Leo Frank and the Birth of the Anti-Defamation League of B'n

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Its Informant Sentenced but ADL Criminal Charges Dropped[/large]

Source: The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 1994, Page 21

[large]Its Informant Sentenced, But ADL Criminal
Charges Dropped[/large]

By Rachelle Marshall

Tom Gerard, a former San Francisco police officer who shared confidential police information on Arab-American and other political groups with a paid agent of the Anti-Defamation League, has pleaded no contest to the minor charge of illegal access to a police computer system, ending the criminal case against him brought last year by the San Francisco District Attorney?s office, Gerard was sentenced to a three-year period of probation, 45 days on the sheriff?s work crew, and a $2,500 fine.

The original charges brought against Gerard when he was arrested in May 1993 included the theft of confidential police and Department of Motor Vehicle records. In late April of this year Judge J. Dominique Olcomendy said the case could not go forward because the FBI refused to release documents that Gerard?s attorney said would prove his client?s innocence. Gerard?s long career in undercover police work involved frequent contacts with the FBI and included a stint with the CIA in Central America. Some of the documents subpoenaed by his attorney are thought to be summaries of FBI wiretaps that revealed Gerard and ADL employee Roy Bullock were selling data on anti-apartheid groups to the South African government.

The two men may have provided information to Israel?s spy agency Mossad as well. Included in Gerard?s files was information on every major Arab-American organization and hundreds of their members. The arrests last winter in Israel of three Arab Americans who were visiting the occupied territories prompted many supporters of Palestinian causes to suspect that reports of their legal activities in the United States were being sent to Israeli intelligence officials and used as a basis for arrest when they arrived in Israel. Although ADL was found in possession of much of this illegally acquired information, District Attorney Arlo Smith agreed last fall not to file criminal charges against the organization on condition that ADL contribute $75,000 to educational programs over the next three years and refrain from soliciting confidential public records that it knew were illegally obtained.

The FBI?s refusal to cooperate in the case against Gerard is puzzling to those who recall that it was the FBI that tipped off San Francisco police in late 1992 that the former police officer had illegally retained in his home police intelligence files that had been ordered destroyed in 1990. But according to the April 30 San Francisco Examiner, the defense strategy crafted by Gerard?s attorney, James Lassart, ?was tosubpoena the FBI records, knowing that the bureau wouldnot turn them over for fear of compromising its own investigative techniques and informants.?

Despite the court?s decision on Tom Gerard, the controversy over the ADL spy case is bound to remain alive. Arab Americans and others whose rights were violated were disappointed and angry when the original charges were dropped. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said, ?What was on trial was whether or not our system of justice would follow through and protect our rights ? Our justice system has been found wanting.? Osama Doumani of the American-Arab AntiDiscrimination Committee (ADC) called it ?a reverse David and Goliath situation.?

In the long run it may be up to the victims of the spy operation to bring its perpetrators to justice. Two civil lawsuits against the ADL are inching their way through the courts, unfortunately at what ADL lawyers are trying to assure is glacial speed. One of the suits was filed last year in federal court by ADC and other civil rights organizations, and the other in California state court by a group of individuals represented by former Congressman Paul McCloskey, Jr. Plaintiffs in both suits were listed in ADL?s files and charge that ADL violated their constitutional rights to privacy and freedom of expression.

It is likely to be months or years before these cases are resolved. Meanwhile, the failure of the judicial system to prosecute all of those involved in spying on thousands of their fellow citizens suggests that the effort to achieve full civil rights for all Americans still has a long way to go.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance writer living in Stanford, CA.

© Copyright 1995-1999, American Educational Trust. All Rights Reserved.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Jewish Anti Defamation League to Monitor Pro Life Web Sites[/large]

Source: EWTN News Brief | 20-Jun-2001

[large]Jewish Anti-defamation League to Monitor
Pro-Life Web Sites[/large]

NEW YORK, Jun 20, 01 (CWNews.com/LSN.ca) ? The US Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) launched into a left-wing activist project on Monday when it announced a web site to monitor ?extremist? and ?hate? groups, a category in which they include pro-life groups. The site would serve as a database for law enforcement officials.

While the group claims it is only seeking to identify ?anti-abortion groups that advocate violence,? the group?s pro-abortion advocacy and attempts to associate the shooting of abortionists with peaceful pro-life groups such as Human Life International contradicts their reassurances. An ADL press release from October 30, 1998 identified Human Life International among ?anti-abortion extremists? and derided any pro-life group comparing the slaughter of the unborn to the Nazi Holocaust.

