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palestinian rights
Why the Mainstream Media Should Stop Using the ADL as Their Go-To Antisemitism Source
The group uses dubious reporting methods and tends to conflate right-wing racial extremism with pro-Palestine speech and activity.
Jun 14, 2026
More than a decade ago, a video (Mondoweiss, 8/7/14) showed Jodi Rudoren, then The New York Times‘ Jerusalem bureau chief, having a casual and friendly meeting with Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League. The cozy relationship in the video was telling enough, but when the video captured Foxman complaining that the “Arabs” had taken over a famous New York City hotel, and Rudoren shrugging it off, many skeptics viewed this as a window into the Times’ pro-Israel bias.
The recently deceased Foxman (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 5/12/26), famous for promoting the pro-Israel viewpoint and insinuating that critics of Israel were antisemitic, wasn’t Rudoren’s source in this video; they were pals.
Emmaia Gelman’s new book, The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State, is a history of the group, framing it not as a racial justice organization but as a deputy sheriff for the US empire. Gelman shows how the ADL crafts a narrative for the public that pushes Western imperialism rather than equality. In recent years, the ADL’s main focus has been smearing criticism of Israel or support for Palestinian human rights as Jew hatred. As the group (4/4/23) says, “anti-Zionism is indeed antisemitism.”
The book is loosely part of the #DropTheADL campaign, which encourages both progressives and schools to stop citing the group as a source on political extremism, because of its “racist and right-wing” track record. The movement has had limited success: The delegates of the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, voted to sever ties with the ADL, a move that was overruled by the union’s governing board (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 7/21/25).
Over the decades the ADL has established itself as a one-stop research depot for media when it comes to antisemitism.
When major newspapers write about the definition or prevalence of antisemitism, they frequently look to the ADL (New York Times, 2/27/28, 12/10/23, 10/6/24; Washington Post, 10/27/21; Wall Street Journal, 5/6/26; USA Today, 4/22/25, 5/6/26). In the Times obituary for Foxman (5/10/26), the paper wrote:
One reason Mr. Foxman was consulted by journalists and academics was that he made sure his organization could back up its claims with facts and statistics.
Gelman’s research challenges that record, arguing that ADL documentation of antisemitic incidents lacks context, allowing the group to “conflate small ambiguous acts like some kid writing a swastika on their desk with burning a synagogue,” Gelman told FAIR. That’s where their research “got fudgy” and “showed spikes” in antisemitism, leading to reporting filled with “stark terms without context.”
Bulwark of the West
Why is the ADL so influential? In Gelman’s telling, the ADL worked hard in the early days of the Cold War as a news source for Washington, DC officials. It blanketed congressional offices and newsrooms with briefings, newsletters, and press releases, making it a go-to source for civil rights information. Its stances neatly aligned with pro-US Cold War policy, unlike other other civil rights organizations, which anti-communists tended to view with political suspicion.
The book documents much of this history, including how the ADL produced influential media of its own:
One measure of the ADL’s reach into political culture was the ADL Bulletin, a glossy, often chatty magazine of news features and insider tidbits on domestic and international civil rights issues. The Bulletin started the decade with a paid circulation of 150,000—already a major publication, matching about 11% of the concurrent circulation of the New York Times. By 1967 it had grown to nearly 169,000 subscribers.
In particular, she cites the organization’s role in changing US perception of Israel after the 1967 war, establishing the Israeli side as the West’s bulwark against a Soviet-aligned Arab alliance. The group’s
reporting heralded a new project of blanketing US media with articles about Israelis as salt-of-the-earth Westerners, mixing human interest with political argument, and flatly denying Palestinian dispossession.
In the 1970s, the ADL created the radio series Dateline Israel, which “was distributed at no cost to thousands of radio stations and reportedly aired on 500 stations,” where “episodes presented Israel as bustling, hopeful, modern.” Gelman adds:
Dozens of 15-minute radio segments highlighted Jewish ingenuity, character, and desire for peace. They highlighted an ostensible pluralism alongside grateful and supportive Arabs who welcomed colonization.
‘A Bit of Selection Bias’
Gelman wants to see news organizations stop using the ADL as a go-to source, not just because of what she sees as dubious reporting methods, but because the group tends to conflate right-wing racial extremism with pro-Palestine speech and activity.
It’s a long road ahead, she said. “We have progressive media moving away from the ADL,” she said. “What’s left is the legacy media and the big-reach media. The only way I can see that shifting is if journalists themselves begin to revolt.”
Part of the problem is that over the decades the ADL has established itself as a one-stop research depot for media when it comes to antisemitism. Last year, for example, when FAIR asked the Southern Poverty Law Center about a rise in antisemitic and white supremacist content on social media networks like Facebook, a media handler suggested FAIR send its request to the ADL.
