The ADL Has Chosen a Side. And It’s Not the Jewish One

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Anti-Defamation League CEO and national director Jonathan Greenblatt speaks at the ADL National Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., June 4, 2019. (Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The organization’s championing of progressives has increasingly clashed with its stated mission of calling out antisemitism.<
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Not long after a slew of attacks on religious New York City Jews, the Anti-Defamation League’s new director of Jewish outreach, Tema Smith, declared, “One of these days we need to talk about how the Jewish community’s reactions to antisemitism coming from Black people is inherently tied to (implicitly racist) fears of Black violence.”

In the progressive hierarchy of victimhood, devout Jews — whose ancestors probably knew a thing or two about systemic bigotry — are the ones obligated to wrestle with their alleged, latent racism after being smashed over the head with a brick as they walked down the street minding their own business. Well, that is, if they ever regain consciousness.

Once a champion of Zionism, the ADL now hires a Jewish outreach director who demands that her “community” give a proper hearing to those who defend the targeting of Jewish civilians through suicide bombing. “Here’s the thing,” tweeted Smith, “Jews *have* to be ok with Palestinians *explaining* why some turn to terrorism. The whole problem with the ‘it was 18 years ago, she was in college’ line is that it denies her right to even opine on the Palestinian experience.” Smith made this comment when defending then–president-elect Joe Biden’s pick for deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, Reema Dodin, who said in the wake of the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing that killed 15 civilians (including seven children and a pregnant American woman) that such bombings were “the last resort of a desperate people.”

Does the ADL believe we have a responsibility to hear out every violent white supremacist’s thought process, as well? After all, the ADL spends a lot of time pressuring tech companies and other media outlets to censor speech that it deems hateful (like, God forbid, criticizing leftist banker George Soros). Do certain people get a special dispensation for rationalizing political violence?

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Smith is the perfect hire for the new ADL, a Democrat partisan outfit run by former Barack Obama appointee Jonathan Greenblatt, who’s spent years degrading the group’s mission of fighting antisemitism and building its social-justice agenda. (Greenblatt’s new book is yet another play on Sinclair Lewis’s paranoid novel, It Can’t Happen Here. “From Microaggression to Genocide” is one of the chapters, so you get the idea.)

The ADL, self-anointed arbiter of antisemitism, is useful in providing lazy journalists with quotes confirming preexisting notions about antisemitism being largely a right-wing phenomenon. There is the rare perfunctory, half-hearted condemnation of some leftist Jew baiting, but as Seth Mandel points out, in many ways, the ADL is now complicit in normalizing Jew hatred, by shielding from condemnation the progressive politicians who peddle it:

If there’s one organization whose responsibility it is to prepare not just the Jewish community but the wider United States public and its government for emerging anti-Semitic threats, it’s the ADL. Instead, the head of the ADL has been spreading a cynical left-wing myth about anti-Semitism while threats to the Jewish community fester.

And it’s even worse than it looks, because while there’s long been a willful blindness toward anti-Semitism from the left, the ADL and other partisan groups aren’t the ones experiencing this blindness. They’re the blinders.

Other, lesser-known groups — Bend the Arc and the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, to name just two — have also cynically adopted Judaism to advance often-authoritarian, completely irreligious, progressive ideas. All these groups peddle grievances under the idea of tikkun olam, which, roughly translated, means “healing the world,” an obscure open-ended directive from God that’s used as a cudgel by the Jewish Left to convert every one of its partisan causes into religious ones: abortion, socialism, social justice, and myriad other issues that have absolutely nothing to do with Judaism. The ADL’s central dilemma — though perhaps it doesn’t see it as such — is that its championing of progressives has now increasingly conflicted with the organization’s stated mission of calling out antisemitism. The hiring of Smith is just the latest example of this problem. In most cases, the ADL seems to have chosen a side, and it’s not the Jewish one.

January 27, 2022 | 2 Comments »

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  1. Here is a very troubling consequence to the use of the ADL’s recent redefinition of racism as I described below. The the head of the ADL was forced to admonish Whoopi for simply applying the ADL’s own definition of racism when she stated that the Holocaust was not due to racism. The hypocrisy exhibited by the ADL’s inconsistency on this topic and its indefensible use of this new definition needs to be addressed and should draw the attention and ire of every Jew.

    ADL CEO scolds Whoopi Goldberg for Holocaust gaffe consistent with ADL’s woke redefinition of racism

    Anti-Defamation League chief Jonathan Greenblatt blasted Goldberg for saying Nazi genocide was ‘not about race,’ despite organization defining racism in way that supports Goldberg’s controversial, historically inaccurate remarks.
    By Aaron Kliegman

    Updated: February 1, 2022 – 11:31pm

    Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), rebuked Whoopi Goldberg this week for saying the Holocaust was “not about race.” However, Goldberg’s comments were consistent with the ADL’s own controversial redefinition of racism, while Greenblatt’s rebuttal was inconsistent with his own organization’s woke reduction of racism exclusively to skin color.

    Goldberg made her controversial remarks Monday on ABC’s “The View,” which she cohosts.

    “Let’s be truthful about it because the Holocaust isn’t about race,” she said, referring to the Nazis’ genocidal effort to exterminate the Jewish people during World War II. “It’s not about race. It’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man.”

    Goldberg’s cohosts noted that the Nazis viewed Jews as a different race.

    “It’s about white supremacists going after Jews,” said Ana Navarro.

    “But these are two white groups of people!” Goldberg responded. “The minute you turn it into race it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s how people treat each other. It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, Jews, it’s each other.”

    In his notorious manifesto, “Mein Kampf,” Nazi leader Adolf Hitler described Jews as a separate and inferior race.

    “Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas in reality they are a race?” Hitler wrote.

