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ADL removes ‘Protect Civil Rights’ from website as it narrows its mission amid right-wing attacks
(JTA) — The Anti-Defamation League has removed entirely from the “What We Do” page of its website a section called “Protect Civil Rights.”
The removal eliminated a passage that read, “Our founders established ADL with the clear understanding that the fight against any one form of prejudice or hate cannot succeed without countering hate of all forms.”
The change to the website, which has not been previously reported, was made amid other website edits following a flurry of right-wing criticism and an unprecedented attack on the organization earlier this month by FBI Director Kash Patel.
On Oct. 1, just hours before Jews on the East Coast would start fasting on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, President Donald Trump’s handpicked top cop said the law enforcement agency was cutting ties with the ADL. The Jewish group was “functioning like a terrorist organization” because of how it tracks and reports extremism on the right, Patel told Fox News.
Patel’s announcement came days after Elon Musk mischaracterized a section of the ADL website to accuse the group of anti-Christian hatred. His post on X triggered a pile-on of condemnation. The ADL removed the section from its website as part of a purge of more than 1,000 other entries making up its Glossary of Extremism and Hate.
An ADL spokesperson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the passage committing the ADL to the protection of civil rights was removed as part of an “ongoing review” of its website and its contents.
“This month, ADL has conducted deferred maintenance on the website, which had grown in recent years to more than 25,000 pieces of content — some even dating back to more than 30 years ago and clearly no longer relevant or reflective of ADL’s work today,” the spokesperson said.
A recent article by ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt makes clear how the ADL’s focus has changed: He outlined a withdrawal from the group’s commitment to the protection of all vulnerable minorities in favor of a mission centered more exclusively on anti-Jewish hatred.
The ADL is not commenting on its relationship with the FBI or Patel’s attack beyond the statement praising the agency it issued in the immediate aftermath.
“ADL has deep respect for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and law enforcement officers at all levels across the country who work tirelessly every single day to protect all Americans regardless of their ancestry, religion, ethnicity, faith, political affiliation or any other point of difference,” the statement said.
It’s still not yet clear what impact Patel’s announcement will have — in part because the ADL didn’t receive an official notice that might have offered details.
“ADL has not yet received any formal communication from the Administration, and we are working to learn more,” Greenblatt said in a note to Jewish groups that arrived in inboxes just hours after Fox News published its exclusive interview with Patel and minutes before Yom Kippur started.
A longstanding partnership that provided FBI agents training on topics such as hate crimes, violent extremism and antisemitism through a workshop at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is thought to be terminated.
Meanwhile, however, the ADL’s extremism trackers continue to exchange tips with the FBI, JTA has learned.
The ADL’s initial reaction may have been shaped by the shock of Patel’s decision, but the group’s ongoing silence on the issue appears to be part of a strategy.
The group never sought to rally a communal outcry from Jewish organizations. In fact, it did the opposite, pleading behind the scenes for them to shut up, an extraordinary move for an organization — and a community — that has in the post World War II era prided itself in speaking out against injustice.
“We’re really following ADL’s lead here,” said a senior official of a major Jewish group that has refrained from commenting on the FBI letter, and who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. “They’re determining how to navigate it in the way that makes sense for them.”
The muted reaction by Jewish legacy organizations can be read, their critics say, as acquiescence to an administration accused of leveraging government power to silence and destroy civil society critics.
Another factor is a community profoundly roiled by the hostility to Israel and Jewish attachment to the country that has emerged among the left and Democrats, the community of American thought where most Jews have thrived for more than a century.
But not everyone is willing to go along with the approach.
Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said Patel’s attack was evidence that it was futile to hope that the trumpeting of common ground with the Trump administration, as the ADL and others have done on Israel policy, would lead to comity.
“This is a reminder that they’re coming for everyone that doesn’t 100% align with their agenda and their approach,” Spitalnick said. “This is about a far more systemic abuse and weaponization of the federal government to advance a political agenda. And that should frighten all of us.”
Appeals by Spitalnick and others for a united Jewish front against the Trump administration’s assault on civil liberties have not just fallen on deaf ears among legacy Jewish groups, they have encountered active resistance. The Jewish Federations of North America, the goliath umbrella body for 150 or so local federations, in April urged constituent groups not to sign onto a JCPA-led statement decrying the Trump crackdown on speech under the pretext of stemming antisemitism.
Six months later, Jewish officials are wondering whether traditional Jewish advocacy on issues such as civil rights will survive the onslaught.
