A dozen former officials from the Anti-Defamation League are now going on-record with JTA regarding why they have recently resigned from the organization: It is prioritizing anti-Semitism over non-Jewish groups’ pet social causes.
The officials appear to be frozen in time on October 6, 2023. Here is Joe Berman, for years one of the ADL’s top litigation figures, who resigned in May and spoke to JTA a few days ago:
“We stood up for the LGBTQ community, for the African American community, for immigrants, and it was a real core part of our mission. And our [legal] briefs were just incredible. And we would often do it in coalition with other civil rights groups, and that’s all gone. That respect that we had is just completely gone.”
Berman’s conclusion: “When you don’t work on [activism] with other groups, then you’re not going to have those other groups come into your defense. And that was the whole basis. It’s gone now.”
I turned this quote around in my head repeatedly trying to understand how a person could say this without a trace of irony. Then I stared through it like those Magic Eye stereograms, hoping its true form would suddenly reveal itself in 3D. I even considered trying to decipher it as if it were a cryptogram, but who—besides ex-ADL volunteer litigators—has all that time for puzzles and games?
Here’s a story for Berman. Yesterday morning Israel time (where I’m currently visiting), I checked social media out of habit, despite the fact that it was the middle of the night back in the U.S. I saw a tweet or two mentioning a shooting that killed multiple Jews at a Hanukkah event. Alarmed, I went to Twitter’s list of trending stories and clicked on a headline about a drive-by shooting of a Jewish home in California that was decorated for Hanukkah. I was momentarily relieved when the article said there were no casualties. Then I went back to Twitter’s main timeline and saw a flurry of posts about Bondi Beach in Australia.
Oh, I thought, they’re talking about a different Hanukkah shooting.
I have no doubt that Berman and the 11 others who spoke to JTA are defending the values they hold dear. But I absolutely do not have the patience for cornball universalism when I’m trying to figure out which Hanukkah shooting is being referenced on my social media feed.
One of the reasons fighting anti-Semitism is so time-consuming is that these “allies” of which Berman speaks do not exist. Sure, individuals of all sorts stand with us, but the alphabet soup of progressive social dogma enforcers has united—against the Jews. The single most salient fact of the post-Oct. 7 world, at least in the United States, is this: Every major group that Jewish advocacy organizations fought for are either sitting this one out or suiting up for the other side.
The ADL’s former director of education also spoke to JTA and lamented the demise of ADL’s “holistic anti-bigotry training, as opposed to emphasizing the targeting of a single vulnerable population.” To be clear, he is referring to a form of programming not much different from Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—the institutional ideology that has made college campuses intolerant of the mere presence of Jews. In a roundabout way, this complaint is that the ADL isn’t fomenting enough anti-Semitism.
What else is on the list of grievances? A former deputy director recalls in horror the time that the ADL’s pro-abortion faction went to war against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. She was not horrified by the irresponsible partisanship and the elevation of abortion by a Jewish group; she was upset about CEO Jonathan Greenblatt’s apparent reaction: “Jonathan came and he was very angry. He said women’s issues are not core issues.”
And on it goes like that.
Truth is, these unhappy campers have indeed revealed evidence of the ADL’s mismanagement. Because the Anti-Defamation League should not have been an organization at which these professionals were comfortable working for as long as they were. At the same time, it’s really too bad that they couldn’t adjust to the new reality—that a system of progressive alliances the ADL had built over Greenblatt’s tenure was illusory, that a frightening amount of time and resources had been spent supporting activists who would like to see us pushed into the sea, and that the Jews will be forced to win this battle with a greatly reduced roster of allies. The good news is that those who want to be part of the fight aren’t going anywhere.
