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DL removes ‘Protect Civil Rights’ from website as it narrows its mission amid right-wing attacks
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.”
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Cameron Kasky, Jewish Parkland shooting survivor, is running for Congress on platform to ‘stop funding genocide’
(JTA) — Cameron Kasky, the 25-year-old Jewish activist and school shooting survivor, has entered the race to represent one of the United States’ most Jewish congressional districts — on a platform that includes stopping Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza.
“We need leaders who aren’t going to coddle their billionaire donors, who won’t support a genocide and who aren’t going to settle for flaccid incrementalism,” Kasky said in the launch video posted on Tuesday for his campaign to represent New York City’s 12th Congressional District.
The video’s caption includes the three main points of his campaign: “Medicare for all. Stop funding genocide. Abolish ICE.”
While Kasky’s anti-Trump positions are likely to go over well with the district’s largely liberal populace, his stance that Israel is committing a genocide — and the apparent centrality of that stance to his campaign — could be an issue for constituents. The district includes the Upper West and East Sides of Manhattan, where many voters sided with the pro-Israel Andrew Cuomo over Zohran Mamdani in the city’s recent mayoral election, as well as Midtown Manhattan.
Kasky’s messaging may, however, speak more to young voters in the district. A New York Times/Siena poll from September found that 66% of New York City voters ages 18 to 29 found that Mamdani, an anti-Zionist, “best addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” among the mayoral candidates.
A democratic socialist, Kasky was a vocal supporter of Mamdani throughout the mayoral election — and an aggressive critic of fellow Democrats who objected to the mayoral candidate’s anti-Israel stances.
“‘Vote blue no matter who unless it’s a Muslim who criticizes Israel’s extremist far right nationalist government’ is not ‘vote blue no matter who,’” he wrote in one tweet.
In another, he wrote that Democrats who refused to endorse him after the primary should “go get a consulting gig and stop disrespecting your own voter base.”
Kasky had teased entering the crowded race for months, ever since Rep. Jerry Nadler, Congress’ most senior Jewish member, announced he would not be running for reelection.
In that time, Kasky has also weighed in on the viability of Micah Lasher, the Jewish state Assembly member and former Nadler aide who launched his own campaign for the seat earlier in the fall.
Lasher is unable to “fight fascism” because of his “genocide denial and free speech attacks on students,” Kasky wrote, with a screenshot of a Lasher tweet from Oct. 28, 2023, that criticized what Lasher called the “awful use of the word ‘genocide’ by some westerners to describe Israel’s actions.” (As the war in Gaza neared its two-year mark this summer, a poll found that half of Americans believed Israel had committed genocide, a claim that Israel and the United States both reject.)
Kasky also reposted a poll according to which Brad Lander, Mamdani’s most prominent Jewish ally, would beat the moderate congressman Dan Goldman, who is Jewish and withheld an endorsement due to “some of the rhetoric coming from Mamdani.”
“Needless to say, I am looking forward to working with Brad Lander,” Kasky wrote.
Kasky is the co-host of the “For You Podcast” with Tim Miller, which attempts to “break down the politics of the TikTok generation,” for The Bulwark, a center-right, anti-Trump media company.
One of Kasky’s podcast guests over the summer is now his opponent: Jack Schlossberg.
Schlossberg, who is the grandson of President John F. Kennedy and has said he is “at least 100% half Jewish,” announced his own candidacy for the 12th Congressional District last week.
Kasky remarked on their podcast that many women in his life have crushes on Schlossberg — and Schlossberg replied that the two men have a similar appeal.
“I always say, when you go unhinged politics Jew, it’s hard to go back,” Kasky said.
Kasky was thrust into the national spotlight as a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. Together with other survivors, he led a march in Washington and spurred a national movement that is seen as crucial to the 2022 passage of the most significant federal gun control legislation in decades.
Kasky, a junior at the time of the shooting, is credited with having selecting the name and hashtag #NeverAgain — which has long been linked to Holocaust commemoration — for the student-led gun control campaign. (Another co-founder of Never Again MSD is David Hogg, who recently stepped down as the youngest-ever vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.)
Before the shooting, Kasky said he played Motel in a school production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” The quality of his performance was proof, he joked, that he was not a paid actor in the protests, as some conspiracy theorists accused.
Kasky attended Hebrew school growing up, which he referenced when speaking on MSNBC about the “No Kings” protests against Trump.