Officials are closely reading a Sept. 25 National Security Presidential Memorandum, purportedly spurred by the killing of Charlie Kirk, that sets up a task force that includes nonprofits among the entities it will investigate for “support” of “political violence, terrorism, or conspiracy against rights; or the violent deprivation of any citizen’s rights.” It also identifies “common threads” of such movements as including “anti-Christianity” bias or “hostility toward those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
These catchall phrases are so broad that they may place numerous NGOs in the government’s crosshairs, said Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
“When the White House erroneously accuses the ADL of ‘anti-Christian’ bias and ‘functioning like a terrorist organization,’ it creates fear of who is next, and honestly, that fear is justified,” Soifer said. “It’s clear the Trump administration is aiming to expand the definition of terrorism, to weaponize it against Americans with whom they disagree.”
Close to 4,000 nonprofits, including dozens of liberal Jewish groups, signed an open letter last month expressing alarm at the presidential directive.
“This attack on nonprofits is not happening in a vacuum, but as a part of a wholesale offensive against organizations and individuals that advocate for ideas or serve communities that the president finds objectionable, and that seek to enforce the rule of law against the federal government,” said the letter.
Jonathan Jacoby, the president of the Nexus project, which seeks to combat antisemitism while mitigating its weaponization, said Trump had the Jewish community in his sights.
“The Trump administration’s actions are not just challenging liberals or progressives or Democrats, they’re challenging Jews to respond. They’re challenging every Jewish organization,” he said. “It’s a clear example of why every Jewish organization, or every organization that represents Jewish interests, should be calling this out loud and clear.”
One of the ironies of Patel’s attack is that it has brought out groups that have clashed with the ADL over whether the group has blurred the differences between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel to the group’s defense, while the ADL and its allies remain silent.
“While we have had our differences with the ADL over the years, the organization has played a central role in combating antisemitism and extremism in the United States for more than a century,” J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group said in a statement. “Ending the FBI’s long-term partnership with the ADL, while smearing the organization in this manner, will only embolden extremists and make American Jews less safe.”
The organizations that have lobbied hardest for further protections of synagogues and other institutions have been silent on the FBI-ADL breach; the JFNA, the Orthodox Union and the Secure Community Network declined or did not respond to requests for comment.
Leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements released statements for this story emphasizing the necessity of the ADL’s work with law enforcement — but without criticizing or even mentioning Patel’s attack.
“For decades, the ADL has worked with our movement’s network of congregations and also with law enforcement at every level, whose commitment we deeply respect,” said Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, the CEO of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. “These partnerships protect our communities and must continue, and we are expressing our support for the ADL’s collaboration with law enforcement through the most appropriate and effective channels.”
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism said his movement was “aligned with the ADL’s commitment to fighting antisemitism and advancing Jewish communal safety … We hope the FBI will continue to join in that effort as it has over many decades to the benefit of the nation overall.”
The ADL has endeavored since Jan. 20 to accommodate Trump 2.0, praising some of its actions targeting universities where pro-Palestinian activism has at times created a hostile environment for Jewish students. Greenblatt, in comments first reported by the Forward, in June praised the Trump administration’s crackdown on universities in an address to a conference of Republican state attorneys general.
“I don’t agree with everything the Trump administration is doing, I don’t want to shut down these schools altogether,” he said. “But you know what? God bless [Education] Secretary [Linda] McMahon.”
Such statements have spurred claims that Greenblatt is steering the organization right, perhaps at the behest of donors the ADL shares with Trump or to avoid clashing with an administration that has sought to punish its critics. A New York Magazine deep dive in August into Greenblatt’s apparent shifts laid out what it said was evidence of a rightward drift.
Greenblatt in a subsequent interview with The New York Times said the group remained steadfastly nonpartisan. “We’ve worked with presidential administrations over generations, right and left,” Greenblatt said. “We don’t agree with them on everything, but where we can find common ground, we try. And where we have a point of disagreement, we make that known.”
Attempting to assign to Greenblatt a place on the left-to-right continuum may not make sense. His trajectory is more outside to inside, expansive to insular. He is emblematic of the many American Jews who until Oct. 7, 2023, felt comfortably ensconced in the precincts of liberalism, and who have since felt politically homeless.
Multiple sources pointed to Greenblatt’s Oct. 16 op-ed in eJewish Philanthropy as representative of this sentiment.
“It is a sad truth that so many of our self-described allies simply disappeared or deeply disappointed us when we needed them,” he wrote. “In this environment, we have no choice but to concentrate our energies like a laser beam on our core purpose, the reason why the ADL actually was founded so many generations ago — to protect the Jewish People.”
The post ADL removes ‘Protect Civil Rights’ from website as it narrows its mission amid right-wing attacks appeared first on The Forward.
