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ADL enlists major law firms to launch pro bono network for antisemitism cases
(JTA) — The Anti-Defamation League is launching a nationwide legal service to connect victims of antisemitism with lawyers who are able to take their cases on a pro-bono basis.
The initiative comes as the ADL has increasingly turned to litigation as a tactic — the group says it has filed more lawsuits and legal complaints in the last years than in its previous 110 years combined.
Announced on Wednesday, the ADL Legal Action Network comes out of a partnership with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, one of the largest law firms in the country. In total, more than 40 firms have agreed to participate, collectively tapping a pool of 39,000 attorneys.
The network will accept online submissions involving discrimination, intimidation, harassment, vandalism or violence and use artificial intelligence to evaluate them. Tips that make it through the system will be referred to partner firms or the ADL’s in-house litigators.
“For decades, victims of antisemitism have come to ADL to receive frontline services,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. ”We are now dramatically expanding our capabilities to support more Jewish Americans by helping to provide direct access to legal support anywhere in the country.”
Gibson Dunn partner Orin Snyder called the network an “unprecedented legal firewall against antisemitism, extremism, and hate.”
The initiative comes as the ADL, which is flush with donations, retreats from some of its traditional advocacy and educational work while facing an onslaught from the right, including the cutting of longstanding ties to the FBI after the agency’s director, Kash Patel, said the ADL has been “functioning like a terrorist organization.” (The group has also faced criticism from the left.)
The group recently eliminated an online resource known as the Glossary of Extremism and Hate, which counted more than 1,000 entries after accusations of bias by conservatives. It has also, for example, eliminated a signature anti-bias training for students and school teachers that included a focus on racism and LGBTQ issues.
Greenblatt has said he is intentionally retooling the organization to prioritize countering antisemitism as American Jews report increased harassment and discrimination.
The legal network formalizes and expands the Campus Antisemitism Legal Line, which Gibson Dunn launched with the ADL, Hillel International and the Louis D. Brandeis Center in 2023. The ADL says CALL has received nearly 1,000 reports from 230 campuses and helped spur civil rights complaints and criminal cases. The new system extends that model beyond higher education to workplaces, public accommodations and allegations involving extremist organizations and individuals.
One example that originated with a tip is a federal complaint filed by the ADL and its partners in June alleging that a high school in the Boston suburbs failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism.
The complaint said that Concord-Carlisle High School and Concord Middle School became hotbeds for abuse of Jewish of students, including “Nazi salutes in school hallways, students dividing themselves into teams called ‘Team Auschwitz; and ‘Team Hamas’ during athletic games, swastikas drawn in notebooks and on school property, and the use of antisemitic slurs such as ‘kike,’ ‘dirty Jew,’ and ‘go to the gas chamber,’” according to the ADL. School administrators allegedly downplayed or dismissed students’ complaints.
The district has said it takes antisemitism seriously and that it is cooperating with officials. It also said it is consulting with Jewish groups as it reviews its classroom policies and training programs.
Directing the expanded network is James Pasch, who was tapped in 2023 to head a new litigation division for the organization. In an interview, Pasch said the organization is deliberately making the courthouse a central arena.
“ADL does and has done, historically, three things incredibly well — we educate, we advocate and we investigate — and now we litigate,” he said. The aim, he added, is to “create life-altering costs to perpetrators who are committing illicit acts of antisemitism,” develop case law that better protects Jews, and give victims “a necessary outlet to tell their story in a complete way.”
Pasch said the ADL’s litigation team has grown into “like a boutique litigation firm inside ADL,” with roughly seven litigators plus support staff, while most large matters proceed with support from outside law firms. The expansion comes amid skyrocketing fundraising, which topped $170 million in annual donations, according to its most recent audited financial statements — a $65 million increase over its best year.
Pasch said settlements, or even the threat of a filing, can lead to immediate impact and set standards for other institutions.
The ADL’s case list since Oct. 7 ranges across campuses, K-12 districts, workplaces and terror-finance suits. The group filed federal actions seeking to hold Iran, Syria and North Korea responsible for allegedly supporting Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack; separate complaints invoke Title VI against universities and school districts over what the ADL calls failures to adequately respond to antisemitism. The organization has also backed a church lawsuit targeting intimidation by a white supremacist group.
The initiative comes as many large firms reportedly recalibrate their pro bono work under pressure from the Trump administration, which has elevated antisemitism as a signature priority. To avoid becoming targets over more politically sensitive matters such as immigration and asylum, some firms are reportedly steering clear of those cases. Partnering with Jewish organizations on antisemitism claims lets the firms align with an issue the administration has endorsed.
