The Anti-Defamation League Is Bad For Jews
By spreading meritless charges of antisemitism, the ADL endangers the very community it claims to defend.
When speakers at an education conference in Denver last month accused Israel of genocide and racism, the comments sparked a media firestorm that drew national coverage.
The reason this otherwise obscure venue gained such widespread attention was a letter from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other organizations condemning the speakers for antisemitism.
One of the speakers, Ruha Benjamin, a professor of African-American studies at Princeton, charged Israel with genocide and referred to the victims of its assault on Gaza as “martyrs.” Another, Suzanne Barakat, the former director of the Health and Human Rights Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, likewise accused Israel of genocide. She also described it as “a state founded on ethnocentric superiority as an inherently systemically racist framework.”
Upon hearing the remarks, a group of Jewish attendees reported feeling “unsafe”—to the point that “we tucked our Magen Davids [Jewish stars] in our shirts and walked out as those around us glared and whispered.”
In the ensuing days, the ADL, together with the Jewish Federation of North America, the American Jewish Committee, and Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools, published a letter denouncing the statements as antisemitic. The comments, they maintained, amounted to "extreme, biased, and false anti-Zionist and anti-Israel rhetoric.” They also accused the speakers and organizers of “anti-Jewish discrimination” and “contributing to the hostile atmosphere for Jewish community members.”
But did the comments in question really qualify as antisemitic? The answer is no—not even close, in fact. Still, the episode reveals how the ADL and its allies weaponize the charge of antisemitism to intimidate critics of Israel. By doing so, they trivialize the very concept and undermine efforts to combat the problem.
‘They Don’t Just Overcook a Hamburger, Jerry!’
Let us start with what antisemitism means—and what it does not. Although numerous organizations have addressed the issue, the most well-known effort is that of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Its “Working Definition of Antisemitism” is frequently cited and has even found its way into state law.
I discussed the many problems with this document in a previous essay and will not repeat myself here. Suffice it to say, the IHRA definition is hopelessly vague and could conceivably designate anything under the sun as antisemitic. It is akin to putting Jerry Seinfeld’s Uncle Leo in charge of rooting out antisemites.
Of course, the ambiguity was likely the point, since it permits the speaker to hurl the charge of antisemitism at anyone they wish without having to argue the merits.
The IHRA proceeds to do just that in its “Working Definition” document when it lists some examples of antisemitism. While most of them are reasonable, a few have drawn criticism, including this one:
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
Tellingly, the ADL and its coauthors use exactly this language in their letter. Dr. Barakat, they contend, “label[ed] the establishment of Israel as a ‘racist’ endeavor.” Her actual quote described Israel as a “state founded on ethnocentric superiority as an inherently systemically racist framework.”
To say “Jews are racist” would qualify as antisemitic. That is because the speaker is expressing antipathy towards Jews on the basis of their Jewishness. Saying Israel is racist, on the other hand, conveys animus toward a state—one which happens to call itself Jewish but whose Jewishness is beside the point.
Even if she had used the words ascribed to her, it would make no sense to call them antisemitic. “The existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” is a statement about Israel, not Jews. Israel, after all, is hardly coterminous with the Jewish community, as many Jews neither live there nor agree with the tenets on which it was founded.
A reasonable formulation of antisemitism would restrict itself to Jews. This is how other organizations frame their definitions. Take the Jerusalem Declaration, which defines antisemitism as “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).”
To say “Jews are racist” would qualify as antisemitic under the Jerusalem Declaration. That is because the speaker is expressing antipathy towards Jews on the basis of their Jewishness. Saying Israel is racist, on the other hand, conveys animus toward a state—one which happens to call itself Jewish but whose Jewishness is beside the point.
The Crime of Genocide
Any state, including Israel, can be guilty of racism and genocide. The fact that Israel pronounces itself to be a Jewish state does not magically exempt it from such charges—regardless of what the IHRA, the ADL, or anyone else would like you to think.
Either Israel’s conduct amounts to genocide under these terms or it does not. Deciding the matter requires input from trained experts, and it is ludicrous to suggest, as the ADL does, that one of the two possible answers is antisemitic.