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Heeding a Saudi plea, Trump says he canceled a joint U.S.-Israel assault on Iran
(JTA) — President Donald Trump said he canceled at the last minute a planned joint assault with Israel on Iran’s energy infrastructure at the behest of Saudi Arabia, which feared the war blowing up into a wider conflict.
The U.S. alerts over the weekend warning citizens to evacuate the Middle East and then Trump’s announcement late Saturday that he was canceling the planned strike appeared to catch Israel off guard. It undercut Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim last week that he and Trump were in lockstep on Iran.
“The U.S.A. is locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II,” Trump said on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns.
“Despite this, we have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to,” he said. “This would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.”
Saudi Arabia’’s official news agency confirmed that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince who has close business and personal ties with Trump and his family, appealed to the U.S. president to stand down.
“The Crown Prince stressed the need to prioritize dialogue to reduce escalation and the importance of making every possible effort to achieve calm that paves the way for diplomatic solutions, preserves the region’s security and stability, and prevents a wider conflict whose repercussions would affect regional and international security and stability,” the Saudi Press Agency said.
Iran disputed Trump’s claim, instead saying that it was ready to respond to any attack on the country.
“The Iranian Foreign Ministry vowed that Tehran will use all means at its disposal to exercise its inherent right of self-defense in the face of the United States’ ongoing violations against the Islamic Republic,” the Fars News Agency said.
Fars, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – the principal power in Iran since the war began – denied any stand-down on Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz.
“Iran’s Armed Forces have staged uncompromising retaliation in the face of each instance of violation, including those taking place in support of illegal vessel movement in the waterway,” the agency said.
The waterway is critical to the passage of a fifth of the world’s petroleum. Iran has asserted control of the waterway in the wake of the war the United States and Israel launched in February.
Trump’s statement came after CBS News reported on Saturday that the United States and Israel were set to attack Iran’s energy infrastructure, which would substantially escalate the war. The State Department put out a security alert advising Americans in the region to leave if they could, and to cancel plans to enter it.
Regional media reported that Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, conveyed warnings through Turkey and Pakistan to regional U.S. allies that it would hit back hard if the U.S.-Israel attack went through.
Israel appeared to be caught off guard both by the planned escalation and by Trump’s stand-down. “Israel is unaware of a decision to restart full military operations, nor has been requested of Israel to join any military actions against Iran,” CBS News quoted an Israeli official as saying – even as it quoted U.S. officials as saying that Israel was coordinating with the United States.
Israel’s government had no comment on Trump’s reported plan to attack the infrastructure, or his stand-down. Flights in and out of Ben Gurion Airport were unaffected. In his Truth Social statement, Trump said, “The Country of Israel joins me in this commitment.”
Trump has multiple times since the war’s launch threatened to escalate the war only to retreat at the last minute, something the Fars news agency noted in a sardonic tone.
“This narrative seems familiar and repetitive,” it said in a separate report on bin Salman’s appeal. “Every time Trump has made serious threats against Iranian infrastructure in the past, after Tehran has not backed down, he has claimed that friendly countries have asked him not to do anything.”
Trump escalated his rhetoric last week as Iran continued to attack ships attempting to transit Hormuz. “We’re going to beat the f***ing s**t out of them,” he told Fox News.
Trump has since the tentative signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran in mid-June asked Israel to stay out of the conflict – including in the wake of the resumption of fighting on July 13.
Netanyahu, facing a tough reelection in October, has in recent weeks sought to allay any perceptions in Israel that he had been sidelined by Trump. He met with the president last week.
“I just finished an excellent meeting with President Trump,” he told Israeli reporters after the meeting. “And when I say excellent, it’s not lip service – a conversation with full cooperation, with mutual support, with the understanding of the joint goal to ensure that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon, and other goals.”
The roller-coaster ride appeared to unsettle Netanyahu’s colleagues in his Likud Party. “You can say ‘no’ to Trump,” Knesset member Amit Halevi told Kan Reshet Bet, the government-run radio station. “Our commitment is to the security of the state.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Heeding a Saudi plea, Trump says he canceled a joint U.S.-Israel assault on Iran appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention
(JTA) — Local and national Jewish Democrats say they are sympathetic after Michigan’s Jewish attorney general, Dana Nessel, said she would skip the state Democratic Party’s nominating convention over concerns about antisemitism and harassment.
“I don’t blame AG Nessel for not wanting to go and basically put herself in situations that feel untenable in this moment of time and don’t add any value politically, personally,” Jessica “Decky” Alexander, the Michigan Jewish Democratic caucus chair, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.
Alexander’s comment came a day after Nessel announced during a televised antisemitism roundtable that she would be skipping the convention next month, where party leaders will finalize the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate following a divisive primary that has focused in part on Israel and antisemitism.