Under President Donald Trump, the Department of Justice has reorganized its civil rights division to focus on a narrow list of priorities, among them antisemitism. The department has launched probes into universities accused of mishandling last year’s protests over the war in Gaza, and last month brought charges against an alleged Palestinian militant who participated in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel before entering the United States as an immigrant.
Pasch said he welcomes federal efforts but added that increased government action is no reason for civil society to let up the legal pressure.
“This is a moment that will take an all-of-society approach from the government, to NGOs, to private business,” he said. “In legal cases, the Justice Department generally does not represent private individuals who are victims of antisemitism, but ADL along with our partners in firms have the ability to bring those cases to the forefront.”
The ADL is not the only Jewish group also ratcheting up litigation.
The Brandeis Center, a Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit dedicated to advancing “civil and human rights of the Jewish people” on Monday announced five new hires. The group is led by Kenneth Marcus, who is credited with pioneering the use of federal civil rights law — especially Title VI — to address antisemitism in education.
The pro-Israel group StandWithUs reports that its legal team has tripled in since the Oct. 7 attacks and has been publishing semiannual reports detailing new cases.
The increase in legal activity comes amid a broader debate about how to balance civil rights enforcement with free-speech protections. As part of settlement negotiations, the ADL has demanded that school districts and universities formally adopt what’s known as the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
But civil liberties groups and Palestinian-rights advocates have criticized the use of Title VI complaints tied to the IHRA definition because they say aggressive enforcement can stifle political discussions about Israel. The ADL and its partners counter that the cases target conduct — harassment, threats, discrimination — not viewpoints, and that filings have already yielded concrete changes on campuses and in districts.
In explaining how he selects what cases to pursue, Pasch said the criteria include whether a filing would disrupt harmful activity, strengthen or establish law, and give victims a full voice.
“We can’t heal the injured and we can’t bring people back from the dead,” he said. “But we can provide a voice and some semblance of relief for victims, whether that be policy change or monetary relief.”
The post ADL enlists major law firms to launch pro bono network for antisemitism cases appeared first on The Forward.
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Spain Expands Anti-Israel Measures, Bans Golan, West Bank Products Amid Rising Tensions With Jerusalem
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks at a press conference in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, China, Sept. 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Xihao Jiang
The Spanish government has announced a ban on imports from hundreds of Israeli communities in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights — making Spain the second European Union country to implement such a policy as the latest move in its ongoing effort to boycott Israel.
According to a statement from Spain’s Ministry of Finance on Monday, the ban — set to take effect on Tuesday — is the result of a September decree “adopting urgent measures against genocide in Gaza and in support of the Palestinian population.”
The regulation “prohibits … the entry into Spain of products originating from Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
Among all members of the EU, Spain is the second country to take such action, following Slovenia — one of the bloc’s smallest economies — which became the first EU member to ban Israeli products in August, and potentially to be joined by Ireland, where parliament is currently working on a similar measure.
As a major trade partner of Spain, Israel exports roughly $850 million in goods to the country each year — about half the value of Spanish exports to Israel — with products from the West Bank and the Golan making up only a small fraction of those shipments, according to the Israel Export Institute.
Spain’s newly implemented measure marks its latest attempts to curb Israel’s defensive campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, as ties between the two countries continue to deteriorate amid ongoing tensions.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Spain has launched a fierce anti-Israel campaign aimed at undermining and isolating the Jewish state on the international stage.
Even as Spain ramps up its anti-Israel campaign, authorities this week granted Airbus exceptional permission to produce aircraft and drones using Israeli technology at its Spanish plants — despite having banned military and dual-use products from the Jewish state just two months ago.
Approved last Tuesday by the cabinet and defended by several ministers this week, the exemption reflects the pressure from companies and domestic interests that some of Europe’s toughest critics of Israel’s recent war have faced as they attempt to impose trade sanctions.
In September, Spain passed a law to take “urgent measures to stop the genocide in Gaza,” banning trade in defense material and dual-use products from Israel, as well as imports and advertising of products originating from Israeli settlements.
On Tuesday, Spain’s consumer ministry ordered seven travel booking websites to take down 138 listings for holiday homes in Palestinian territories, warning they could face sanctions if they continue advertising Israeli-owned properties in those areas.
Earlier this year, the Spanish government also announced it would bar entry to individuals involved in what it called a “genocide against Palestinians,” block Israel-bound ships and aircraft carrying weapons from Spanish ports and airspace, and enforce an embargo on products from Israeli communities in the West Bank.
Spain has also canceled a €700 million ($825 million) deal for Israeli-designed rocket launchers, as the government conducts a broader review to systematically phase out Israeli weapons and technology from its armed forces.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has faced increasing backlash from his country’s political leaders and Jewish community, who accuse him of fueling antisemitic hostility.
