The Anti-Defamation League’s Latest Spurious Attack

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 24 Nov 2025

Roy Eidelson |  Psychology for human rights – TRANSCEND Media Service

18 Nov 2025 – There’s an old adage among attorneys: “If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell!” Outside of the courtroom, there’s no better example of this tactic today than the incessant, loud, and misdirected charges of “Antisemitism!” that have become the calling card of the Anti-Defamation League.

Last week the ADL released yet another entry in its ongoing series of reports that should be subtitled “Defending Israel by Weaponizing Antisemitism.” This one accuses over a dozen professional academic associations in the United States of failing to combat antisemitism within their ranks. The American Psychological Association, where I was a member for over a quarter-century, is unfairly maligned as among the very worst offenders.

Over the past two years, Israel has violated too many fundamental principles of international law to count in its genocidal assault on Gaza. And over this period, every feeble justification promoted by the Israeli government and its surrogates, like the ADL, has collapsed under the weight of evidence, much like the hundreds of thousands of homes — along with schools and hospitals — destroyed by the IDF’s massive and indiscriminate bombing.

So only one arrow now remains in the ADL’s quiver for defending the indefensible: accusations of antisemitism aimed at discrediting individuals and groups that denounce Israel’s unconscionable actions and demand justice and freedom for the Palestinian people. That defending Israel rather than protecting Jews is the ADL’s primary agenda couldn’t be clearer. What other explanation is there for its out-of-all-proportion focus on antisemitism from the political left when Christian nationalists, white supremacists, and the Trump administration itself pose the far greater threat to the welfare of American Jews? And how else to explain why the many Jews who do not embrace the ADL’s warped perspective are among those targeted for condemnation?

In regard to its newest report, the ADL’s stacked-deck ground rules are clear. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “working definition” of antisemitism — widely criticized by scholars and human rights advocates alike because it conflates criticism of Israel and antisemitism and because it is routinely used to suppress free speech — is the ADL’s crooked yardstick for measuring antisemitism. At the same time, despite their accuracy, assertions that Israel engages in apartheid, in war crimes, and in genocide are categorized as antisemitic, as is support for the non-violent Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Meanwhile, the report is filled with falsehoods and deceptions, including these: “Israel’s military actions target terrorist groups, not civilians,” “there is no evidence that Israel has deliberately and systematically targeted Palestinian schools,” and “within Israel, there are safeguards aimed at ensuring the equal treatmentof all citizens.”

The catch-22 is that, from the ADL’s perspective, to contest or reject any of its claims is to immediately reveal oneself as antisemitic. But here’s an inconvenient dose of reality for ADL devotees. A recent survey of a representative sample of Jews in the United States found that 61% believe that Israel has committed war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza, and 39% go even further and say that Israel is committing genocide there. By the standards of the ADL and other similar Israel advocacy groups, have these Jews unwittingly admitted that they’re unrepentant antisemites? Or are they simply willing, at least anonymously, to acknowledge some terrifying truths about Israel — even though the ADL won’t do so? Just as the Israeli government pretends that it acts on behalf of all Jewish people around the world (it doesn’t), the ADL masquerades as a vigilant defender of the entire American Jewish community (it’s not).

Some may be disheartened by the ADL’s report. But I’m actually encouraged to learn that so many professional academic organizations have been judged “guilty.” What a relief! After all, consider the alternative. Imagine if we had already reached the point in our authoritarian descent where expressions of pain or outrage over what Israel has done and is doing to the Palestinian people were silenced entirely. That may be what the ADL wants, but thankfully we’re not there yet.

In regard to my own profession of psychology, it’s frightening to envision a world in which organizations like Psychologists Against Antisemitism — the Israel advocacy group whose members’ accusations and complaints are apparently treated as irrefutable evidence in the ADL’s report —have taken the helm at the APA. That is, imagine an academic association of scholars and practitioners where AIPAC-funded congressman Ritchie Torres and former Fox News regular Leo Terrell are considered leading authorities on antisemitism; where donning a keffiyeh is deemed an antisemitic act, comparable to wearing the white hood of the Ku Klux Klan; where distressing facts are dismissed as “unfounded libels” and condemned as “the kind of hot Jew-hatred that once prevailed at German and at other European universities in the Nazi era”; and where everyone seemingly must agree that Israel is always the victim and never the oppressor — unlike any other country that has ever existed.

Ultimately, the real value of this ADL report is that it sounds an urgent alarm for the many members of academic associations who care about human rights, free speech, and Palestinian lives. It tells us that we must join together across our diverse professional disciplines and speak out against the repressive forces represented by the ADL and similar Israel advocacy groups. And those of us with greater privilege cannot allow the risks and burden to fall on colleagues whose careers and life circumstances are far more precarious than our own.

To be clear, Jew-hatred is an undeniable and growing threat in the United States today. Emblematic is the fact that conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Nick Fuentes has already been viewed over 20 million times. For those still unfamiliar with Fuentes, he’s a racist, an antisemite, a Holocaust denier, a Hitler admirer, a believer in a “global Jewish conspiracy,” and a one-time dinner companion of Donald Trump — and he has a zealous fan base of hundreds of thousands of young white men. This should concern all of us. The ADL does a grave disservice by not focusing on the threat to Jews from Fuentes and his maniacal Groypers, but instead using so much of its formidable resources to target anti-genocide protesters on college campuses and the academic professionals who support them.

We don’t yet know how the top leadership within each of these professional associations will respond to this latest broadside from the ADL. In at least some cases, their recent histories of accommodation to threats and demands from Israel’s defenders are far from encouraging. Ideally, collectively these executives will now finally stop cowering and will choose decency over expediency. Regardless, we are not yoked to their choices. We can take a firm stand against the bullying now. Indeed, precious lives may depend on our doing so.

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Roy Eidelson is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and was a member of the American Psychological Association for over 25 years, prior to his resignation. He is a clinical psychologist and the president of Eidelson Consulting, where he studies, writes about, and consults on the role of psychological issues in political, organizational, and group conflict settings. He is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, former executive director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, and a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. Roy is the author of Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible and can be reached at reidelson@eidelsonconsulting.com.

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