of fighting hate speech, the ADL has a long history of wielding its moral authority to attack Arabs, blacks, and queers.”
And anti-Zionists.
In its new orientation reported below, the ADL has decided to prioritise its fight against Palestine-solidarity groups Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), as well as Muslim civil rights organization Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
There are labelled “extremists” because of their anti-Zionist advocacy: “anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” an “ideology . . . rooted in rage . . . predicated on one concept: the negation of another people.”
As Stefanie Fox of JVP puts it “the ADL is dropping its pretence of dismantling antisemitism and protecting the American Jewish community and is instead solely focused on shielding the Israeli government from accountability.”
A portend of things to come, in Britain as well as the US?
This article was originally published by Jewish Currents on Sun 1 May 2022. Read the original here.
The ADL Doubles Down on Opposing the Anti-Zionist Left
CEO Jonathan Greenblatt argued that Palestine-solidarity groups are “the photo inverse of the extreme right,” and promised that fighting them would become more central to his mission.
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Once you accept Zionism as a legitimate point of view you have effectively lost the argument. A majority Jewish state in the Middle East only exists because of ethnic cleansing in 1948. So if you accept the legitimacy of Israel (even within 1967 borders) then by definition accept that it is OK to use Ethnic Cleansing to achieve a political objective.
If you concede the legitimacy of Ethnic Cleansing then you will always be on the Blackfoot in opposing the ADL.
The ADL is, and always was, a cop-shop, a police informer’s paradise.
It has nothing remotely to do with anti-fascism.
Anti-Zionism is by definition a polarising stance. While certain iterations of Zionism are racist, at least by implication, the main thrust of the ideology is less Jewish supremacy than the need of the Jewish people to have a homeland in the land of Israel. It therefore follows that when we label ourselves anti-Zionist, committed Zionists will interpret that as denying the Jewish people their right to a homeland, and by extension, wishing to destroy the state of Israel along with its Jewish occupants. A stronger position might be to acknowledge the aspirations of the Jewish people for a homeland in Israel while at the same time arguing that the Palestinians have an equal right to occupy the land of their ancestors.
The just solution is a power-sharing arrangement, according to which both Jews and Palestinians have equal rights. This will be very difficult to achieve, but hardly less so that the democratisation of South Africa, which was won in the teeth of similarly entrenched racial prejudices and powerful wealth-driven opposition. Many Israelis will fight against the tooth and nail, preferring instead to see the Palestinians confined to walled encampments like the demeaning and demoralising Native American reservations in the USA. Such an outcome must be resisted at all costs. Where the struggle for Palestinian rights triumphs over Jewish hegemony is its moral force. The steadfast nature of the Palestinian people, their incredible bravery and dignity in the face of adversity, reflects that moral force; whether it ensures their ultimate victory and the restoration of their freedom still hangs in the balance.
I disagree with Kuhnberg. Zionism was not about the need for Jews (not the mythical ‘Jewish People’) to have a homeland. Our home is where we live. Zionism was always about the perpetuation of the ‘Jewish nation/race’.
During the war the Zionist movement set its face against rescue to any other destination but Palestine, even to the extent of sabotaging efforts to provide alternative destinations since immigration to Palestine was not possible. It was summed up in the famous quote of Ben Gurion in reaction to the Kindertransport whereby 10,000 German Jewish children were brought to England.
The Zionists were furious that they were not allowed into Palestine but fortunately the Board of Deputies was not yet in their hands. This took place in 1940 when Selig Brodetsky was elected President. Brodetsky openly sabotaged the efforts of Rabbi Schonfeld, Chair of the Chief Rabbi’s Rescue Committee to secure the entry of Jewish refugees to Britain.
As Ben Gurion stated in a memo to Mapai’s Central Committee on 9.12.38.
‘If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel. ‘
This can be found in Shabtai Teveth’s official biograph of Ben Gurion ‘The Burning Ground 1886-1948’ p.855
I should also add that the ADL might concentrate on the Anti-Zionist Left but it is slowly koshering ‘good’ neo-Nazis in Ukraine since they are our friends now.
In a truly remarkable interview Andrew Srulevitch, ADL’s director of European affairs, interviews a Prof. David Fishman and asks:
‘But we’ve seen torchlit marches in the middle of Kyiv with the red and black flags of UPA (the WWII-era Ukrainian Insurgent Army) and pictures of Stepan Bandera, who allied with the Nazis during WWII. Isn’t that evidence of Nazism in Ukraine?