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UN’s Francesca Albanese Lashes Out at ‘Pro-Genocide Minions’ After Georgetown University Severs Ties
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for Palestinian human rights, on Nov. 14, 2023. Photo: AAPIMAGE via Reuters Connect
A controversial United Nations official who has been criticized for using her role to promote anti-Israel bias and pro-Hamas propaganda denied on Monday that Georgetown University severed its relationship with her due to accusations that she is antisemitic, explaining that she was dropped due to the US government’s decision to sanction her.
“I had an affiliation with a US university. I used to lecture there. Everything has been cut down,” she said earlier this month at an event with ODI Global.
A university official confirmed to JNS on Friday that Georgetown severed ties with Albanese due to the imposition of sanctions, saying, “US institutions are prohibited by federal law from affiliating with individuals subject to US sanctions.”
In July, the Trump administration sanctioned Albanese, accusing her of “political and economic warfare” against the US and Israel. “Albanese has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the time.
Following news of Georgetown’s severing ties with Albanese, some media reports suggested the decision was based on her antisemitic comments. The UN official appeared to respond to such claims on the social media platform X.
“Georgetown’s decision to end my 10-year-old affiliation is yet another fallout of the sanctions the US imposed on me last July for exposing Israel’s genocide and the complicity of US businesses. Any other explanation is the usual laughable propaganda of the pro-genocide minions,” she posted on X.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s attacks on the Jewish state.
In August, she defended Hamas as a legitimate “political force” in Gaza that has built schools and hospitals while ruling the Palestinian enclave for nearly two decades, arguing that people should not think of the internationally designated terrorist group as armed “cut-throats” or “fighters.”
Months earlier, Albanese called on all medical professionals to cut ties with Israel, accusing the Jewish state of committing “genocide” — an accusation she made repeatedly since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The UN recently launched a probe into Albanese’s conduct over allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.
While speaking at a Washington, DC bookstore last October, Albanese also accused Israel of weaponizing the fallout of the Oct. 7 atrocities to justify the continued “colonization” of Gaza.
Albanese claimed last year that Israelis were “colonialists” who had “fake identities.” Previously, she defended Palestinians’ “right to resist” Israeli “occupation” at a time when over 1,100 rockets were fired by Gaza terrorists at Israel. In 2023, US lawmakers called for the firing of Albanese for what they described as her “outrageous” antisemitic statements, including a 2014 letter in which she claimed America was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby.”
Albanese’s anti-Israel comments have earned her the praise of Hamas officials in the past.
In response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s calling Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel the “largest antisemitic massacre of the 21st century,” Albanese said, “No, Mr. Macron. The victims of Oct. 7 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.”
Video footage of the Oct. 7 onslaught showed Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas celebrating the fact that they were murdering Jews.
Nevertheless, Albanese has argued that Israel should make peace with Hamas, saying that it “needs to make peace with Hamas in order to not be threatened by Hamas.” In July 2024, she also called for Israel to be expelled from the UN.
Albanese even once confessed that she struggles with impartiality. In an interview with the Institute for Palestine Studies in which she discussed Palestinian refugees and the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) she said, “I feared deep down perhaps I feared that embarking on research on a matter on which I deeply held personal views could compromise my objectivity.”
UN Watch cheered Albanese’s dismissal from Georgetown as a victory against rising antisemitism.
“We welcome Georgetown University’s decision,” UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said in a statement. “Academic institutions have a responsibility to uphold basic standards of integrity and human dignity. Removing an official who has repeatedly trafficked in antisemitic rhetoric and justified terrorism is a necessary step toward restoring those standards.”
Calling on the UN to join Georgetown in dismissing Albanese, he added, “This sends an important message. Positions of authority at the United Nations do not grant immunity from accountability, and universities should not serve as safe havens for those who abuse their platforms to promote hatred. The UN must follow Georgetown’s lead and remove Albanese.”
Albanese is not without allies at Georgetown. One of them, Middle East studies associate professor Nader Hashemi, said on X that Albanese’s status as a sanctioned person will change if and when the Democrats win the US presidency and that she will be hosted at Georgetown again.
“As soon as the sanctions are lifted on Francesca, we plan to host a [sic] her again at Georgetown University,” he wrote. “I’m certain her affiliation will also be restored. When she does return to campus, I suspect there is not a room large enough to accommodate all the people who want to meet her.”
Hatred for Israel, often fueled by the spread of misinformation about the Jewish state’s history and conduct in Gaza, is fueling violence against Jews in the US and elsewhere, according to experts who spoke with The Algemeiner earlier this year.