As it happens, Israel probably is guilty of genocide. To say so is not to draw equivalence between Israel’s crimes and those of the Nazis. What it does mean is that Israel has violated the United Nations Genocide Convention.
The Genocide Convention defines genocide as any of five acts undertaken “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” The five acts include killing members of the group, harming members of the group, inflicting conditions of life intended to destroy the group in whole or in part, attempting to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring the group’s children to another group.
Either Israel’s conduct amounts to genocide under these terms or it does not. Deciding the matter requires input from trained experts, and it is ludicrous to suggest, as the ADL does, that one of the two possible answers is antisemitic.
Indeed, numerous scholars and human rights organizations, including Israeli ones, have found the charge of genocide to be warranted—conclusions the ADL and its allies cannot simply wish away. When Dr. Barakat accused Israel of genocide, she was explicitly invoking the findings of these specialists. (I was not able to locate a transcript of Professor Benjamin’s remarks and so cannot say what she based her claims on).
Among those who contend that Israel is plausibly guilty of genocide are Human Rights Watch; Amnesty International; the International Court of Justice; the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967; Amos Goldberg, a specialist in Holocaust and genocide studies at Hebrew University; William A. Schabas, a professor of international human rights law at Middlesex University; Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court; Aryeh Neier, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch; and Raz Segal, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University.
Ethnic Cleansing and the Crime of Apartheid
So much for genocide. What about Dr. Barakat’s other claim—that Israel was “founded on ethnocentric superiority as an inherently systemically racist framework?” This, like the charge of genocide, is an empirical statement, one that is either true or false and which can only be decided by weighing the available evidence. While the ADL is under no obligation to like the answer, it cannot yell “antisemite!” at somebody merely for offering one.
In short, the notion that it is antisemitic to make verifiable statements about Israel—statements supported by the world’s leading human rights experts—is nonsense. When the ADL claims otherwise, it is trying to bludgeon others into silence for having the temerity to advance views it dislikes.
The IHRA considers it antisemitic to describe “the existence of a State of Israel as a racist endeavor.” In doing so, however, it confronts a rather glaring problem, which is that it was a racist endeavor. We know this because Israel’s founders said it was a racist endeavor.
David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Zionist movement and Israel’s first prime minister, wrote in July 1937 that the attainment of Jewish statehood would require what today would be called ethnic cleansing:
The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the First and Second Temples. … This thing must be done now…1
That was not a one-off statement. In October 1941, he affirmed that “it is impossible to imagine general evacuation [of the Palestinians] without compulsion, and brutal compulsion.”2
Such views were common among the Zionist leadership at the time. Menachim Ussishkin, the head of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), commented in June 1938 that
We cannot begin the Jewish state with a population of which the Arabs…constitute almost half and the Jews exist on the land in very small numbers…Such a state cannot survive even for half an hour.3
Equally blunt was Yosef Weitz, the chief the JNF’s Lands Department. “The only solution,” he declared in December 1940, “is a Land of Israel, at least a western Land of Israel [i.e., Palestine], without Arabs,” adding that “there is no room here for compromises.”4
Eliahu Dobkin, the director of the Jewish Agency’s Immigration Department, echoed this sentiment when he announced in May 1944 that “there will be in the country a large [Palestinian] minority and it must be ejected. There is no room for our internal inhibitions…”5
And so it came to be. In the months surrounding Israel’s declaration of independence, at least 720,000 out of a prewar population of 1.3 million Palestinians were forced from their homes.6 Not all fled as a result of direct coercion by Zionist forces or the threat thereof. But most did. What’s more, none were allowed to return. “In this sense,” explains Benny Morris, a leading historian of the era, “it may fairly be said that all 700,000 or so who ended up as refugees were compulsorily displaced or ‘expelled’.”7
When the state you want to build requires, by your own acknowledgement, the ethnic cleansing of masses of people, that is pretty much the definition of a “racist endeavor.” It certainly qualifies as “a state founded on ethnocentric superiority,” to borrow Dr. Barakat’s phrasing.
As for the other part of her statement—that Israel is based on an “inherently systemically racist framework”—this too finds support from human rights organizations, which conclude that Israel is guilty of apartheid.
