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Major address by ADL chief omits mention of Trump and followers among antisemitic threats
WASHINGTON (JTA) — In a major policy speech, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt doubled down on his argument that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, emphasized the threat to visibly Orthodox Jews and accused The New York Times of an “antisemitic attack” in its coverage of Hasidic movements.
One topic he didn’t discuss: former President Donald Trump and his extremist supporters, a frequent topic of concern for the ADL and Greenblatt in recent years.
The speech Monday morning, at the ADL’s annual leadership summit in Washington, D.C., was remarkable for barely mentioning what has, for years, been the group’s focus: the threat from the far right, spurred in part by Trump’s ascendance. Instead Greenblatt, in prepared remarks, tacked to the center, remaining focused on a message he sounded at the same summit a year ago — that anti-Zionism is unquestionably antisemitism.
“I know that for bigots — especially those who self-style as “anti-Zionists” — Israel’s Independence Day is a day to redouble their efforts to make sure it is Israel’s last Independence Day,” he said, adding later, “To underscore what I said at this event last year: Anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Full stop.”
His speech last year drew criticism from the left for marginalizing parts of the Jewish community that criticize Israel, and for equating that sector with a stream of extremism on the other end of the political spectrum that has fueled deadly attacks on Jews.
Despite not featuring in Greenblatt’s speech, the threat from the right was nonetheless very much embedded in the conference agenda; one session was dedicated to the surge of the far right on social media and another was dedicated to ties between the the extremes of the conservative movement today and the John Birch Society, the seminal extremist movement founded in the anticommunist fervor of the mid-20th century.
The conference will culminate on Tuesday with a Capitol Hill rally against antisemitism, held together with the ADL’s traditional partners from minority, LGBTQ and civil rights groups. Its featured speakers include Susan Rice, the former national security advisor who now serves as a domestic policy advisor to the Biden administration, as well as Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed shah of Iran, who has positioned himself as an advocate of Iran-Israel ties.
Greenblatt emphasized in his speech that antisemitism knows no single ideological home. He noted what the ADL has documented as an alarming spike in antisemitic attacks and that more than half of violent attacks have targeted visibly Orthodox Jews.
“This year, we find that the dramatic increase in antisemitic incidents is not due to any single ideology fueling violence, or one group becoming more accepting of antisemitism than another,” he said. “It’s due to every ideology becoming more comfortable with anti-Jewish hate.”
Since he took the ADL’s helm in 2015, Greenblatt has been under fire from conservatives for the organization’s emphasis on threats emerging from the extreme right, though the organization has always focused on far-right antisemitism. On Monday, Greenblatt’s speech touched almost exclusively on themes that have troubled Jewish conservatives: the perceived threat to pro-Israel Jews on campuses, attacks on visibly Orthodox Jews in the northeast, and defending haredi Orthodox Jews from perceived attacks on their lifestyles and education system.
Greenblatt took the New York Times to task for its series of articles reporting on deficiencies and malfeasance in Hasidic schools in New York.
“Our Orthodox brothers and sisters are constantly under threat,” he said. “It is one that needs solidarity and support from everyone – Jewish and non-Jewish alike. So to see this community singled out by elite institutions, like the New York Times, arguably the most important paper in the world, depicting them as clannish and using power to manipulate events … that represents an antisemitic attack on their community.”
Absent from his speech was any mention of Trump, although the former president is seen as the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and has intensified his attacks on “globalists” and on progressive Jewish billionaire George Soros, tropes that the ADL and other groups have said fuel antisemitism. Greenblatt was outspoken last year in criticizing Trump for having dinner with Kanye West after the rapper, who now calls himself Ye, embarked on a string of antisemitic comments. That dinner also included Nick Fuentes, the Holocaust denier and far-right provocateur.
Greenblatt also didn’t mention Ye in a section of his speech on the ADL’s work with corporations, even though the ADL led a campaign last year urging Adidas to end its partnership with Ye. After Adidas ended the collaboration, it announced a partnership with the ADL.
Greenblatt began his speech by celebrating Israel on the occasion of its 75th birthday, despite what he acknowledged as “complexity, worry, anxiety and concern” about the country’s future. A large part of that concern, within the country, has centered on the debate over the government’s effort to weaken the judiciary, which has brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis to protest in the streets. Greenblatt called the protests “something really special,” and “the triumph of Zionism.” He urged compromise on the judicial overhaul.
