What Happened to the Anti-Defamation League?
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For those of us who don’t follow American policy around Israel and larger Jewish issues generally, it can be confusing to watch what has happened to the Anti-Defamation League, which has transformed from generally good organization doing generally good work to islamophobic fascists. What the heck is up? Robert Kuttner has a long piece on this at the American Prospect:
THE ADL HAS LONG BEEN DEVOTED to Israel in addition to battling domestic antisemitism, but under Jonathan Greenblatt, whose tenure as CEO since 2015 coincides with the rapacious behavior and growing global isolation of Israel, the Zionist mission has increasingly crowded out the domestic one and impeached the ADL’s own credibility.
In a 2022 speech to ADL leaders, Greenblatt flatly said that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” ADL’s annual reports on antisemitic incidents include peaceful protests criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza or expressing sympathy with Palestinians.
In January 2024, two-thirds of the ADL’s tally of more than 3,283 antisemitic incidents in the United States since October 7, 2023, were tied to the Gaza war. The ADL even classified anti-war protest events led by groups like Jewish Voice for Peace as anti-Israel, and hence antisemitic.
In shifting its emphasis and resources to trying to equate criticism of Israel’s behavior with antisemitism, the ADL has increasingly disinvested from its historic mission to promote tolerance. In December 2023, the ADL ended its anti-bias education program, A World of Difference. The program was founded in 1985 to address bias in all forms and was used in school curricula.
In June 2025, the ADL laid off 22 employees as part of a shift away from broader civil rights work in favor of focusing on its specific definition of antisemitism. Subsequently, the ADL deleted its Glossary of Extremism, which contained thousands of entries on neo-Nazi groups, militias, and antisemitic conspiracies, after facing criticism by Elon Musk.
Other ADL employees quit in protest against the shift in mission. Our former colleague, Jonathan Guyer, in a piece for The Guardian, quoted ADL researcher Stephen Rea: “I resigned because I felt that Jonathan Greenblatt’s comments were undermining my ability as a researcher to fight online hate and harassment.”
Another senior manager quoted anonymously sent a message to ADL colleagues: “There is no comparison between white supremacists and insurrectionists and those who espouse anti-Israel rhetoric, and to suggest otherwise is both intellectually dishonest and damaging to our reputation as experts in extremism.”
Greenblatt is obviously an evil man and I don’t doubt that the big funders, or some of them anyway, are on his side. I wonder how much Miriam Adelson money is involved. But of course this does not represent the majority of Jewish Americans at all. It’s bad stuff.