I first learned about the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) when I was in middle school. An extracurricular club at some school sang a Christian hymn as part of their traditions. The ADL got that banned. I was still in my “angry atheist” phase, so I thought that was pretty awesome. I then filed away the ADL with the ACLU, NAACP, and other acronymized (it’s a real word, I promise) civil rights groups.

The ADL popped up on my radar again in 2016, the first year I was old enough to vote. They were one of the many groups that criticized the Trump campaign, so they remained a-okay in my book. I also learned they were originally founded by Jews to combat antisemitism but had since expanded their focus to hate movements in general. Nice.

Sometime in 2021 I started to deconstruct the Zionist propaganda I grew up around. The ADL reared its head once again, this time in a very different light. I learned that the ADL is explicitly Zionist, and their definition of antisemitism includes delegitimizing Israel.

As Israel ramped up their violence against Palestinians and Hamas responded with their attack on October 7, 2023, the ADL became more relevant in global politics. Today, they are one of the most vocal Zionist organizations in the US.

The History

The Anti-Defamation League was founded in 1913 by the American Jewish advocacy organization B’nai B’rith as a reaction to the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish man. Frank was the superintendent of a factory in Atlanta, Georgia, where a 13-year-old girl was murdered. Frank was given the death penalty, which was eventually commuted to life in prison. A mob then abducted him from prison and hanged him. Historians today generally agree that Frank was innocent, his conviction a result of antisemitism.

As an aside, these events are the focus of my favorite musical, Parade. I highly recommend it. I prefer the original cast recording, but the revival from a few years ago is also excellent.

The ADL’s first big win came in 1927 when they organized a boycott of Henry Ford’s newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, which contained extremely antisemitic rhetoric. Yes, that Henry Ford, and no, I don’t know why he had a newspaper. They eventually succeeded in pressuring Ford to issue an apology.

Obviously, the ADL opposed Nazi Germany and worked to infiltrate and surveil pro-Nazi groups in the US. These spy tactics will serve them well in the decades to come.

Post-World War II, the ADL was outwardly against McCarthyism. However, they fully cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee in rooting out communists in the organization. They also denied the possibility of antisemitism contributing to verdicts against Jewish communists. Remember this, because it’s not the last time the ADL ignores antisemitism to pursue an agenda.

During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, the ADL worked with the NAACP to push forward progressive legislation like the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act of the 60s.

So far, the ADL seems pretty great. Sure, they bought into the red scare propaganda and snitched on members, but basically everyone did. Their overall impact to this point has been positive. Unfortunately, we now come to a particularly bloody week in 1967.

The Six Day War

You might have noticed I haven’t really talked about Israel yet. Surprisingly, the first couple decades of the country’s existence aren’t that relevant to the ADL’s activities. Sure, they had an office in Tel Aviv, but they’d been focused on other stuff Stateside.

The SparkNotes version is this: in 1947, the new state of Israel was carved out of Mandatory Palestine to be a “Nation for Jews.” War erupted in 1948, when a coalition of Arab countries pushed back against the UN Partition Plan, which reallocated a majority of Palestine to Jews, despite their smaller population. The Arab states also argued that Palestine should be dictated by those that live there, not Western empires. The 1948 Arab-Israeli War ended with Israel annexing more than half of the territory initially allocated to Arabs, in addition to the land they already had. The 1949 Armistice Agreements established demarcation lines between Israel, Egypt-occupied Gaza, and the Jordanian West Bank.

These lines mostly held until 1967, when Egypt tried to prevent Israel from using the Straits of Tiran. Israel initiated combat by launching a massive surprise attack on Egypt that basically crippled their military before the war even started. Six days later, Israel had occupied the Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza Strip, taken from Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, respectively. Israel forced almost half a million Arabs out of these territories and destroyed their villages, an ethnic cleansing that came to be known as the Naksa. Don’t confuse this with the Nakba, which was when Israel ethnically cleansed Palestinian Arabs all the way back in 1948. It’s hard to keep track of all these crimes against humanity.