Apartheid is not an antisemitic slur; it is crime against humanity under the Rome Statute. In 2022, the UN Special Rapporteur determined that
the political system of entrenched rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that endows one racial-national-ethnic group with substantial rights, benefits and privileges while intentionally subjecting another group to live behind walls and checkpoints and under a permanent military rule sans droits, sans égalité, sans dignité et sans liberté (without rights, without equality, without dignity and without freedom) satisfies the prevailing evidentiary standard for the existence of apartheid.
This finding is confirmed by other organizations as well, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Yesh Din, an Israeli NGO.
In this way, the ADL and others like it are enabling the very forces with the intent and ability to harm the Jewish community. Far from helping us, their flimsy and disingenuous charges of antisemitism end up putting us in danger.
In short, the notion that it is antisemitic to make verifiable statements about Israel—statements supported by the world’s leading human rights experts—is nonsense. When the ADL claims otherwise, it is trying to bludgeon others into silence for having the temerity to advance views it dislikes. The result is to cheapen the term and obscure the many real examples of antisemitism.
Be Careful Who You Ally With
The ADL’s shtick is clear: to level false charges of antisemitism in order to confer immunity on Israel and muzzle those who might besmirch its reputation. But its crusade against imaginary antisemitism serves only to abet the real kind. It both distracts from genuine antisemitism and alienates Jews from their natural allies.
Make no mistake: Antisemitism is a threat. It always has been and always will be. The question is how we, as Jews, can shield ourselves from it.
Many see Israel as the answer. The Jewish state, they believe, is the last bastion that keeps us safe. To this, I would ask: How’s that working out for us? After 75 years of war and occupation, would anyone really try to argue that Israeli Jews are safe?
There is only one institution with a proven track record of protecting Jews, and it is not Israel; it is liberal democracy. The problem is that liberal democracy itself is in danger—not just in the U.S. but across the world. The culprits, with few exceptions, are found on the right, while those committed to its preservation overwhelmingly reside on the left.
By and large, people on the left see Israel’s racist and genocidal conduct for what it is. Consequently, when the ADL, on behalf of Jews, vilifies others as antisemitic for acknowledging obvious facts about Israel, it drives away the very allies on which we depend.
It simultaneously pushes Jews into the arms of the right. However common antisemitism is on the fringes of the left—and it is certainly present, as I have discussed previously—its manifestations on the right are far more dangerous. Students for Justice in Palestine has rightly earned rebuke for its antisemitism. But it is not exactly on the verge of taking over Washington.
Do you know who is? The Republican Party. The GOP, for all its Zionist window dressing, is home to a shocking number of antisemites, including Donald Trump himself. They are not the type who valorize Hamas, of course. Instead, they are the old-school, blood-and-soil variety—the kind that thinks the government is controlled by a secret Jewish cabal bent on destroying the volk.
Yet, these are precisely the forces with whom the ADL aligns us with its baseless smears of antisemitism. Every time the ADL bashes the left for its ostensible Jew-hatred, Republicans are thrilled. “Come over to our side,” they reassure us in the course of dismantling liberal democracy, “we are your protectors.”
In this way, the ADL and others like it are enabling the very forces with the intent and ability to harm the Jewish community. Far from helping us, their flimsy and disingenuous charges of antisemitism end up putting us in danger. But we, as Jews, are under no obligation to take them seriously.
The ADL is not our friend, and it is high time we said so.
Ben-Gurion, diary entry for 12 July 1937, cited in Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Revisited, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 101.
Ben-Gurion, "Outlines for Zionist Policy," 15 October 1941, Z4/14. 632, Central Zionist Archives (CZA), cited in Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestinian Studies, 1992), p. 128.
Protocol of the Jewish Agency Executive (JAE) meeting of 12 June 1938, Vol. 28, no. 53, CZA, cited in Masalha, Expulsion…, pp. 111-12.
Weitz diary entry, 20 December 1940, cited in Morris, The Birth…, p. 109.
Protocol of the JAE Meeting of 7 May 1944, cited in Morris, The Birth…, pp. 110-11.
Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 (New York: Picador, 2021), p. 57.
Morris, The Birth…, p. 842.
The ADL is now bad for everyone. Their betrayal of the American people will not be forgotten.