“This kind of reminded me of my education growing up — when you go to Hebrew school, you learn about fascism a little bit younger than the other kids,” he said. “And you find yourself asking, in the face of authoritarianism, in the face of seeing a genocide happen before the entire world, what would I do? How would I react?”
He moved to New York City to attend Columbia University, where he later dropped out, and lives in the 12th Congressional District that’s been described as a “crown jewel” of New York politics.
Now, Kasky is running on a progressive agenda that emphasizes fighting Trump and stopping U.S. military aid for Israel, referring to the country’s actions in Gaza in no uncertain terms as a “genocide” — a response which he says has been informed in part by his Jewish identity.
“I am always surprised when people ask me why I focus so much on Palestine,” he wrote. “Beyond my Jewish identity making me strongly opposed to genocide, I’m a school shooting survivor-turned-activist. I started my adult life demanding an end to American-made weapons slaughtering children.”
The post Cameron Kasky, Jewish Parkland shooting survivor, is running for Congress on platform to ‘stop funding genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Democrats urge Senate to oppose Trump’s pick for antisemitism envoy ahead of confirmation hearing
(JTA) — On the eve of a long-delayed Senate confirmation hearing for President Donald Trump’s pick for antisemitism envoy, a group of House Democrats is urging senators to reject the nomination of Yehuda Kaploun, arguing that he lacks the judgment and moral authority the post requires.
In a letter obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and sent Tuesday to Sen. Jim Risch, the Idaho Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, its top Democrat, the lawmakers call Kaploun’s nomination “partisan and controversial” and say his “comments and actions demonstrate a clear unfitness for this post.”
A total of 18 House Democrats signed the letter, including several Jewish lawmakers such as Jerrold Nadler, Jamie Raskin, Jan Schakowsky, Becca Balint and Steve Cohen.
The intervention is atypical: House members almost never publicly oppose sub-cabinet nominees, a category generally considered routine Senate business.
The committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on Kaploun’s nomination on Wednesday morning.
Trump tapped Kaploun in April to serve as the State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, an ambassador-level role focused on antisemitism abroad. The Senate did not move for months to schedule a hearing, leaving the position vacant even as administration officials warned about a spike in antisemitism.
Kaploun, a Hasidic rabbi, Miami-based businessman and longtime political operative close to Trump, would be the first Hasidic Jew to serve in the role if confirmed. In a May profile, JTA detailed how he rose from a Brooklyn yeshiva student and community activist affiliated with the Chabad movement to a prominent figure in Republican politics and a visible surrogate in Trump’s 2024 campaign.
The Democratic letter focuses first on Kaploun’s rhetoric about Trump’s political opponents. It cites a comment in which Kaploun said that after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, “Democrats refuse to even recognize the butchers of women and kidnappers of children as terrorists,” calling the statement “absurd, insulting, and malicious.” The lawmakers argue that the remark maligns Democratic members of the Foreign Relations Committee who condemned the attacks and raises questions about his ability to work across party lines.
In addition, the Democrats point to an event Kaploun organized during the 2024 campaign at which Trump said that if he were to lose the election, “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss,” and spoke of a “Democrat curse” on Jews who vote for the party. The letter describes those remarks as antisemitic scapegoating and says Kaploun’s failure to publicly condemn them — or what the letter calls the administration’s hiring of “antisemites and Christian Nationalists” — should be a central topic of Wednesday’s hearing.
The lawmakers also cite JTA’s earlier reporting on dueling lawsuits in Miami-Dade County involving Kaploun and another member of his synagogue, which alleged threats and an extramarital affair. Court records show that judges issued restraining orders on both sides and that the case was settled in April, days before Trump announced the nomination. Kaploun has denied having an affair and has said, through an attorney, that he was drawn into a marital dispute that has now been resolved.
The letter closes by turning Kaploun’s own past standard for nominees back on him, quoting a 1993 submission he made to the Senate, in which he argued that nominees must be judged on “honor,” “fidelity to principle” and respect for civil rights. “By his own standards, Mr. Kaploun fails,” the lawmakers write, urging senators to vote no.
Their intervention comes as a broad coalition of Jewish organizations has pressed the Senate to move quickly to confirm an antisemitism envoy and a parallel ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. In an August letter led by the Jewish Federations of North America, groups from across the Jewish communal spectrum urged Senate leaders to “swiftly” fill both roles, warning that “we dare not delay in filling these critical positions.”