There are small signs of change. In a long interview with ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt, New York Times writer Lulu Garcia-Navarro (8/9/25) asked the leader about “young Jews who might self-describe as anti-Zionist or have problems with the state of Israel at the moment.” Greenblatt dismissed them, comparing them to “Hispanic people who support President Trump’s policies at the border.” “There are Blacks for Trump,” he added.
When the writer continued to press this issue, he bit back:
What polls are you seeing? I understand anecdotally you may have heard it from some people. I believe there may be a bit of a selection bias there. Have you gone to any of the mainstream synagogues in New York City, the ones with the largest membership, and asked them? I would encourage you to go to 92nd Street Y. Go to the West Side JCC. Go to Central, Park Avenue, Rodeph Sholom, go to KJ. Go to all these large Jewish synagogues and ask where their young people are.
Later that year, the Forward (11/21/25) reported that “younger Jews are more than twice as likely to identify as anti-Zionist than the overall population.” A Washington Post poll (10/6/25) taken in September 2025 found only 36% of Jewish Americans aged 18 to 34 saying they were emotionally attached to Israel, while 50% of Jews in that age group said that Israel has committed genocide.
A 2026 poll by the Jewish Voter Resource Center found 44% of Jewish Americans under 35 supported a democratic, binational government in Israel-Palestine elected by both Jews and Palestinians—”even as most major Jewish organizations classify calls for a single state as an expression of antisemitism,” the Forward (5/27/26) reported.
But in his interview with the Times, Greenblatt redefined which Jewish opinions mattered to him: not just pro-Israel opinions, but those of monied religious congregations in upper Manhattan, an elite that towers above Jewish communities elsewhere. The exchange makes the leader seem woefully out of touch.
He and his group still enjoy a kind of media access the rest of society can only dream about. But the pushback from the Times reporter is a small signal that some outlets are beginning to look at this group more critically.
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Why Congress Shouldn't Mandate US Intelligence Sharing With Israel
Israel’s use of much US intelligence is apt to be contrary to US interests and the interest of peace and security in the Middle East, and for many of the same reasons underlying the reduced popularity of Israel among the US public.
Jun 10, 2026
Buried deep inside a 192-page intelligence authorization bill is Section 622, titled “United States-Israel Intelligence Sharing Enhancement.” It would require the president, acting through the director of national intelligence and as necessary the secretary of defense, to “expand and enhance intelligence sharing with the Government of Israel” on a list of subjects that encompasses almost every topic of intelligence interest in the Middle East.
The bill, put forward by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would prohibit any suspension, reduction, or limitation of such sharing “except on the basis of a specific and identifiable national security concern determined by the President.” Any such exception would require a report to Congress within 15 days detailing not only the reason for the change but also the categories of information involved. The same report would require an assessment of the anticipated impact on regional security and various other matters.
This proposal is one of several recent moves by those in Washington who carry the Israeli government’s water to keep the United States tied to Israel despite plummeting support for the country among the American public. The most salient form of US support to Israel has been more than $300 billion in economic and especially military assistance. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tried to get ahead of the declining public support and avoid embarrassing losses by suggesting it would be fine with him to phase out the military aid.
Israel’s strategy and that of its US supporters is now to rely on ties with, and support from, the United States that are not as salient as the military aid with its prominent price tag. The strategy includes forms of military integration that are less visible than congressionally appropriated grant aid and therefore less publicly accountable. Section 224 of a defense authorization bill currently in the House of Representatives embodies this form of integration.
Attacks that sabotage diplomacy are among the Israeli operations that might use shared US intelligence.
The mandating of intelligence sharing carries this strategy further by moving it into the shadowy world of relations between intelligence agencies. That world is even farther removed from public visibility and accountability than the defense integration, and even less likely to stimulate thoughts about American taxpayers’ money going to a foreign country. So far, Section 622 of the intelligence bill has received less attention than Section 224 of the defense bill.
The notion of legislating an intelligence liaison relationship in this way, with any foreign country, is bizarre. Liaison with counterpart foreign services, including exchanges of information, is an important but complex part of the intelligence business. The nature of a liaison relationship depends partly on the temperature of the overall political relationship with the country in question but also on other factors known mostly to intelligence officers. These include the collection requirements levied on them, their ability or inability to meet those requirements with national resources, their assessment of the foreign service’s ability and willingness to fill collection gaps, the role that any trading of information plays as quid pro quos in operational cooperation, and the risks of compromising intelligence sources and methods.