The ADL often even attacks conservative Jews such as Dr. Laura Schlessinger for their conservative views. In fact, Carl Pearlston, a member of the ADL for 25 years wrote recently in the Jewish World Review that he was booted off the ADL?s Executive Committee and Regional Board for not towing the ADL?s leftist agenda. Pearlston laments that the ADL was ?turning Judaism on its head.? He said that for the ADL ?fighting ?hate? became a euphemism for an attack on sexual morality, the traditional family, and the Jewish view that children deserve a loving father and mother, not two fathers or two mothers.?

The ADL?s aggressive pro-abortion stand was confirmed when in a June 28, 2000 press release they cheered the Supreme Court decision barring a partial-birth abortion ban in Nebraska and admitted that the ADL had ?filed an amicus curiae or ?friend of the court? brief which said the Nebraska law unconstitutionally interfered in matters of individual choice.?[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Jewish Labor Committee Attempts to Shut Down Boston Conference on Zionism[/large]


New England Committee to Defend Palestine

March 16, 2008Zionists walked into a well-known center for left activists in Boston this week and managed, with a single complaint, to take away an already agreed-upon meeting space for an April conference on Palestine organized by the New England Committee to Defend Palestine. Around March 9, the local branch of a national group called the Jewish Labor Committee told the director of Encuentro 5 and the landlord of the building that houses Encuentro that the New England Committee to Defend Palestine is a ?hate group? and demanded that it not be allowed to hold the conference in Encuentro?s meeting space. On March 14, the director of Encuentro informed the conference organizers that he would have to accede to pressure from the Jewish Labor Committee and UNITE-HERE (the Union of Needle trades, Industrial and Textile Employees and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union). UNITE-HERE is connected to a trust that owns the multi-story brick industrial building in Boston?s Chinatown. Encuentro?s space is on the 5th floor of this building and is held without a lease, making it vulnerable to landlord threats.

Beneath the facts of the case lie a number of ironies:
* Attacks like this are exactly the subject of the disputed conference. The purpose of the conference, whose title is ?Zionism and the Repression of Anti-Colonial Movements,? is to expose attacks on activists as they have been carried out historically by zionist forces. Activists scheduled to speak have been involved in the Native American struggle against European genocide on the North American continent, the Black liberation struggle in the US from slavery onward, the struggle against US imperialism in Central America, the movement against apartheid in South Africa, the struggle against US imperialism and genocide in Iraq, and the struggle against US-Israeli genocide in Palestine.
* Encuentro bills itself as ?a space for progressive movement building? in Boston ([small]http://www.encuentro5.org[/small]). Massachusetts Global Action ? the organization that runs Encuentro?argued the need for a ?tactical retreat? and offered us $400 and help finding another venue if we would consent to leave. We told them that this would undermine the meaning of our conference, their own work, and the movement as a whole. Our suggestion to Encuentro was to take this matter to the activist community ? to the people who use the space ? to tell them what was taking place and invite them to help organize a struggle to defend the integrity of our collective work.

Zionist organizations like the JLC have more material and political power than perhaps at any time in the past. But this power is increasingly hollow, since it must increasingly assert itself by shutting down a discussion about that power?a discussion that is growing and moving into the mainstream. The JLC did not succeed by persuading Encuentro 5, but by threatening them through the building?s owners. These are clearly threats that they have the power to carry out?a fact that proves what critics of zionism are saying.

But this also demonstrates that while they have more material power than ever before, they have less ideological support than ever before. The legitimacy of the zionist project?the passive consent given to US support for ?Israel??is collapsing. That collapse must come before the serious fight over material power?a fight that is coming.

We are disappointed that Encuentro 5 and Mass Global Action decided that it was not strategic for them to challenge this abuse of power now. We know that the repercussions might well have been severe, and recognize that this would affect a great deal of effort and work that has gone into building their organization. We offer the following as a challenge?not so much to them, but to the movement as a whole, since finally the question is not about any of our specific, struggling organizations:

Can we build a movement against imperialism, or against social injustice in the United States, if the limits of our discussion can be set by organizations like the JLC?organizations that are committed to ensuring that billions of dollars in US military and economic support are given yearly to one of the most militarized colonial states in the world?

There is widespread discontent with zionist power. This discontent will not turn itself into a meaningful response until it becomes organized around specific battles. This can only take place if at some point people are willing say ?it stops here.?
* ?Progressives? are not progressive. The ?progressives? are the Jewish Labor Committee, which calls itself ?the Jewish voice in the labor movement.? The JLC did not come in from the outside but actually has an office in Encuentro?s own space. The Jewish Labor Committee?s web site (http://www.jewishlabor.org ) shows its president, Stuart Applebaum, standing proudly with war criminal Shimon Peres in February in Jerusalem. The JLC has put out a statement condemning the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against ?Israel.? The JLC statement asserts that Israelis, who have brutally occupied Palestine for 60 years, carrying out a program of genocide ever since, should not be seen as ?victimizers.?