An ADL report from two weeks ago noted another worry — that Israel’s government includes politicians who “have polluted Israeli public discourse with chilling racist expressions that would have led to the immediate termination of their political careers in other democracies.” The report added that “Jewish racism is as deplorable as other forms of racism, and should never be excused or tolerated.”
Greenblatt did not mention that concern in his speech, though he called for Israel to have “a civil society where non-Jews enjoy the same rights and fulfill the same responsibilities as their Jewish neighbors.”
“There are challenges in Israel right now – and there will be challenges and difficult conversations to come, but ADL will never waver in its support of a democratic, Jewish state,” Greenblatt said in the speech. “Israel is a miracle, and I will never apologize for being a proud Zionist.”
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UK lawmakers press government on why West Bank imports haven’t yet been banned
(JTA) — British lawmakers from across the political spectrum are pressing the government to ban imports from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying that explanations for why such a ban has not yet been imposed were inadequate.
During a three-hour House of Commons debate on Thursday, lawmakers argued that Britain’s long-standing position that the settlements are illegal under international law means it should fall in line behind other countries advancing bans, particularly at a time of rising settler violence and efforts to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
The debate — the latest in a number of formal discussions about a potential ban in Parliament — was led by Abtisam Mohamed, a politician from the governing Labour Party who is the first Arab woman and first Yemeni member of Parliament. She was denied entry into Israel in 2025, a year after being elected.
“I want to pose a simple question to the government today, a question that sits at the heart of this debate,” Mohamed said in opening the session. “If settlements are illegal, why have we not made an outright ban on trade? What exactly is it that we’re waiting for?”
Lawmakers from other parties piled on.
“There is no excuse that we have to wait for other countries to move because they’ve moved ahead of us,” said Ellie Chowns from the left-wing Green Party, which has made opposition to Israel part of its platform. “There is no excuse that this is too technically difficult because the legal framework already exists.”
And a member of the Conservative party, which has traditionally favored strong ties with Israel, said he was unconvinced by the argument, made recently by a government official, that other measures that are potentially less complicated to administer could achieve the same pressure on Israel.
“We’ve done everything except the obvious, which is just the ban,” said the lawmaker, Kit Malthouse. “The question I’m left asking is, why? Why the reluctance? Why the hesitation? Nobody’s buying the complexity argument.”
On Monday, EU foreign ministers met to discuss a ban on products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, in order to gauge if there is enough support for the move. The EU’s foreign minister said a ban on imports was the most popular option under discussion and said she expected that the conversation would soon advance.
The discussion in the House of Commons comes as the British Labour government is in flux, with a new prime minister set to take over from Keir Starmer next week. It also comes as the government is taking steps to reassure a Jewish community that has been rattled by a number of violent incidents. This week, the government both allocated more than $300 million in security funding for Jewish institutions while also formally declaring Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, seen as tied to many of the attacks, to be a terrorist group, in a move that enables more intense prosecution.
In an appearance before the Foreign Affairs Committee earlier in July, the government’s top Middle East minister fended off allegations that the Labour government was slow-walking pressure on Israel. Hamish Falconer also noted that British Jewish leaders are urging against an import ban.
“There are legitimate and reasonable concerns from the British Jewish community that if we were to take steps which were crude, which were untargeted, could have unintended consequences on the lives of the community who are already under considerable pressure,” he said. “I do take that seriously for obvious reasons.”
The Board of Jewish Deputies, an umbrella organization for almost 200 Jewish groups in Britain, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that it was reluctant to comment on a potential ban on West Bank imports before a new prime minister is installed. But the group has previously weighed in strongly against efforts to boycott Israel, arguing in a 2017 report that “to hasten a solution to the settlements would be to assist the chances of negotiations through promoting peace, rather than the problematic boycott campaign.”
Falconer also signaled that all bets could be off if the Israeli government moves forward with a settlement project known as E1, telling the Foreign Affairs Committee, “I have said repeatedly that no one should benefit from a profit made on land that has been unlawfully procured.”
The E1 initiative would expand Jewish settlements on a stretch of land east of Jerusalem, bisecting the West Bank, and is seen by both its proponents and critics as a bid to undercut a potential future Palestinian state. The current right-wing Israeli government has moved the E1 project significantly toward actualization, approving it formally.
If the project proceeds further, Falconer told lawmakers, “then we and our friends and allies would take tangible action in response.”