Moreover, no single liaison relationship exists in isolation. The US intelligence services need to consider possible implications for their other foreign relationships. For example, one generally does not share with country A information about country B if the United States has a relationship with B that is about at the same level as it has with A. Intelligence liaison involves a hierarchy of relationships, ranging from extensive cooperation with close allies to carefully limited ad hoc exchanges with adversaries. The intelligence community has a staff with the full-time job of monitoring and managing this set of relationships to prevent crossed wires. A congressional mandate regarding a single relationship increases the chance of crossed wires.
An irony is that the Congress considering this mandate is the same Congress that has in effect surrendered to the president its powers under Article I of the Constitution to set tariff rates and to decide whether to wage war. And yet, Section 622 would involve congressional micromanagement of a matter that by its nature needs to be the business of the executive branch and especially the intelligence agencies.
In intelligence, Israel is more of an adversary than an ally. Being an adversary in intelligence means indulging in the hostile act of espionage. Israel has a long record of conducting that type of hostile act against the United States. The best-known case involves the spy Jonathan Pollard, who stole such an overwhelming volume of US secrets that then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger stated to the court that sentenced Pollard that it was difficult “ to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by the defendant in view of the breadth, the critical importance to the US, and the high sensitivity of the information he sold to Israel.”
When Pollard completed his prison sentence and parole in 2020, he was given a hero's welcome, led by Netanyahu himself, on his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel. There was nothing noble in Pollard’s actions. Although he liked to say he was motivated by concern about Israel’s security, before selling his espionage services to Israel he offered to sell US secrets to three other countries and made the same offer to a fourth country even when spying for Israel.
The Israeli espionage threat to the United States has only intensified. Last week, NBC News reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency raised the threat level for such espionage, evidently a reflection mostly of US-Israeli differences over the Iran war. The New York Times quotes an official saying that Israeli intelligence operations aimed at senior US officials during the second Trump administration have become so aggressive as to be “unhinged.”
Any sensitive information, including intelligence secrets, shared with Israel entails a high risk of Israel passing it to other countries, including US adversaries. Israel has a long record of that, too, and not just because Israel probably passed some of the secrets Pollard purloined to the USSR, in exchange for Moscow allowing Soviet Jews to emigrate. Israel’s sharing of US-origin military technology with China has been an issue. That the partner may be a rogue state has not stopped Israel from military and technical cooperation, as demonstrated by its relationship with apartheid-era South Africa, which extended even to the development of nuclear weapons.
The risk of Israel passing sensitive US information to other states continues partly because Israel is hungry for cordial relationships—and especially establishment of new formal diplomatic relations—with any country willing to have such relations despite Israel’s continued subjugation of the Palestinians. Secrets from US intelligence would be very attractive to some of Israel’s partners or potential partners, and thus attractive to Israel as trading material. Those other countries may include China, with which Israel continues to have extensive technical cooperation, and Russia.
Even without any passing to third countries, Israel’s own use of much US intelligence is apt to be contrary to US interests and the interest of peace and security in the Middle East, and for many of the same reasons underlying the reduced popularity of Israel among the US public. Israel has started more wars and attacked more nations than any other country in the Middle East. In recent years it has inflicted more death and destruction on civilians through military operations than any other Middle Eastern state. It uses violence to seek regional hegemony and destroy Palestinian nationhood in ways that are inconsistent with US interests.
The current ill-advised war with Iran demonstrates the sharp divergence of US and Israeli interests. After being the principal influence on President Donald Trump’s decision to launch the war, Netanyahu’s government has been sabotaging efforts to end it. It currently is doing so mainly with relentless attacks in Lebanon that have killed thousands and displaced over a million people. The divergence of objectives was reflected in an expletive-laden phone call last week between Trump and Netanyahu that was mainly about those attacks.
Attacks that sabotage diplomacy are among the Israeli operations that might use shared US intelligence. The United States also will be blamed for aiding other violent Israeli operations because of the “enhanced” intelligence sharing, even if it were no longer paying for Israeli arms.
The supposed escape clause in Section 622 of the intelligence bill would in practice be so cumbersome as to be useless. The required report to Congress would dump the issue on Capitol Hill, where the Israel lobby would quickly depict it as a question of being for or against the security of Israel. The mandated intelligence sharing in the bill thus would tie the president’s hands and prevent any administration from using management of the intelligence liaison relationship as leverage to deter destructive conduct by Israel.
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Occupation and Genocide Anywhere Are a Threat to Democracy and Freedom Everywhere
Not only is taking a stand against the overwhelming devastation that has been unleashed on Palestinians a duty, but also an obligation for people desiring peace and liberation for all.
May 20, 2026
Earlier this year a number of participants announced their withdrawal from Australia’s Adelaide Festival’s "Writer’s Week" following the disinviting of Australian-Palestinian author, Randa Abdel-Fattah. The event was subsequently cancelled.