The progressives are UNITE-HERE, the brave union for oppressed garment and hotel workers, which acted in this fiasco as a landlord bully threatening to kick out tenants for political speech.

The progressives are leftists who support resistance in Palestine, but not resistance that uses measures of a kind used by its enemy ? namely, armed struggle. The leadership of the resistance in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan today is Islamic. Progressives in the US support secular political movements, so they don?t support the people who are actually carrying out the resistance in these countries which the US and ?Israel? are busy devastating. Support for resistance by oppressed people should be given without qualification.

* The criminal has accused his victim of the crime. The real hate groups are those who support genocide in Palestine. The Boston Jewish Labor Committee?s accusation that the conference organizers are a ?hate group? comes right out of the manual of the Anti-Defamation League which has gone to great pains to define political speech and action as good or bad in terms favorable to the zionist project. The ADL is a ?progressive? organization ? it seems to be for the right thing, except when it comes to criticism of ?Israel.? Criticism of ?Israel? is anti-Semitism ? that?s hate speech, that?s against the law. The ADL was part of a recent attack on a mosque being built in Boston. It was exposed for lobbying Congress against a bill that condemns the Armenian genocide. During the late ?70?s and early ?80?s, it spied on organizations in the U.S. that supported the struggle against white supremacist apartheid in South Africa. This do-good ?no place for hate? organization is actually a front group for a racist foreign power.

The limits of political speech on the left are now being defined by the very organizations who say they?re working for the good. There is no open debate. The idea is to simply prevent political speech. Why is support for a nasty racist state in occupied Palestine driving so much of US and international politics? And the question goes beyond Palestine, since these same organizations have the power to set limits on the discussion of ?social justice? and racism here inside the US. This includes a history of demonizing black nationalists like Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and the Black Panthers as ?anti-Semites.? In many cases people?s careers have been ruined and their reputations smeared by forces who never came out in the open. Joseph Massad, Tony Martin, Ward Churchill, and most recently Catherine Wilkerson, are examples. Ward Churchill will be among the speakers at the conference.

The New England Committee to Defend Palestine assures all those who have been invited to and registered for the April 12 and 13 conference that we have secured another venue and will be announcing it soon. We couldn?t have provided a better example of zionist interference in anti-imperialist activism than the one that just happened here. We have great speakers coming from many different movements. We hope that supporters of the struggle in Palestine, and all those who recognize the need to build a truly independent opposition to oppression inside the US, will join us for this event.

[small]http://www.onepalestine.org[/small]


:: Article nr. 42087 sent on 17-mar-2008 06:59 ECT
[small]www.uruknet.info?p=42087[/small]

:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Libel Award Against Anti Defamation League Upheld[/large]



LIBEL AWARD AGAINST ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE UPHELD

DENVER Apr.23, 2003 - A $9.75 million libel award against
the Anti-Defamation League for publicly calling an Evergreen
couple anti-Semitic was upheld Tuesday by a federal appeals
court.

William and Dorothy Quigley won the judgment in April 2000
after the ADL's remarks at a news conference. The incident
arose out of a dispute between the Quigleys and neighbors
Mitchell and Candice Aronson, who are Jewish. The original
judgment was $10.5 million, but a judge reduced that to $9.75
million in 2001 because the Quigleys had won a separate but
related judgment against the Aronsons over wiretapping
violations.

The ADL appealed the libel judgment, but the 10th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals upheld the smaller award.

ADL regional director Bruce DeBoskey declined to comment.

The appeals court overturned the jury's finding that the
ADL had invaded the Quigleys' privacy, saying the jury
instructions were faulty. That decision had no effect on the
libel award.

The dispute dates to 1994. The Aronsons claimed the Quigleys
made anti-Semitic remarks in phone conversations that the
Aronsons taped.

© 2003 Associated Press[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Local Chapter Breaks with ADL Position on Denial of Armenian Genocide Foxman Charged with Moral Myopia

Armenian Genocide Debate Exposes Rifts at ADL[/large]
By Jennifer Siegel

Published August 22, 2007

It has been a long, hot, difficult summer for Abraham Foxman. Faced with the fight of his professional life, the indefatigable director of the Anti-Defamation League was forced into a rare and reluctant retreat by the unlikeliest of adversaries: an ethnic minority charging one of the world?s most famous Holocaust survivors with suppressing recognition of a genocide.

