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Acknowledging ‘reputational risk,’ ADL chief defends partnership with undemocratic United Arab Emirates
(JTA) — The announcement was akin to several that Jewish groups have made in recent years: a new partnership with an Arab nation would advance coexistence in the Middle East.
Except that the group announcing the new alliance last week was the Anti-Defamation League, which devotes itself to fighting for human and civil rights. And the country it’s partnering with is the United Arab Emirates, an autocracy that, say the U.S. government and civil rights advocates alike, is guilty of a wide range of such abuses.
The new Manara Regional Center For Coexistence, based in Abu Dhabi, will “engage young leaders across the Middle East and North Africa, empowering them to build ties with peers and foster a shared commitment to coexistence,” according to a tweet by ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who traveled to the UAE for the center’s launch.
The ADL partners with a wide array of organizations in the United States and beyond to achieve its mission. But Greenblatt told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he recognized that working with the UAE could be complicated.
“There’s always execution risk,” Greenblatt said. “There can be, if things go south, a kind of reputational risk. You know, there are specific internal issues of UAE that we can’t control for.”
Those issues, according to the State Department, include placing “serious restrictions on free expression and media” and engaging in “substantial” repression of human rights groups, LGBTQ residents and international critics. Its latest human rights review includes “credible reports” of arbitrary arrest and detention, the jailing of political prisoners and a lengthy listing of other reported restrictions and abuses in the country.
Human rights advocates say the UAE prohibits free speech, banishes political parties, does not have a free media and tolerates slavery-like conditions for some of the large immigrant workforce it houses, which comprises the vast majority of its residents.
And Freedom House, a democracy watchdog, scores the UAE 18 out of 100 on its freedom metric (“not free”) – including ratings of 5 out of 40 for political rights and 13 out of 60 for civil liberties. It has called a UAE press law “one of the most restrictive press laws in the Arab world [which] regulates all aspects of the media and prohibits criticism of the government.”
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, right, confers with Ali Al Naumi, the chairman of the Manara Regional Center For Coexistence, in Abu Dhabi, March 14, 2023. (UAE Embassy to Washington Twitter feed)
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, who heads T’ruah, a liberal rabbinic human rights group that has collaborated with the ADL in the past, said she was “flabbergasted” by the partnership and that she did not understand how the ADL could advance its mission in an autocracy.
“I just don’t really see how any civil rights organization or any organization that claims to be a civil rights organization can justify partnering with a government that is completely autocratic,” she said.
An official at Human Rights Watch, which has criticized the UAE for an “alarming campaign of repression and censorship against dissidents,” among other abuses, also said the ADL’s mission seemed inconsistent with the values of a repressive regime. (The ADL and Human Rights Watch disagree over Israel, an issue that has caused the ADL to clash with human rights or civil rights groups. Human Rights Watch has said Israeli authorities are guilty of the crime of apartheid, an accusation the ADL has called inaccurate and offensive.)
“The UAE’s rights record should be especially concerning for organizations who profess to ‘protect democracy and ensure a just and inclusive society for all,’” said Michael Page, the deputy director of the group’s Middle East and North Africa division, quoting the ADL’s mission statement. “This UAE record includes detaining scores of activists, academics, and lawyers serving lengthy sentences, severely restricting independent civil society, and maintaining a restrictive labor governance system that leaves millions of migrant workers vulnerable to abuse.”
The UAE has also drawn criticism from labor rights groups, which accuse it of turning a blind eye to abuses of its migrant laborers, who comprise as much as 90% of the workforce. The International Trade Union Confederation accuses the country of allowing “modern day slavery.” Reported conditions include letting employers confiscate passports; having laborers work off prohibitive fees that allowed them into the country; and making the laborers live and work in squalor.
An ADL spokesperson said that the group is “unaware of any issues related to the building” housing the Manara Center and referred questions on the issue to the UAE Embassy in Washington, D.C., which did not respond to a request for comment.
Greenblatt said the ADL was bringing its decades of experience in promoting civil rights and democracy to the region.
“The UAE, again, let’s just say the country has a different tradition than the United States in terms of its governance, in terms of its law, in terms of its practices,” he said. “The ADL, which is a part of that civic fabric of America, is going to have the opportunity to initiate work here in the Emirates and in the Gulf more broadly.”
He said such a prospect “is incredibly exciting, if we can bring to bear some of what we’ve learned the hard way over 110 years.”
The partnership reflects the sometimes strange bedfellows created by the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and the UAE and three other Arab countries in 2020. Since the deals, a string of initiatives to invigorate business ties and Jewish life in the Arab countries have launched, and Dubai, the UAE’s most populous city, has become a vacation destination for Israelis.
Greenblatt said ADL’s venture would help address a neglected component of the accords: people-to-people encounters.
“It is worth trying to find ways to bring together the people of the region — Muslims and Christians and Jews of different ethnicities and nationalities — in pursuit of the greater good,” he said.
Jacobs, of T’ruah, said that outlook was naive. “It’s not like there’s slight differences” between the United States and the UAE,” she said.
