{"id":307925,"date":"2025-11-24T12:01:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T12:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=307925"},"modified":"2025-11-19T09:55:48","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T09:55:48","slug":"the-anti-defamation-leagues-latest-spurious-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/11\/the-anti-defamation-leagues-latest-spurious-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"The Anti-Defamation League\u2019s Latest Spurious Attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

18 Nov 2025\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0There\u2019s an old adage among attorneys: \u201cIf the law is against\u00a0you,\u00a0argue the facts. If the law\u00a0and\u00a0the facts are against\u00a0you, pound the table and yell like hell!\u201d<\/em> Outside of the courtroom, there\u2019s no better example of this tactic today than the incessant, loud, and misdirected charges of \u201cAntisemitism!\u201d that have become the\u00a0calling card<\/a>\u00a0of the Anti-Defamation League.<\/p>\n

Last week the ADL released yet another\u00a0entry<\/a>\u00a0in its ongoing series of reports that should be subtitled \u201cDefending Israel by Weaponizing Antisemitism.\u201d This one accuses over a dozen professional academic associations in the United States of failing to combat antisemitism within their ranks. The\u00a0American Psychological Association, where I was a member for over a quarter-century,\u00a0is unfairly maligned as among the very worst offenders.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 along with schools and hospitals \u2014 destroyed by the IDF\u2019s massive and indiscriminate bombing.<\/p>\n

So only one arrow now remains in the ADL\u2019s quiver for\u00a0defending<\/a>\u00a0the indefensible: accusations of antisemitism aimed at discrediting individuals and groups that denounce Israel\u2019s unconscionable actions and demand justice and freedom for the Palestinian people. That defending Israel rather than protecting Jews is the ADL\u2019s primary agenda couldn\u2019t be clearer. What other explanation is there for its out-of-all-proportion focus on antisemitism from the political left when\u00a0Christian nationalists<\/a>,\u00a0white supremacists<\/a>, and the\u00a0Trump administration<\/a>\u00a0itself pose the\u00a0far greater threat<\/a>\u00a0to the welfare of American Jews? And how else to explain why the many Jews who\u00a0do not embrace<\/a>\u00a0the ADL\u2019s warped perspective are among those targeted for condemnation?<\/p>\n

In regard to its newest report, the ADL\u2019s stacked-deck\u00a0<\/strong>ground rules are clear. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) \u201cworking definition\u201d of antisemitism \u2014\u00a0widely criticized<\/a>\u00a0by scholars and human rights advocates alike because it conflates criticism of Israel and antisemitism and because it is routinely used to suppress free speech \u2014 is the ADL\u2019s crooked yardstick for measuring antisemitism. At the same time, despite their accuracy, assertions that Israel engages in\u00a0apartheid<\/a>, in\u00a0war crimes<\/a>, and in\u00a0genocide<\/a>\u00a0are 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: \u201cIsrael\u2019s military actions target terrorist groups, not civilians,\u201d \u201cthere is no evidence that Israel has deliberately and systematically targeted Palestinian schools,\u201d and\u00a0\u201cwithin Israel, there are\u00a0safeguards aimed at ensuring the equal treatmentof all citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

The catch-22 is that, from the ADL\u2019s perspective, to contest or reject any of its claims is to immediately reveal oneself as antisemitic. But here\u2019s an inconvenient dose of reality for ADL devotees. A recent\u00a0survey<\/a>\u00a0of a representative sample of Jews in the United States found that 61% believe that Israel has committed\u00a0war crimes<\/em>\u00a0against Palestinians in Gaza, and 39% go even further and say that Israel is committing\u00a0genocide<\/em>\u00a0there. By the standards of the ADL and other similar Israel advocacy groups, have these Jews unwittingly admitted that they\u2019re unrepentant antisemites? Or are they simply willing, at least anonymously, to acknowledge some terrifying truths about Israel \u2014 even though the ADL won\u2019t do so? Just as the Israeli government pretends that it acts on behalf of all Jewish people around the world (it doesn\u2019t), the ADL masquerades as a vigilant defender of the entire American Jewish community (it\u2019s not).<\/p>\n

Some may be disheartened by the ADL\u2019s report. But I\u2019m actually encouraged to learn that so many professional academic organizations have been judged \u201cguilty.\u201d 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\u2019re not there yet.<\/p>\n

In regard to my own profession of psychology, it\u2019s frightening to envision a world in which organizations like Psychologists Against Antisemitism \u2014 the Israel advocacy group whose members\u2019 accusations and complaints are apparently treated as irrefutable evidence\u00a0<\/strong>in the ADL\u2019s report \u2014have taken the helm at the APA. That is, imagine an academic association of scholars and practitioners where\u00a0AIPAC-funded<\/a>\u00a0congressman\u00a0Ritchie Torres<\/a>\u00a0and former Fox News regular\u00a0Leo Terrell<\/a>\u00a0are\u00a0<\/strong>considered leading authorities on antisemitism; where donning a\u00a0keffiyeh<\/a>\u00a0is deemed an antisemitic act, comparable to wearing the white hood of the Ku Klux Klan; where\u00a0distressing facts<\/a>\u00a0are\u00a0dismissed<\/a>\u00a0as \u201cunfounded libels\u201d and\u00a0condemned<\/a>\u00a0as \u201cthe kind of hot Jew-hatred that once prevailed at German and at other European universities in the Nazi era\u201d;\u00a0and\u00a0where everyone seemingly must agree that Israel is always the victim and never the oppressor \u2014 unlike any other country that has ever existed.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s recent\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with Nick Fuentes has already been viewed\u00a0over 20 million times<\/em>. For those still unfamiliar with Fuentes, he\u2019s a racist, an antisemite, a Holocaust denier, a Hitler admirer, a believer in a \u201cglobal Jewish conspiracy,\u201d and a one-time dinner companion of Donald Trump \u2014 and he has a zealous fan base of hundreds of thousands of young white men.\u00a0This<\/em>\u00a0should concern all of us. The ADL does a grave disservice by not focusing on the threat to Jews from Fuentes and his maniacal\u00a0Groypers<\/a>, but instead using so much of its formidable resources to target anti-genocide protesters on college campuses and the academic professionals who support them.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t 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\u00a0demands<\/a>\u00a0from Israel\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Roy Eidelson is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network<\/em><\/a> 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 <\/em>Eidelson Consulting<\/em><\/a>, 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 <\/em>Psychologists for Social Responsibility<\/em><\/a>, former executive director of the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, and a member of the <\/em>Coalition for an Ethical Psychology<\/em><\/a>. Roy is the author of <\/em>Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What\u2019s Happening, What\u2019s Right, and What\u2019s Possible<\/a> and can be reached at <\/em>reidelson@eidelsonconsulting.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – royeidelson.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

18 Nov 2025\u00a0–\u00a0Attorneys’ old adage: \u201cIf the law is against\u00a0you,\u00a0argue the facts. If the law\u00a0and\u00a0the facts are against\u00a0you, pound the table and yell like hell!\u201d Outside the courtroom, this tactic are the charges of \u201cAntisemitism\u201d from the Anti-Defamation League.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":243442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1668,87,865,88,427],"class_list":["post-307925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-antisemitism","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-palestine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307925"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307930,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307925\/revisions\/307930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}