For weeks, Foxman, 67, faced mounting criticism for refusing to back Armenian Americans in their quest to pass a congressional resolution recognizing as genocide the World War I-era massacre of Armenians at the hands of their Ottoman rulers. But after insisting that the ADL and the United States should not risk inciting Turkey, Israel?s most important Middle Eastern ally, by labeling the episode as genocide, he made a hasty ? if less than contrite ? retreat this week in the face of a potential mutiny from fellow Jews.

?I didn?t make a mistake,? Foxman said Tuesday in an interview with the Forward. He added: ?No Armenian lives are under threat today or in danger. Israel is under threat and in danger, and a relationship between Israel and Turkey is vital and critical, so yeah, I have to weigh [that].?

The ADL worked to head off a full-blown public relations crisis with a carefully worded statement, released August 21, that did not endorse the congressional resolution but confirmed that the ?consequences? of the actions of the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians were ?tantamount to genocide.? But several observers within the organization?s leadership told the Forward that even if the effort proves successful, the saga would likely leave behind lingering questions about Foxman?s maverick leadership style as well doubts about the group?s fundamental mission.

?Are we an organization of principle? Are we an organization that will stand up for what?s right and wrong? Or are our principles put through some kind of filter that involves Israel?s self-interest??, said a member of ADL?s national executive committee who requested anonymity. There is ?that subtext here.?

Some saw the brouhaha as a matter of chickens coming home to roost for Foxman, who has served as the ADL?s director since 1987. Over the years, Foxman has charged an array of foes with misrepresenting Jewish history and fomenting antisemitism, including Mel Gibson, Jimmy Carter, Louis Farrakhan and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran. ?There?s a huge irony here,? said Jonathan Sarna, a professor of Jewish history at Brandeis University. ?The Armenian community is using all the strategies we invented to deal with Holocaust denial.?

Although a dispute over the Armenian genocide has simmered within some Jewish circles for years, ADL?s recent controversy commenced last April, when Foxman told the Los Angeles Times that he opposed a resolution, proposed by Congressman Adam Schiff and co-sponsored by 29 out 43 Jewish members of Congress, to officially recognize the Armenian massacres of 1915-1923 as a genocide.

?The Turks and Armenians need to revisit their past,? Foxman told the newspaper. ?The Jewish community shouldn?t be the arbiter of that history. And I don?t think the U.S. Congress should be the arbiter, either.?

Although officially the ADL did not take a position on the bill, along with B?nai B?rith International, the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, all four groups have said publicly that historians, not lawmakers, should settle the debate over the 1.5 million Armenian deaths. Earlier this year, the groups passed along to congressional leaders a letter from Turkish Jews opposing the resolution.

But ultimately, Foxman and the ADL, which was founded to combat antisemitism in 1913, confronted the bulk of public opposition. The issue erupted last week when the town council of Watertown, Mass.? home to one of the country?s oldest and largest Armenian communities ? voted to withdraw from an ADL-run anti-discrimination program. With other area towns poised to follow suit, ADL?s New England regional board, one of the organization?s most influential and moneyed, issued a statement backing the congressional resolution, and the board?s professional head, regional director Andrew Tarsy, publicly disavowed Foxman?s position.

Tarsy was summarily fired last Friday, resulting in the cascade of events ? including the resignations of two regional board members, condemnation of the ADL by such prominent Jews as Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz and a public rift with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, which organized a petition campaign among the area?s Jewish groups ? that forced Foxman and the ADL?s national leadership to change course.

As of press time, the ADL had not announced whether Tarsy would be reinstated. In speaking to the Forward, Foxman ? who is slated to release a book, ?The Most Dangerous Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control,? next month ? remained almost defiantly unapologetic.

?We?ve never denied that there was a massacre, we [just] didn?t engage in the g-word,? Foxman said. ?Now, they?ve insisted on the g-word. Fine.? He added: ?If my going public and saying this was a genocide can bring unity to the community, and can make the Armenian community feel that they?re being heard, then I did it.?

The national director said he personally had believed that the Armenian tragedy constituted genocide before saying so publicly, but that his reversal was motivated by a concern for Jewish welfare. ?I?m saying it sincerely. I still don?t think it?s our issue, but so many people believe it is our issue? I said okay,? Foxman said.

He added: ?I saw what this was doing to the unity of the Jewish community at a time we need unity. Israel is under threat. European Jewry, Latin American Jewry are under attack. In America, we?re being attacked as disloyal. This is not a time for Jews to be attacking each other over an issue that is really not central.?