Kaploun has previously said he is refraining from interviews until after his confirmation process, but he has publicly argued for the importance of rising above partisanship. In a May op-ed published by JTA and co-authored with the previous two antisemitism envoys, Elan Carr and Deborah Lipstadt, Kaploun wrote that “the fight against this terrible scourge… must be bipartisan and non-political.”
The post Democrats urge Senate to oppose Trump’s pick for antisemitism envoy ahead of confirmation hearing appeared first on The Forward.
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Maduro Accuses Zionists of Trying to Deliver Venezuela to ‘Devils’ as US Threatens Terror Designation
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a march amid the disputed presidential election, in Caracas, Venezuela, Aug. 3, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Maxwell Briceno
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro accused Zionists of trying to hand his country over to “devils,” as the United States ramped up military pressure and opposition leaders continued to voice support for action against his regime.
“There are those who want to hand this country over to the devils – you know who, right? The far-right Zionists want to hand this country over to the devils,” Maduro said on Saturday during a speech to local pro-government grassroots organizations.
“Who will prevail? The people of [King] David, the people of God, the people of [Simón] Bolívar, or the imperialist demons?” he continued. “We are the people of David against the Goliaths that we have already defeated in history. If God wills it, we will face them.”
| Nicolás Maduro: “Algunos quieren entregar este país a los demonios; ya saben quiénes son: la facción sionista de ultraderecha”.
pic.twitter.com/i7IJ5W0kOs— Alerta News 24 (@AlertaNews24) November 16, 2025
The Venezuelan leader has a long history of blaming the Jewish state and Jewish communities for the country’s problems, even as opposition leaders continue to publicly voice support for Israel and denounce his regime.
Last year, Maduro blamed “international Zionism” for the large-scale anti-government protests that erupted across the country following the presidential elections, in which he claimed victory amid widespread claims of fraud.
He also called the Argentinian government “Nazi and Zionist” earlier this year, amid an ongoing dispute over the arrest of an Argentine military officer in Venezuela.
Maduro broke diplomatic relations with Argentina after President Javier Milei refused to recognize his reelection in July.
During his Saturday speech, the Venezuelan leader insisted that the country is a Christian nation and questioned why Americans would want to kill Christians, as he urged Washington to refrain from military escalation amid a US buildup in the Caribbean and strikes on alleged drug trafficking vessels.
“I place at the forefront of this battle our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom our homeland has been entrusted, the only king between heaven and Earth, Jesus of Nazareth, the young child and Palestinian martyr, Jesus of Nazareth,” Maduro said.
“I place Jesus of Nazareth as commander-in-chief of the battle for peace and the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people,” he continued.
He also tried to appeal to the American people, urging them to say “no” to war and “yes” to peace.
Maduro’s latest remarks came just before the Trump administration on Sunday announced the decision to designate the Cartel de los Soles, which the Trump administration has accused Maduro of leading, as a foreign terrorist organization. The designation could open the door to strikes on Maduro’s assets and infrastructure inside Venezuela.
“Based in Venezuela, the Cartel de los Soles is headed by Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking individuals of the illegitimate Maduro regime who have corrupted Venezuela’s military, intelligence, legislature, and judiciary,” the US State Department said in a statement, noting the designation will take effect next week, on Nov. 24.
“Neither Maduro nor his cronies represent Venezuela’s legitimate government. Cartel de los Soles by and with other designated [foreign terrorist organizations] including Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel are responsible for terrorist violence throughout our hemisphere as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe,” the statement continued. “The United States will continue using all available tools to protect our national security interests and deny funding and resources to narco-terrorists.”
Congress has seven days to review the decision after being notified, and “in the absence of congressional action to block the designation,” it will take effect, according to the State Department.
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that, while he doesn’t believe the administration needs congressional authorization for potential military strikes inside Venezuela, he would like to keep lawmakers informed.
“We like to keep Congress involved. I mean, we’re stopping drug dealers and drugs from coming into our country,” he said. “We don’t have to get their approval. But I think letting them know is good.”
In recent weeks, Trump has ordered at least 21 strikes on boats believed to be carrying narcotics and has built up thousands of troops in the region.
Last month, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the creation of a new counter-narcotics Joint Task Force, saying it was established “to crush the cartels, stop the poison, and keep America safe.”