ADL - A History of
Disinformation and Intimidation
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which describes itself as a
civil rights organization, has been in the forefront of an ongoing
attempt to label legitimate American-Arab and American-Muslim
charitable, political, and informational organizations as fronts for
terrorism. This attempt is part of a long-standing ADL policy of
discrediting any individual or organization opposed to Israel or
supportive of Palestinian rights. The ADL's strong political loyalty
to Israel as well as its acknowledged ties to Israel's external
intelligence agency in addition to its past practices of spreading
disinformation and intimidating those who have spoken out against
Israeli policies should however serve as a warning about the ADL and
the nature of its claims.
When the ADL was founded in 1913 it defined its mission as
opposing the defamation of the Jewish people. Over the years, the
organization won respect for its active support of civil rights and
its opposition to segregation and white supremacist groups. However
after the founding of the State of Israel and the 1967 Middle East
War, the ADL significantly altered the way it defined its mission. In
a 1974 ADL publication entitled "The New Anti-Semitism", then-ADL
National Director Benjamin Epstein argued that any "criticism of
Israel reflects insensitivity to American Jews and constitutes a form
of anti-Semitism". This change in the way it defined its mission
meant that the ADL would no longer be engaged in merely civil rights
work but would rather take on a very strong political stance in
defense of Israel. The main goal of the ADL became to counteract any
criticism of Israel and to promote Israel's interests regardless of
other considerations. Throughout the 1970's and 1980's, for example,
the ADL was in the forefront of an effort to keep documents
underscoring Israel's sinking of an American naval ship confidential.
Such efforts cannot be understood in the context of the ADL's former
civil rights agenda. Similarly, in November, 1994, ADL's Executive
Director Abraham Foxman personally appealed to President Bill Clinton
to commute the prison sentence of Jonathan Pollard, an intelligence
analyst for the U.S. Navy who sold what the New York Times described
as "suitcases full of military intelligence" to Israel. Foxman's
appeal to President Clinton can only be understood in light of the
ADL's new mission of promoting Israeli interests.
The fact that the ADL has become a pro-Israel interest group is,
of course, not in itself problematic. The entire United States
political system is based on the freedom of interest groups to
compete with others in promoting their often conflicting agendas.
However the ADL has overstepped the bounds of legitimacy on a number
of levels. The organization has engaged in illegal domestic spying
activities, has worked with foreign intelligence agencies to
undermine the rights and endanger the lives of American citizens, has
undertaken disinformation campaigns slandering and intimidating
numerous academicians, politicians, journalists, church officials,
and Arab-Americans.
ADL's transgressions were most notably exposed in January 1993
when San Francisco newspapers broke the story of ADL's extensive
domestic spying network. The San Francisco Police Department
discovered that under the cover of fighting anti-Semitism, the ADL
had gathered and sold to intelligence agents of the Israeli and South
African governments information on thousands of American individuals
and groups. In addition to nearly all Arab American organizations,
those whom the ADL targeted included House Armed Services Committee
Chairman Ron Dellums, former Congressman Pete McCloskey, Los Angeles
Times correspondent Scott Kraft, the board of directors of public
television station KQED, the Rainbow Coalition, a number of labor
unions, Greenpeace, as well as numerous other journalists,
professors, members of Congress, and activists who the ADL suspected
had "anti-Israel" leanings. The information which the San Francisco
police department confiscated from the ADL offices included illegally
obtained confidential police material. The manner by which the ADL
obtained such information as well as the fact that they sold it to
foreign governments are both felonies.
The ADL's ties to the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence
agency, had been known even before the scandal broke out in 1993.
During the court proceedings concerning a 1970 lawsuit against the
ADL, an internal letter was disclosed in which ADL's Epstein bragged
about the close intelligence relations between the ADL and Israel.
Furthermore, in his 1988 autobiography, ADL general counsel Arnold
Forster described the close connections between the ADL and the
Mossad. The Mossad connection is especially disturbing because of the
Israeli intelligence agency's long record of engaging in political
assassinations of opponents of Israel throughout the world.
Like the Mossad, the ADL has not been content with just gathering
information on those who have spoken out against Israel or in favor
of Palestinian rights. The ADL has also actively engaged in
discrediting them through disinformation campaigns which are aimed at
both distorting the records and intimidating those opposed to Israel.