This made me think of United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese’s words—“The occupation of Palestine must be understood as part of a broader project of domination. This is not merely about the physical borders of historical Palestine. It is a systematic assertion of permanent supremacy that knows no border…”—delivered in her Nelson Mandela Lecture.
Indeed, the impact of the ongoing genocide and occupation not only echo far beyond Palestine, because of our shared humanity, but also because of the impact it is having on freedoms across the globe. The censorship of Abdel-Fattah is yet another example of this, and it is not only happening in Australia. Even in South Africa, a country that charged Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), artists are facing attempts to constrain their work.
The global wave of solidarity with Palestine has been used by some governments as a pretext to diminish freedoms by attacking the right to protest and political participation. While some did this by using laws that were already in place, others enacted ambiguous or unduly expansive legislation criminalizing Palestine solidarity and weaponizing the battle against antisemitism.
Protecting the freedom to advocate for Palestine is essential to protecting the right to protest, a fundamental tenet of democracy.
For instance in the US, Project Esther was released by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank also responsible for the odious Project 2025. The strategy’s recommendations have made their way into the policy of the Trump administration. This includes suing, firing, deporting, and defaming activists, organizations, and institutions by effectively claiming that involvement in advocacy for Palestine is material support of "a terrorist support network.” And also clamping down on college and university campuses where “more than 3,100 people have been arrested or detained.”
The United Kingdom, on the other hand, used counterterrorism legislation to ban Palestine Action. This despite an intelligence assessment report undermining the government’s claims by finding that most of the groups’ activities are “not terrorism” and the ban risked wrongfully criminalizing people. While the ban has been found to be unlawful, since put into effect in July 2025 terrorism arrests have increased by 660%, with the majority of these linked to it.
Across Europe Palestine solidarity was particularly targeted, like in Germany where the homes of pro-Palestinian activists have been raided and support for Israel has become a prerequisite for citizenship.
The effects of these actions will not be limited to Palestine advocacy and puts all movements at risk by diminishing freedoms that enable organizing across issues. So protecting the freedom to advocate for Palestine is essential to protecting the right to protest, a fundamental tenet of democracy.
Research by investigative journalist and author of The Palestine Laboratory, Andrew Loewenstein, identified over 120 countries that have bought weapons or some form of repressive technology from Israel, all principally tested on Palestinians.
Israel provided military and strategic support to apartheid South Africa’s invasion of Angola, resulting in mass casualties; it is among the countries that armed perpetrators of Rwanda’s genocide and Myanmar at a time it was found to be committing a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” against its Rohingya Muslim population.
In modern times Israel’s offerings have included drones, spyware, and surveillance tools. Like the Israeli-made spyware being used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an immigration agency that has been found to not only undertake abusive practices, but also violate its own policies.
For us in South Africa though, this is no surprise. The "homeland" of Bophuthatswana, where I was born and raised, was a product of the South African apartheid regime’s segregationist policies—which Israel took interest in—and stripped Black people of South African citizenship.
Like other homelands when it declared "independence" in 1977, it was shunned by the world. Despite its official stance, Israel was the only country to quietly recognize Bophuthatswana through informal connections and a quasi-diplomatic mission. A Jerusalem Post editorial in 1992 even referred to Bophuthatswana as "Africa’s Little Israel."
The backdrop of this relationship was the “clandestine alliance” between Israel and South Africa’s apartheid regime. Not only did the two countries collaborate on nuclear, but Israel would also become South Africa's largest weapons importer after the 1977 UN arms embargo and support the regime’s attempt to undermine sanctions.
It was a relationship of mutual admiration, an ideological alignment that in recent times is only matched by India’s admiration of Israel.
Apartheid had far-reaching consequences that extended beyond South Africa's borders. Along with unlawfully occupying Namibia, a colonial legacy embraced by the regime, it also launched hostilities in countries like Zambia and Zimbabwe. Similarly, Israel continues to conduct atrocities and aggression not only against the Palestinian people, but also in places like Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria. More recently, more than 300 people have been killed and scores injured following Israel's 10 minute assault in Lebanon—despite a two-week Middle East ceasefire, which Israel would afterwards claim did not include Lebanon. In the same way apartheid was deemed a threat to international peace and security, so too is the occupation and genocide in Palestine.
Not only is taking a stand against the overwhelming devastation that has been unleashed on Palestinians a duty, but also an obligation for people desiring peace and liberation for all. Because beyond the bombs, Israel has used international humanitarian law to try to justify the murder of civilians—a template being adopted by others like the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.
Like the people of South Africa and oppressed people everywhere, the people of Palestine too will continue to make their rightful claim to freedom. And for the sake of humanity everywhere, people of conscience must continue to stand with them and keep the fire of freedom within reach.
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