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during the roundtable. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
She said she had filed a formal complaint within the party about a party official who had called her a neo-Nazi because of her beliefs. “Why is this person more accepted in our party than me?” she asked without naming the official. Her office responded to a request for comment by referring to the recorded livestream of the antisemitism roundtable.
Nessel’s declaration comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel. El-Sayed is surging in polls despite a reported $30 million spent against him by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and its supporters, whom he has made a target of criticism from the campaign trail.
Nessel’s comments also follow turmoil at the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement convention in April, where Stevens was booed by attendees. A third primary candidate who later dropped out of the race, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, said a convention attendee had targeted her Jewish husband with an antisemitic slur.
The incident has fueled alarm among Jewish Democrats, according to Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
“She’s not alone,” Soifer told JTA about Nessel on Friday. “We’ve heard from other Jewish Democrats who attended the Democratic Party convention earlier this year in Michigan, and there was a sense of discomfort amid what felt like a pro-Palestinian protest [that] may have even blurred the line for some into antisemitic sentiment — and it’s really concerning.”
Nessel has raised the alarm about antisemitism within the party for years, alleging in 2024 that Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a prominent pro-Palestinian voice, had been antisemitic when criticizing charges Nessel filed against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan.
For her part, Alexander said she would be participating in the nominating convention and said she believed the chair of the state Democratic Party, Curtis Hertel, had been “very accessible and very open to making sure that we, including our Jewish elected officials, feel safe in that space.” But she said she understood why Nessel was staying away.
“It would never even occur to me, but I’m not an elected official,” Alexander said. “It’s a different stake for me than it is for Dana. I understand her completely.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention appeared first on The Forward.
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Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’
(JTA) — Every congregational rabbi in Maine has signed onto a statement calling for peace and urging the state’s political leaders to stop using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza, following a Democratic primary in which several candidates used the label for the first time.
But the rabbis also indicated that they, too, were unsatisfied with conditions in the Middle East and called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work toward a peaceful future.
“We call upon Maine’s leaders, and particularly its political leaders, to reject the irresponsible usage of the term in describing the Israel-Hamas War,” said the statement released on Friday. “We also call upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the cycle of violence and to create a better world for both Palestinian and Israeli children.”
The statement, titled “A Call for Peace and Responsible Rhetoric,” argues that using the term as a “political slogan does not advance peace in the Middle East.” The term “erases essential moral and legal distinctions, diminishes the meaning of genocide, and inflames hatred for the local Jewish community,” the rabbis say.
“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the adoption of hateful and misleading language,” they continue. “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.”
The statement comes days after Troy Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, secured the Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nomination Saturday at the party’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner, a staunch Israel critic who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Platner faced a sexual assault allegation, which he denies. Jackson now faces Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November’s general election.
Platner’s romp to the primary victory featured routine use of “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. And ahead of the convention to replace him, Jackson and several other Democratic hopefuls who later exited the race began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza for the first time, a shift that drew scrutiny from some Jewish leaders and voters in the state.
The use of the term has become a “currency for acquiring power and position in Maine’s Democratic party,” Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, who also signed the statement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Too many Maine Democrats are cynically willing to trade in that currency at the expense of our safety and dignity,” she said in an emailed statement. “We decided we needed to say something collectively, both about the specious and dangerous nature of the claim, and about how much damage has been done to our families and congregants.”
The statement Friday was spearheaded by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine and signed by every congregational rabbi in the state, including Rabbi Bill Siemers of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and Rabbi Erica Asch of the Reform Temple Beth El in Augusta. (Rabbis affiliated with the Chabad movement in Maine did not appear on the signatory list.)
Zach Schwartz, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, said the federation hoped the “unity displayed here in Maine can inspire Jewish communities across the US to also unite against the extremist rhetoric harming our community and our children.”
Rabbi Josh Stanton, the associate vice president of interfaith and intergroup initiatives for Jewish Federations of North America, also hailed the joint statement.
“Maine’s Jewish clergy are setting an important example with their call to put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look to the common good,” Stanton said in an emailed statement. “At a time of rising polarization and declining civil discourse, the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s efforts to unify the community around this important message are a mark of true leadership.”
Isaacs told JTA that she hoped Jackson would “support, understand, and advocate for all of Maine’s citizens, including the totality of Maine’s diverse Jewish community.”
“Work with us to figure out how to express outrage and legitimate critique of Israel’s government without succumbing to language that you might not know is an ancient antisemitic trope, or dismissing the security needs of Israel’s citizens,” Isaacs said of her message to Jackson. “Please have the courage to forge your own path, and not follow in the footsteps of Graham Platner, a man who should have never been normalized, endorsed, or empowered.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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