In June, an assailant firebombed a pro-Israel rally with Molotov cocktails and a “makeshift” flamethrower in Boulder, Colorado, killing one person and injuring 13 in what US authorities called a targeted terrorist attack. According to court documents, the man charged for the attack yelled “Free Palestine” during the violence and also told investigators that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people.”
The Colorado firebombing came less than two weeks after a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The suspect charged for the double murder also yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supported the criminal charges against the suspect stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
Recent research has found that anti-Zionist faculty at universities have created a hostile climate for Jews and Israelis.
According to a recent survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), university faculty and staff have exacerbated the antisemitism crisis by politicizing the classroom, promoting anti-Israel bias, and even discriminating against Jewish colleagues.
The actions by faculty provided an academic pretext for the relentless wave of antisemitic incidents of discrimination and harassment which pro-Hamas activists have perpetrated against Jewish and Israeli members of campus communities since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, according to the survey, released in September.
The survey of “Jewish-identifying US-based faculty members” found that 73 percent of Jewish faculty witnessed their colleagues engaging in antisemitic activity, and a significant percentage named the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) group as the force driving it. Of those aware of an FSJP chapter on their campus, the vast majority of respondents reported that the chapter engaged in anti-Israel programming (77.2 percent), organized anti-Israel protests and demonstrations (79.4 percent), and endorsed anti-Israel divestment campaigns (84.8 percent).
Additionally, 50 percent of respondents said that anti-Zionist faculty have established de facto, or “shadow,” boycotts of Israel on campus even in the absence of formal declaration or recognition of one by the administration. Among those who reported the presence of such a boycott, 55 percent noted that departments avoid co-sponsoring events with Jewish or pro-Israel groups and 29.5 percent said this policy is also subtly enacted by sabotaging negotiations for partnerships with Israeli institutions. All the while, such faculty fostered an environment in which Jewish professors were “maligned, professionally isolated, and in severe cases, doxxed or harassed” as they assumed the right to determine for their Jewish colleagues what constitutes antisemitism.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Russian Teen Assaulted Over Israeli Flag Photo as Antisemitism Concerns Mount, Amid Calls for Jews to Leave Country
Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, former chief rabbi of Moscow and current president of the Conference of European Rabbis, on June 24, 2024. Photo: IMAGO/epd via Reuters Connect
A 15-year-old student at a school in Russia was brutally assaulted by classmates after posting a photo featuring an Israeli flag on social media, Russian media reported, leaving him with a serious eye fracture from an incident that has drawn public outrage and is now under criminal investigation.
Earlier this month, a high school student in St. Petersburg, a major city in northwestern Russia, was physically attacked by two classmates after changing his social media profile photo to one featuring an Israeli flag, according to a report by local News Channel 78 on Sunday.
One of the attackers allegedly harassed the boy over his profile picture, demanding that he remove it and apologize.
After a verbal confrontation in which the attacker threatened the boy and hurled insults, including references to the Holocaust, he allegedly demanded that the victim meet him in the bathroom to continue the discussion.
When the two boys met there, the assailant reportedly demanded that he apologize on his knees. The victim refused but said he was willing to apologize without being humiliated.
The attacker then struck him repeatedly in the face while another boy blocked the bathroom exit.
The victim had to be hospitalized after suffering a fracture to the eye socket and underwent surgery under general anesthesia to remove bone fragments.
After spending more than a week in the hospital, he is now receiving outpatient care, and his family is coordinating with school administrators on a transition to home-based schooling as recommended by his doctors.
The boy’s mother reported the assault to the police, prompting local authorities to open a criminal investigation for assault and battery.
This incident came after Pinchas Goldschmidt, who served as Moscow’s chief rabbi from 1993 to 2022, recently urged Jews to leave Russia and consider immigrating to Israel, citing a growing hostile climate and rising antisemitic attacks targeting the local Jewish community.
“I have long urged Russia’s Jews to consider aliyah, the return to Israel. The post-Soviet renaissance was extraordinary, but illusions of permanence ignore history,” Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, wrote in an op-ed for The Jerusalem Post earlier this month.
“Now, more than ever, Russia’s Jews should heed the call to leave. Israel offers not just refuge but a homeland where Jewish life is sovereign, not contingent on geopolitical whims,” he continued.
Although the number of Jews leaving Russia has declined, the country still accounted for the largest number of immigrants to Israel in 2025, with roughly 8,300 arrivals, according to data released Monday by Israel’s Immigration and Absorption Ministry.
This figure marked a nearly 60 percent drop from 19,500 last year and a small fraction of the 74,000 who immigrated in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.