Fishman responds:
“For Ukrainian nationalists, UPA and Bandera are symbols of the Ukrainian fight for Ukrainian independence. The UPA allied with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union for tactical – not ideological – reasons. For Jews, however, not only is allying with the Nazis unforgivable under any circumstance, but historians have documented that Ukrainian nationalists participated together with Germans in the murder of many thousands of Jews in Ukraine.
“We should also not forget that 10 million Ukrainians fought in the Red Army against Nazi Germany and 1.5 million Ukrainians died in combat. The number of Ukrainians who fought the Nazis dwarfs the number who collaborated with them. When Ukrainian nationalists and Jews look at those red and black flags, we see two different things.”
https://www.adl.org/blog/why-is-putin-calling-the-ukrainian-government-a-bunch-of-nazis
This is remarkable. The OUN/UPA were clearly ideologically Nazis and proved it slaughtering 200K Jews and 100K Poles among others.
To get the background to this see
Israel lobby group ADL rehabilitates Hitler’s accomplices in Ukraine
https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-lobby-group-adl-rehabilitates-hitlers-accomplices-ukraine/35021
In the middle of reading JVLs introduction to the above article I wondered how much coverage the ADL got in the US MSM in respect of their attack on these groups and, as such, did a search, but didn’t come across anything in the few pages of results that I looked through. But I did come across the following, which is a series of articles demonising Jewish Voice for Peace (having done a search re >adl jewish voice for peace<):
https://cameraoncampus.org/blog/jewish-voice-for-peace-jvp-what-the-media-is-concealing/
And I also came across the following, from November 2017:
Jewish Voice for Peace seeks to end Anti-Defamation League police exchange program
https://www.nhregister.com/metro/article/Jewish-Voice-for-Peace-seeks-to-end-12342651.php
Tony Greenstein
Whatever subterfuge was involved in its creation, the establishment of Israel is a historical fact, and the roughly seven million Jews who live there can’t be simply be wished away. I share your frustration with the lies told about the Zionist project, but the debate has moved on and the only hope for a just solution is for all parties to recognise what is possible and how it can be achieved. Whenever I debate this issue with people broadly supportive of Israel I hear the same simplistic misrepresentation of the Palestinian position: that they want to destroy Israel and expel or murder its citizens. That is the mind-set that has to be tackled before any progress can be made. Opposing Zionism with anti-Zionism leaves the two sides arguing loudly in separate rooms, without any hope of reaching the sort of compromise that could lead to change.
But it isn’t opposing Zionism with anti-Zionism simply because they’re Zionists Kuhnberg, but because of what they have done to the Palestinians during the course of the past seventy-four years, and what they are STILL doing to them. Describing yourself as an anti-Zionist is just a way of stating that you are opposed to what is being done to the Palestinians by the Israeli PTB. And it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to the situation if everyone who describes themselves as anti-Zionists dropped the term.
Kuhnberg,
I agree with Allan Howard. If we called ourselves something else it would make not the blindest bit of difference.
Yes the existence of 7 million Jews in Israel is a fact. I don’t deny it. They have the right to continue to live there but not at the expense of the indigenous population, the Palestinians.
Of course when we talk about de-Zionisation and one, secular democratic state for all, regardless of religious or ethnic affiliation we are accused of ‘wanting to destroy Israel and expel or murder its citizens.’ That is the settler-colonial mindset.
That was the reaction of Whites to the abolition of Apartheid in Southern Africa because they equate the removal of racial supremacy with their own destruction. Quite literally they cannot contemplate anything other than a Jewish Supremacist state which rules over millions of others.
No amount of argument will persuade them that equality does not equal murder and destruction.
@kuhnberg – when you state “committed Zionists will interpret that as denying the Jewish people their right to a homeland, and by extension, wishing to destroy the state of Israel along with its Jewish occupants” does that not also mean that some committed Zionists conflate Jews, Zionism, and Israel ? And if so, isnt that something they accuse those on the left they call antisemitic of doing ?
“Anti-Zionism is by definition a polarising stance. While certain iterations of Zionism are racist, at least by implication, the main thrust of the ideology is less Jewish supremacy than the need of the Jewish people to have a homeland in the land of Israel”
In practise, Zionism has tended to treat Palestinians as less than, regardless of if we call that racism or not, and its intention might be good, but some of its actual outcomes havent been.