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Cori Bush to fellow progressives: My reelection would be ‘the knockout’ punch to AIPAC
(JTA) — Cori Bush told fellow progressives during a virtual rally on Monday night that she intends to deliver a “knockout” punch to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, by winning her congressional primary next month.
When Bush, the two-term progressive Democratic congresswoman, was defeated in a bruising primary two years ago, both she and her adversaries attributed the loss in part to AIPAC.
The group’s PAC spent more than $4 million to defeat Bush, who was one of two members of Congress to vote against a measure to deny entry to the United States to Hamas terrorists who perpetrated Oct. 7, and declined to call Hamas a terror group on the campaign trail.
Now, as AIPAC has rapidly transformed into a radioactive bogeyman among Democrats and Bush’s fellow progressives have mounted an ascent across the party, Bush is out for revenge.
“Jamaal Bowman says it best: He said that Chris Rabb gave a jab to AIPAC. He says that Darializa and Claire … they gave uppercuts to AIPAC,” Bush said. “But then when I win, that will be the knockout.”
Bush is currently running against Missouri incumbent Rep. Wesley Bell in a field with three other candidates. In 2024, Bell defeated Bush 51.1% to 45.6% in a field of four candidates. A February poll sponsored by Bush’s campaign had Bell and Bush tied, with Bush receiving 44% of the votes, while Bell had 40%. (The survey had a margin of error of 5.4%.)
Bush was referring to a list of prominent progressives, including one, Bowman, who like her was primaried out of Congress in 2024, and three who won primaries decisively in Pennsylvania and New York this year. She was speaking at an online rally organized by Our Revolution, the group formed by Sen. Bernie Sanders to advance the progressive movement.
The rally came as the movement tries to move past a setback in Maine, where Graham Platner, a progressive and staunch critic of Israel, withdrew after winning the Democratic Senate primary amid allegations of sexual assault. One of the candidates vying to replace Platner on the ticket, Troy Jackson, joined other leading progressives including Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and California congressman Ro Khanna in taking the virtual stage.
Jackson did not mention Israel or AIPAC in his comments, even after announcing in recent days that he believes Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Instead, he listed an array of other issues animating left-wing voters.
“I know that there’s real pain, anger, and disappointment, and I’m not going to try and minimize that. But look, this movement has always been bigger than one person,” he said, alluding to Platner’s exit. “It’s about taking on a system rigged against working people, fighting for Medicare for all, strong unions, higher wages, reproductive freedom, and an economy where billionaires and corporations finally pay their fair share.”
Other candidates took aim more squarely at Israel and its supporters. El-Sayed, who in recent days has taken to calling Israel a “rogue state,” noted that AIPAC and its allies have spent more than $40 million to defeat him. (AIPAC has spent nearly $15 million on the race to date.)
“Donald Trump is not himself the disease in our politics; he’s the worst symptom of the disease of our politics,” El-Sayed said. “The disease is the system that allows big corporations, billionaires, special interest groups like AIPAC, to buy and sell politicians in ways that leave them rigging the system against us.”
El-Sayed also took aim at foreign military aid in his remarks, telling those gathered, “It shouldn’t be this hard to pay your taxes and know that that money is going to be spent on you and your kids rather than to annihilate somebody else and their kids.”
Minnesota congressional candidate Kaela Berg similarly cast her refusal to accept AIPAC money as part of a broader rejection of corporate influence in politics.
“We are the revolution, we are bringing that working class voice, that lived experience, two and a half decades of fighting the bosses, being people in Congress who cannot be bought, being the antidote to corporate Democrats and to Republicans,” Berg said. “I do not take AIPAC money. I do not take corporate money.”
Khanna, fresh off a trip to the Middle East during which he claimed that Israeli soldiers took the side of armed settlers who detained him in the West Bank, used his remarks during the town hall to shift attention from his detention to the treatment of Palestinians.
“Yes, people know I was detained, but if there’s one obligation, I feel I want to tell in every part of this country the story of apartheid in the West Bank,” Khanna said. “The story of these Palestinians who are being treated in an inhumane, undignified way, and if we can tell that story, I believe we will finally get change.”
Khanna, who has emerged as one of Israel’s fiercest critics in Congress since Oct. 7, also told attendees that the progressive wins across the country reflected growing support for the movement’s policy positions, including its opposition to Israel.
“We are winning, and we’re winning not because of candidates,” Khanna said. “We’re winning because we stand for Medicare for all. We stand against the genocide. We stand against foreign wars.”