“They’re not stupid,” she said of the UAE’s rulers. “They know what international law is.”
A number of other Jewish and civil rights groups that have partnered with the ADL, including the American Jewish Committee and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, did not return requests for comment.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said he welcomes the chance for Jewish organizations to bring their values into unfamiliar territory. He likened criticism of the ADL to the flak he got a few years ago when he met the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who has been accused of intensifying the kingdom’s already dour record of human rights abuses. Bin Salman was subsequently accused of ordering the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“People would say, well, how could we even meet with such a person? The answer is, how can you try to build a more, I would say, pluralistic, and a more respectful community,” he said in an interview. “And we don’t just do that in places that are already very friendly. I think that’s our challenge wherever we are and, you know, Jonathan Greenblatt and the ADL have made that a very pervasive mission. It’s an important one.”
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Hezbollah Pays Steep Price in Battle to Reverse Its Fortunes
Workers remove a coffin with a body from temporary graves and prepare for transport for a funeral ceremony of four Hezbollah fighters and two civilians, amid a temporary ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, in Tyre, southern Lebanon, April 26, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Marko Djurica/File Photo
Hezbollah has paid a heavy price for going to war with Israel on March 2: Israel has occupied a chunk of southern Lebanon, displaced hundreds of thousands of its Shi’ite Muslim constituents and killed as many as several thousand of its fighters, according to previously unreported casualty estimates from within the group.
The move has brought severe political consequences, too. In Beirut, opposition has hardened to its status as an armed group, which domestic rivals see as exposing Lebanon to repeated wars with Israel.
In April, Lebanon’s government held face-to-face talks with Israel for the first time in decades, a decision Hezbollah firmly opposed.
However, more than a dozen Hezbollah officials told Reuters they see a chance to reverse deteriorating fortunes by aligning with Tehran in its war with Israel and the United States. The group, founded by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 1982, opened fire two days into the conflict, which began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28.
The group’s calculations are based on the assessment that its participation would force Lebanon onto the agenda of U.S.-Iranian negotiations, and that Iranian pressure can secure a more robust ceasefire than one that took effect in November 2024 following a conflict sparked by the war in Gaza, the officials said.
Hezbollah was mauled in the last war, which killed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, along with some 5,000 fighters, and weakened its long-dominant hold over the Lebanese state.
Rearmed with Iranian help, it has used new tactics and drones, surprising many with its capabilities after a fragile 15-month truce during which Hezbollah held fire, even as Israel continued to kill its members.
Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi denied the group was acting on Iran’s behalf when it resumed hostilities, as alleged by opponents. He told Reuters Hezbollah saw a window to “break this vicious cycle … where the Israelis can target, assassinate, bombard, kill, without any revenge.”
He acknowledged losses and damage in southern Lebanon but said “you don’t go into making calculations of how many are going to be killed” when “pride and sovereignty and independence” are at stake.
Hezbollah’s media office said the figure of several thousand fighters killed in the present war was false.
While a US-mediated ceasefire that took effect on April 16 has led to a significant reduction in hostilities, Israel and Hezbollah have continued to trade blows in the south, where Israel maintains troops in a self-declared “buffer zone.”
Yezid Sayigh, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said Hezbollah had “shown more resilience than many thought possible, but that was not a strategic gain in itself.”
“The only thing that will contain Israel is a comprehensive US-Iran deal,” he said. “Without a deal, there’s going to be a lot of pain for everyone. At best, a hurting stalemate.”
GRAVES FRESHLY DUG, AND QUICKLY FILLED
More than 2,600 people have been killed since March 2, around a fifth of them women, children and medics, Lebanon’s health ministry has reported. Its toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Three sources, two of them Hezbollah officials, said the ministry’s figures do not include many of the group’s casualties. They said several thousand Hezbollah fighters have been killed, though the group does not have the full picture yet.
In a statement to Reuters, Hezbollah’s media office denied the figures cited by the sources, and that the numbers published by Lebanon’s health ministry included its members killed in Israeli strikes.
One source, a Hezbollah commander, said scores of fighters had gone to the frontline towns of Bint Jbeil and Khiyam intending to fight to the death. Their bodies have yet to be recovered.
In the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, more than two dozen freshly dug graves were quickly filled with fighters’ bodies in the days after the ceasefire took hold. Simple marble tombstones identify some as commanders, others as fighters.
In one southern village alone, Yater, the council recorded the deaths of 34 Hezbollah fighters.
Lebanon’s Shi’ite Muslim community has borne the brunt of Israel’s attacks, forced to flee into Christian, Druze and other areas, where many blame Hezbollah for starting the war.
Israel has been entrenching its hold over a security zone stretching as far as 10 km (6 miles) into Lebanon and demolishing villages, saying it aims to shield northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah militants embedded in civilian areas.
An Israeli government official said Hezbollah had abrogated the November 2024 ceasefire by firing on Israeli citizens on March 2. The threat to northern Israel would be eradicated, the official said, adding thousands of Hezbollah militants had been killed, and Israel was steadily destroying the group’s infrastructure.