Oh, Israel also torpedoed the USS Liberty, an American intelligence vessel, killing 34 and injuring 171 Americans. Israel claims they thought it was an Egyptian vessel, but Israel does have a long history of “accidentally” killing allied non-combatants…

The ADL obviously threw their support behind Israel’s colonial moves. The state’s actions, such as the Naksa and the USS Liberty incident, were subject to criticism from people that don’t like war crimes. With help from AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the ADL graced us with the term “new antisemitism.” The “New Coke” of anti-Jewish rhetoric, new antisemitism added certain criticism of Israel and “anti-Israel actions” to their definition of original antisemitism.

The ADL’s response to the Six-Day War caused a significant change in how we think about “Jewishness”. New antisemitism linked Zionism to Judaism, intentionally muddying the water to suppress criticism of Israel. Keep that in mind when we look at the ADL’s more recent activity.

The Civil Rights Era

The ADL returned to its fight against hate through the Cold War, focusing on defining and tracking hate crimes, as well as working to ensure Soviet Jews have the right to leave the USSR (and go to Israel). I find it notable that emigration is a right they hold precious for Jews across the world, but not for Gazans, who are effectively trapped while Israel controls their borders.

The ADL was critical of Nelson Mandela during the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and collaborated extensively with the apartheid country. They didn’t like that he stood in solidarity with victims of apartheid everywhere, which included Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. As Mandela grew in popularity, the ADL quietly changed their tune.

On their website, the ADL claims some credit for the passage of “landmark federal antiterrorism legislation” in 1996 that “establishes a ban on fundraising and material support for foreign terrorist organizations and bars their leaders from the U.S.” They’re referring to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which grants law enforcement officers greater resources to combat terrorism. It also restricts habeas corpus, making it much harder to appeal convictions. This has resulted in innocent people facing imprisonment or even death with no recourse. A song from Parade just popped into my head. I wonder why.

The ADL’s snafu with the San Francisco police, however, is not on their website. In 1993, ADL offices in San Francisco were searched by SFPD on the suspicion of surveilling private citizens. The search revealed stolen police records that included classified information. The subsequent investigation turned up conspiracy between certain police officers and the ADL, who were given free trips to Israel for handing over confidential reports. The ADL shared this information with Israel, but claimed that accusing them of being a foreign agent was antisemitic. Well, I guess it’s new antisemitic.

Police also found a private investigator hired by the ADL to spy on white supremacists, Arabs, and anti-Zionists. This PI was part of the ADL’s anti-anti-apartheid work, where they ordered him to dig up dirt on Mandela and Desmond Tutu.

From the end of the 90s to the early 2010s, the ADL participated in activism supporting racial minorities, LGBTQ+, and immigrant rights. The attacks on September 11, 2001 brought in a wave of anti-Muslim hate. In response, the ADL ran campaigns promoting religious freedom and debunking racist conspiracies. While they were doing this, the ADL was also pushing the War on Terror narrative. So while they outwardly worked to help these groups, they supported legislation that discriminated against Arabs and Muslims, encouraged Islamophobia, and massively expanded the police state.

Before we move into the current era of the ADL, I feel that I have to mention their fight with PETA. If you don’t know, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an animal rights non-profit. They’re known for their… interesting advocacy campaigns that only serve to make people hate animal-rights activists. Highlights include “Got Autism?”, a parody of the “Got Milk?” posters, that links autism to drinking cow’s milk (it isn’t) or changing “anti-animal” phrases, like “kill two birds with one stone” to “feed two birds with one scone.” PETA made a “Holocaust on your plate” art installation in the early 2000s, featuring images of factory farms next to concentration camp victims. The ADL got them to apologize.

Greenblatt’s ADL

In 2015, Abraham Foxman (known for his awesome name) stepped down as national director after 28 years in the role. He was succeeded by the current director and CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt. Before the ADL, Greenblatt founded and invested in multiple companies that focused on social entrepreneurship, an approach to business that focused on social and societal issues. Greenblatt later joined the Obama administration in his second term, where he served as Special Assistant to the President and the Director of the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation. The SICP focused on using capitalistic practices to enact social change. Reading into it, the whole concept felt like something corporate people talk about to feel good about what they’re doing. But I’m neither an economist nor a corporate stooge, so it all kind of went over my head.