    Goldberg’s comments drew immediate backlash, including from Jewish groups.

    “Whoopi Goldberg absurdly claims the #Holocaust ‘isn’t about race,'” tweeted David Harris, CEO of the American Jewish Committee. “Nazi Germany considered all Jews a ‘subhuman race.’ That’s why they wanted to exterminate the entire Jewish people, including my family, & almost succeeded. Please rethink & apologize.”

    Six million Jews were “gassed, starved, and massacred because we were deemed an inferior race by the Nazis,” wrote StopAntisemitism.org.

    The U.S. Holocaust Museum, in what appeared to be a response to Goldberg, added: “Racism was central to Nazi ideology. Jews were not defined by religion, but by race. Nazi racist beliefs fueled genocide and mass murder.”

    Among those to rebuke Goldberg was Greenblatt, who characterized her words as a “distortion” of the Nazi genocide.

    “No @WhoopiGoldberg, the #Holocaust was about the Nazis’ systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race,” Greenblatt tweeted. “They dehumanized them and used this racist propaganda to justify slaughtering 6 million Jews. Holocaust distortion is dangerous. #ENOUGH.”

    Goldberg apologized Monday evening for her comments, quoting Greenblatt’s tweet before adding, “I stand corrected.” The actress and comedian said the Holocaust was indeed about race, adding the Jewish people have her full support.

    That same night, Goldberg appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” where she backtracked on her comments and clarified what she meant.

    “I think of race as being something that I can see,” she said. “So, I see you and I know what race you are.”

    The Holocaust “wasn’t based on the skin,” she continued. “You couldn’t tell who was Jewish. They had to delve deeply to figure it out … My point is, they had to do the work.”

    Greenblatt appeared on “The View” the following day to discuss the controversy directly with Goldberg and her fellow cohosts.

    Hours later, Goldberg was suspended from “The View” for two weeks over her initial comments.

    “While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments,” ABC President Kim Godwin said in a statement. “The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family, and communities.”

    During Tuesday’s show, neither Greenblatt nor any of the show’s cohosts noted that the ADL’s own redefinition of racism appears to contradict Greenblatt’s comments on race and the Holocaust while, ironically, supporting Goldberg’s.

    Over the weekend, the ADL came under fire for changing how it defines racism. The current definition on ADL’s website reads: “The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”

    The definition previously stated: “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. Racial separatism is the belief, most of the time based on racism, that different races should remain segregated and apart from one another.”

    Critics argued the change from a traditional definition to a more controversial one was a sign of the ADL embracing an explicitly left-wing ideology.

    According to internet archives, the definition was updated in July 2020, when riots and protests demanding racial justice erupted nationwide in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

    The edit went largely unnoticed by the public until this past weekend, when it received media coverage and criticism on social media. Much of the criticism noted that the ADL’s definition defines racism as something that explicitly benefits white people and can only be perpetrated against people of color.

    It’s unclear how the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust, most of whose victims were European Jews with white skin, can fit within the ADL’s definition of racism. The definition appears to support Goldberg’s initial claims about the Holocaust, despite them being refuted by historical fact, while undermining Greenblatt’s response.

    “This is entirely unacceptable,” the Jewish Policy Center said of the ADL definition.

    “The ADL defines ‘racism’ as something that explicitly benefits white people, koshering any kind of race-based hatred — *very much including antisemitism*, it must be said — that doesn’t,” wrote Seth Mandel, executive editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.

    Just the News reached out to ADL for comment and has yet to hear back.

  2. ADL changes definition of racism:

    Old definition:

    “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. Racial separatism is the belief, most of the time based on racism, that different races should remain segregated and apart from one another”

    New definition:

    The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.

    Here is the story:

    Anti-Defamation League sparks backlash after changing definition of ‘racism’ on website: ‘Racial hierarchy that privileges white people’
    News
    Chris Enloe
    January 29, 2022
    Devonyu/iStock/Getty Images Plus
    Like Blaze News? Get the news that matters most delivered directly to your inbox.

    The Anti-Defamation League drew sharp criticism this week after it was discovered the organization changed the definition of “racism” on its website to align with what critics say is critical race theory.
    What are the details?

    According to the ADL, racism is the “oppression of people of color” through systems that privilege white people.

    “The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people,” the ADL’s definition of “racism” reads.

    The website states the page was last updated in July 2020. Prior to the update, the ADL’s definition of “racism” did not narrowly pit one racial group against another, but spoke broadly about beliefs of superiority and inferiority.

    “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. Racial separatism is the belief, most of the time based on racism, that different races should remain segregated and apart from one another,” the definition previously read.

    Meanwhile, Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines “racism” as:

    …a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

    What was the reaction?

    In addition to being accused of promoting CRT, Jews observed how problematic the definition change is considering that the Holocaust, for example, was entirely about race, but does not fit the ADL’s updated definition of racism.

    “THIS is entirely unacceptable,” the Jewish Policy Center said.

    “The Anti-Definition League,” mocked Noam Blum, who works for Tablet Magazine, a Jewish publication.

    “The ADL defines ‘racism’ as something that explicitly benefits white ppl, koshering any kind of race-based hatred–*very much including antisemitism*, it must be said–that doesn’t,” Seth Mandel, executive editor of the Washington Examiner magazine, said. “ADL also now dividing Jews by an American racial construct, which explicitly downgrades Jewishness as the defining characteristic of their identity.”

    “Dividing the Jewish people by skin color (ie. “Jews of Color” and “White Jews) is profoundly unJewish and destructive,” journalist Abigail Shrier said. “In fact, it is a common tactic of the enemies of the Jewish people and Israel. Beyond foolish for the ADL to adopt it.”