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Five countries over four days: How Cuba’s Maccabiah Games delegation made it to Israel
(JTA) — Nearly three decades after Hella Eskenazi’s first trip from her home in Cuba to the Maccabiah Games in Israel, the journey hasn’t gotten much easier.
This time, she was joined by dozens of athletes who had to travel through five countries over more than four days to reach Israel — a consequence of both the turmoil affecting travel to Israel generally and the unique complexities of getting anywhere from their communist island nation in the Caribbean.
The first time Eskenazi made the trip was 1997, when she was a member of Cuba’s national karate team, and her country’s sole representative at the sports competition known as the “Jewish Olympics.” That was the year the Games were marred by the collapse of a pedestrian bridge over the Yarkon River in Tel Aviv that killed four members of the Australian delegation and injured 60 others.
This time around, Eskenazi, now 56, is both an athlete and the vice president of Patronato de la Casa de la Comunidad Hebrea de Cuba, her nation’s Jewish community and main synagogue. She’s a former Hebrew school director and has been involved in Cuba’s Maccabi programs since 2013, Cuba’s first year with a full delegation.
For this summer’s Games, Cuba sent 52 athletes to participate, many of whom already live in Israel after making aliyah. But for the 29 members who made the journey from Havana, the trip was anything but easy.
And that would have been the case even if Air France hadn’t canceled their flights — due to the conflict in Iran — halfway through their travel.
As Eskenazi explained, due to a variety of political and economic factors, it’s not easy to get out of Cuba. Her athletes needed various visas that would allow them to travel through Europe to get to Israel, and Cuba does not have a national airline with the same international capabilities as travel giants like Air France or Turkish Airlines.
And because Cuba’s oil supply lags behind much of the world, Air France does not offer flights from Cuba. So they had to travel to Panama first, just to get to Paris.
The original plan, Eskenazi said, was for a portion of the delegation to fly from Havana to Panama to Paris to Tel Aviv. But when Air France canceled all its flights to Tel Aviv, they had to pivot — which wasn’t easy given their restrictive travel visas.
Part of the delegation flew from Paris to Austria, while others went through Abu Dhabi, where Eskenazi said Cubans don’t need visas. And each group had layovers of 12 or 15 hours, making the total journey from Cuba to Israel take four or five days.
Eskenazi’s journey was different, because she had a visa that allowed her to travel through the United States. She flew from Havana to Miami to New York to Tel Aviv. Even then, she still had an 18-hour layover in New York.
Eskenazi said her group would not have made it to Israel without the help of the Maccabi World Union, the global organization that puts on the Games and supports local delegations.
“We are here thanks to the Maccabi World Union,” she said in a phone interview from Israel. “Maccabi World Union, they did many things for Cuba, for the Cuban Jewish community to participate in this Maccabiah.”
So once the Cuban cohort finally made it to Tel Aviv, it was understandably a meaningful arrival.
“It has been very very emotional for us because in Cuba we have many difficulties right now,” Eskenazi said. “And to arrive here, to have electricity, to have food, to be safe, to have our friends, to make sport, to share with all of the people from all over the world, has been very emotional, very emotional for us.”
It’s also been a successful trip, competitively speaking.
Cuba has won several medals, competing in sports including softball, futsal and basketball. Eskenazi herself has won two: a silver medal in the one-mile run and a bronze in the five-kilometer competition for the 55-59 age bracket.
But beyond sports, Eskenazi said it’s been a special experience for her athletes — who hail from a country with a relatively affluent but small Jewish community — to be surrounded by Jews from around the world.
“It’s very important because imagine that you can share with people from Holland, from France, from the United States,” she said. “We met people from Ukraine, from Argentina, from Mexico, from different parts of the world. It’s been very very emotional.
“We are happy to be here because we love to share here with the Israeli way of life,” Eskenazi added. “For us it’s very interesting, and we love Israel. Remember that we are Jewish people, and the Israeli people, they are friendly. This is a very special country. If you can see people, for example, with kippah on the street, with tefillin or tallit, it’s like to be inside of the synagogue, a big synagogue. It’s amazing to be here.”
And after the Games end, it’s right back on the plane home. Hopefully with fewer stops this time.
Eskenazi said her delegation is again splitting up into smaller groups, with some flying back through Paris and Panama, and others going through Madrid straight to Havana.
Regardless of the logistics and the travel delays, Eskenazi said Israel is a special place.
“When I visit Israel, I feel like Cuba, like my country,” she said. “I feel that this is my home, also.”
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