Under Greenblatt, the ADL went all-in on new antisemitism. The organization has quietly been removing references to general civil rights advocacy on their website. Instead, they’re focusing hard on Zionism, to the point that actual antisemitism is ignored or even excused.

Drawing on his experience in business, Greenblatt directed the ADL to spend more time on running cover for Israel and drawing in donors. This created a schism within the organization. Members that worked in civil rights and extremism expressed discomfort with their director making Zionism, not antisemitism, the core target of the ADL. The divide has only widened as Israel’s atrocities gain more attention. Members have been resigning, such as Joe Berman, the former chair of the ADL’s National Legal Affairs Committee. Berman specifically cited the organization’s narrowed focus as cause for his resignation. He also pointed out that, despite Greenblatt’s stated goal of fighting antisemitism, he chooses to ignore it when the source is also Zionist.

Greenblatt criticized Elon Musk when he boosted white supremacists after purchasing Twitter (now called X). Greenblatt very quickly pivoted to praising Musk when the billionaire banned the phrases “decolonization” and “from the river to the sea” from the site. This triggered another round of resignations, including former ADL Vice President Yael Eisenstat. The ADL has kept defending Musk despite his white supremacist tendencies, such as supporting Alternative für Deutschland, the German neo-Nazi party. When Musk performed a Nazi salute twice at a Trump rally, the ADL issued a statement calling it an “awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm.” Remember how I said the ADL ignores actual Nazis when they serve a Zionist agenda?

Jonathan Greenblatt is not the focus of this piece, so I’m just going to quickly run through some other highlights:

• Favorably compared Elon Musk to Henry Ford, one of the most well-known American antisemites in history (and former target of the ADL itself)
• Accused activist groups Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine of being funded by Hamas, as well as being proxies for Iran. There is no evidence for either of these claims
• Supported Trump’s efforts to illegally deport pro-Palestinian activists like Mahmoud Khalil
• Compared the keffiyeh to the swastika

Continuing their collaboration with Israel, the ADL created a department to edit Wikipedia articles. These editors were directed to modify instances of “anti-Israel bias” on the site. What this actually amounted to was changing language about Israel to be more positive, while removing or minimizing valid criticism. The Wikipedia community reached a consensus that the ADL was no longer considered a reliable source after they continuously edited their own Wikipedia page.

While the ADL claims to have ended this program, I have my doubts. I’ve come across articles about Zionist organizations, such as Hadassah, that read more like a glowing review of the organization than an objective presentation of facts. Looking at the pages’ edit history, there are some editors whose only contribution is adding opinionated language. Instead of simply saying “Group A started Project X,” now Group A “began the revolutionary Project X that greatly improved such-and-such.” I’m still looking into it, but that’s like, actual journalism. Turns out journalism is way harder than just making fun of NFTs.

The League of Today

These days, the ADL works with legislators, lobbyists, and other foreign interest groups to expand Israel’s reach in the Middle East and the United States. While the organization has at times criticized Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, they have never stopped their support for the country he leads. The ADL says they are in favor of a two-state solution, but refuses to take any meaningful stand against Israeli officials who call for the continued extermination of Gazans. The League insists they fight hate, but continues to push new antisemitism, inexplicably tying an expansionist, apartheid state engaged in genocide to Judaism. This rhetoric has led to an increase in actual antisemitism. Anti-Zionist Jews now have to deal with the assumption that we’re all genocidal monsters that murder children, journalists, and doctors, in addition to the normal antisemitism the ADL claims to fight.

From civil rights advocate to defender of genocide, the Anti-Defamation League fails to live up to its supposed ideals. In pursuing their Zionist goals, the League threw away the legacy they built over a century of genuine good.

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If you’ve previously supported the ADL, I hope this history convinces you to look to other organizations that carry the torch the ADL stepped on. The Southern Poverty Law Center fights all forms of hate, including antisemitism and anti-Arab discrimination. If you’d prefer a Jewish organization or one dedicated to anti-Zionism, Jewish Voice for Peace calls for an end to US support of Israel. And of course my favorite NGO, Doctors Without Borders, provides medical care and aid to victims of any disaster, natural or man-made.

Check out #DropTheADL, who did a much more extensive write-up on this topic than I did!