While in the 1970's and 1980's, the ADL often falsely labeled such
individuals as being connected to the PLO or in the pay of Arab Gulf
states, since the 1990's, the ADL has begun labeling them as being
connected to Islamic terrorist organizations. The ADL's allegations,
while couched in a matter-of-fact style, nearly always falls far
short of providing any real evidence. However such allegations have
had far-reaching effects. After the ADL accused seven Palestinians
and a Kenyan woman in California with ties to a PLO terrorist group,
for example, the eight individuals were arrested and deportation
proceedings were begun. When it was later discovered that no real
evidence existed against the eight individuals except for the fact
that they had distributed anti-Israeli magazines, the media sharply
criticized the government.
One of its first salvos in the disinformation war was its 1975
report entitled "Target U.S.A.: The Arab Propaganda Offensive", in
which the ADL distorted the images of nearly all mainstream
Arab-American groups. The ADL followed up that report with its most
controversial book of all: Pro-Arab Propaganda: Vehicles and Voices,
an enemies list of 31 organizations and 34 individuals which was
published in 1983 and was largely aimed at countering opposition to
Israel from University professors and student organizations. The
publication intentionally takes statements of those on the list out
of context, accuses them of Anti-Semitism, and falsely accuses a
number of academic scholars of being part of a PLO support network or
of having been paid by Gulf Arab countries. The report calls upon
Jewish leaders in Universities throughout the country to boycott and
intimidate those appearing on the list. Those who appeared on the
list later found themselves ostracized by the academic community with
some losing their jobs or denied promotions. S.C. Whittaker, the
former chairman of the Political Science Department at Rutgers
University admitted, for example, that political reasons, rather than
academic ones, prevented Dr. Eqbal Ahmad from obtaining a regular
teaching appointment after his name appeared on the ADL list. Dr.
Noam Chomsky, who also appeared on the list, says that since the book
was published, protesters have appeared at every one of his speaking
engagements and have distributed distorted ADL reports containing
fabricated quotes that he was alleged to have made in an attempt to
intimidate him and his listeners. On Nov. 30, 1984, the Middle East
Studies Association passed a resolution protesting the "creation,
storage, or dissemination of blacklists, enemy lists" or surveys that
call for boycotting individuals or intimidating scholars. Similar
intimidation campaigns have been waged by the ADL against reporters
and journalists who have criticized Israel.
Throughout the 1980's, the ADL also accused liberal church
officials, church groups, and religious organizations which called
for peace and justice for all in the Middle East as being connected
to the PLO. The Reverend Don Wagner and the Presbyterian Church had
especially been accused by the ADL of having connections to the PLO,
though no evidence was ever presented backing up such contentions. On
the other hand, after a 1994 report on the religious right, the ADL
was accused by religious conservatives of going after people for
their political views and of taking numerous quotes of religious
leaders out of context. Also on May 25, 1994, the ADL's Jerusalem
office released a sensationalist story which appeared the next day in
the New York Times and other newspapers which alleged that the
Vatican had admitted to being responsible for the Holocaust. The
Vatican later totally denied the story. The ADL's blatant
misrepresentation of facts was sharply criticized.
The ADL's credibility has been severely shaken by its long record
of disinformation. While the ADL has every right to continue
advocating pro-Israel policies, its real agenda should be exposed and
it must be made to end the illegal spying, harassment, and
intimidation of political opponents. More importantly, U.S. law
enforcement agencies, the media, and political circles need to see
the ADL for what it is: a pro-Israel group more than ready to distort
the truth to further the Israeli agenda. While in retrospect, it now
seems very clear that the ADL's wild allegations against alleged PLO
support networks in the 1980's were baseless, it must be remembered
that at the time they were seen as credible and led many people to
lose their jobs and others to be imprisoned. The ADL's current
crusade against alleged Islamic terrorist networks is almost
identical to its earlier one against so-called ties to the PLO. Both
campaigns are based on general stereotypes and fears and are devoid
of evidence and fact. To repeat such allegations without further
investigating them, as some in the media have done, is unprofessional
and unethical. To act upon them, as some law-makers and
law-enforcement agencies have done, is dangerous and threatens the
freedoms and civil liberties Americans have grown to expect.
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