The Israeli military says Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel since March 2. Israel has announced 17 soldiers killed in southern Lebanon, along with two civilians in northern Israel.
Citing ongoing Israeli strikes, Hezbollah has called the April ceasefire meaningless and continued to attack.
IRAN ‘WILL NOT SELL’ THEIR FRIENDS
A diplomat who has contact with Hezbollah described its decision to enter the war as a big gamble and a survival strategy, saying it felt it needed to be part of the problem so it could be part of an eventual regional solution.
It has yet to be seen if the gamble will pay off.
Tehran has demanded that Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah be included in any deal on the wider war. But US President Donald Trump said last month that any deal Washington reaches with Tehran “is in no way subject to Lebanon.”
A spokesperson for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, Tahir Andrabi, referred Reuters to an April 16 statement in which he said peace in Lebanon was essential to the talks it is mediating between the U.S. and Iran.
A Western official said they saw a possibility the US and Iran might eventually reach a settlement that does not address the war in Lebanon.
Asked about this, the US State Department, Iran’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva and Lebanon’s government did not immediately comment.
Hezbollah’s Moussawi said a ceasefire in Lebanon continues to be a top priority for Iran, adding Tehran shares Lebanon’s objectives, including that Israel halt attacks and withdraw from Lebanon. Hezbollah has “full trust in Iran – that the Iranians will not sell their own friends”, he said.
The State Department referred Reuters to an April 27 interview Secretary of State Marco Rubio did with Fox News, in which he said Israel had a right to defend itself against Hezbollah’s attacks, and that he didn’t think Israel wanted to maintain its buffer zone in Lebanon indefinitely.
The United States has urged Israel “to make sure their responses are proportional and targeted,” he said.
When the April 16 ceasefire was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hezbollah’s disarmament would be a fundamental demand in peace talks with Lebanon.
Hezbollah has ruled out disarmament, saying the matter of its weapons is a topic for a national dialogue. Any move by Lebanon to disarm the group by force would risk igniting conflict in a country shattered by civil war from 1975 to 1990.
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam have sought Hezbollah’s peaceful disarmament since last year. On March 2, the government banned the group’s military activities.
Hezbollah has demanded the government cancel that decision and end its direct talks with Israel.
Lebanese officials have told Reuters they believe direct talks with Israel under the auspices of the US are the best way to secure a lasting ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops, as only Washington has enough leverage with Israel to achieve those aims.
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US President Trump Tells Israeli Media: ‘I Studied Iran’s New Proposal, It Is Not Acceptable to Me’
US President Donald Trump arrives to award the medal of honor to Master Sgt. Roderick ‘Roddie’ W. Edmonds, Staff Sgt. Michael H. Ollis, and retired Command Sgt. Maj. Terry P. Richardson during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 02 March 2026.
US President Donald Trump said he has reviewed Iran’s latest proposal and described it as “unacceptable” in an interview with Israeli broadcaster Kan News on Sunday. Trump added that ongoing efforts related to the conflict are “progressing very well,” without providing further details. He also renewed his call for clemency for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arguing that Israel needs a leader focused on wartime priorities rather than legal matters.
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Israel Court Extends Detention of Gaza Flotilla Activists
Activist Saif Abu Keshek, a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla detained by Israel, sits at a magistrate’s court for a detention extension hearing in Ashkelon, southern Israel, May 3, 2026. REUTERS/Amir Cohen
An Israeli court has extended by two days the detention of two activists arrested aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla that was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters near Greece, their lawyer said on Sunday.
Saif Abu Keshek, a Spanish national, and Brazilian Thiago Avila were detained by Israeli authorities late on Wednesday and brought to Israel, while more than 100 other pro-Palestinian activists aboard the boats were taken to the Greek island of Crete.
A court spokesperson confirmed that their remand had been extended until May 5.
The governments of Spain and Brazil issued a joint statement on Friday calling their detention illegal.
The activists were part of a second Global Sumud flotilla, launched in an attempt to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza by delivering humanitarian assistance. The ships had set sail from Barcelona on April 12.
Israeli authorities requested a four-day extension of their arrest on suspicion of offenses that include assisting the enemy during wartime, contact with a foreign agent, membership in and providing services to a terrorist organization, and the transfer of property for a terrorist organization, said rights group Adalah, which is assisting in the activists’ defense.
Hadeel Abu Salih, the men’s attorney, said that the two deny the allegations. Their arrest was unlawful due to a lack of jurisdiction, she told Reuters at the Ashkelon Magistrate’s Court after the hearing, adding that the mission was meant to provide aid to civilians in Gaza, not to any militant group.
Abu Salih said that Abu Keshek and Avila were subjected to violence en route to Israel and kept handcuffed and blindfolded until Thursday morning.
Asked for comment, the Israeli military referred Reuters to the Israeli foreign ministry, which said that staff were compelled to act to stop what it described as violent physical obstruction by Abu Keshek and Avila. All measures taken were lawful, it said.