Armenian American leaders welcomed the ADL?s updated position but deemed it far from a full victory.

?This is a current-day issue,? said Anthony Barsamian, director of public affairs for the Armenian Assembly of America. ?Speaking about genocide in Turkey will get you killed. Last fall, I traveled to Turkey and met with Hrant Dink, who was then the editor of the [Turkish-Armenian newspaper] Agos, and he was assuring me that this was an issue for Turks and Armenians within Turkey, and three months later, he was assassinated.?

Within the ADL, Foxman?s critics also seemed unlikely to be fully placated. Although Foxman is widely credited within the organization as a master tactician equally adept at handling world leaders and big-time donors, his detractors have long resented what they see as his propensity to unilaterally adopt positions, as when he lobbied for a pardon for financier Marc Rich in the final days of the Clinton administration. In 2001, Foxman angered leaders in Los Angeles when he unexpectedly fired the director of the ADL?s Pacific Southwest region.

?This is déjà vu,? said Joel Sprayregen, a longtime critic of Foxman who is a former national vice chair of the ADL and honorary chair of its Chicago region. ?To many of us, it seems, here he does it again.?

Copyright © 2010, Forward Association, Inc. All Rights Reserved.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Nader Criticizing Israel Is not Anti Semitism[/large]

Weekend Edition
October 16 / 17, 2004
[large]A Letter to Abraham Foxman
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism[/large]

By RALPH NADER


Dear Mr. Foxman:

You started your last letter with the sentence: ?We are not engaged in a dialogue about the issues you raised in your letter.? That is precisely the point, is it not, Mr. Foxman. For many years you have eschewed engaging in a dialogue with those in Israel and the United States who disagree with your views. Your mode of operation for years has been to make charges of racism or insinuation of racism designed to slander and evade. Because your pattern of making such charges, carefully calibrated for the occasion but of the same stigmatizing intent, has served to deter critical freedom of speech, you have become sloppy with your characterizations when it comes to attempts to hold you accountable. Of course citizen groups make charges all the time but their critics and corporate adversaries do review and rebut which keeps both sides more alert to accuracy especially when they desire press coverage. Few groups get the free ride that has been the case of the ADL when it ventures beyond its historic mission into covering the Israeli militaristic regime and its brutalization and slaughter of far more innocent Palestinians it occupies, than the reverse casualties inflicted on innocent Israelis.

Your insensitivity here is legion. You fail to understand that your studied refusal to reflect the condemnations of Israeli military action and mayhem against civilians, by the great Israeli human rights organization B?t selem and the major international human rights organizations, contributes to the stereotypic bigotry against Palestinian Arabs and the violent Gulag that imprisons them in the West Bank and Gaza. Yours is more than the ?crime of silence? so deservedly condemned in other periods of modern history when despots reigned. You go out of your way to silence or chill others who are raising the same points that B?T selem and Rabbis for Justice and other U.S. and Israeli peace groups, such as Rabbi Lerner?s Tikkun initiative, do.

You are not above twisting words of those you take to task in order to be able to deploy the usual semantic vituperatives. My comments related to the Israeli government with the fifth most powerful and second most modern military machine in the world through its prime minister possessing the role of puppeteer to puppets in the White House and Congress. You distorted the comment into ?Jews controlling the U.S. government.? Shame on you. You know better. If you do not see the difference between those two designations, you yourself are treading on racist grounds. Indeed, you are too willing to justify any violence against innocent Palestinian children, women and men in the mounting thousands on the grounds of inadvertence and security when such casualties are either direct or foreseeable results of planned military operations. Your refusal to condemn bigoted language, cartoons, articles and statements in Israel up to the highest government levels, can be called serious insensitivity to ?the other anti-Semitism.? Both Jews and Arabs belong to the ancient Semitic tribes of the Middle East either genealogically or metaphorically. There is, as you know so well, anti-Semitism against Jews in many places in the world. There is, as you always ignore, aggressive anti-Semitism against defenseless Arabs in many places in the world and in Israel whose military might and nuclear weapons could destroy the entire Middle East in a weekend.

Consider for example, one of many, many episodes of similar impact excerpted from an essay in CounterPunch by Jules Rabin, ?An Israeli Refusnik Visits Vermont, The Man Who Didn?t Walk By?, August 3, 2004:

The man who ?didn?t walk by? is Yonatan Shapira, until recently pilot of a Blackhawk helicopter and captain in the elite Israeli Air Force. I met Yonatan not many days ago when he came to speak in my town, Montpelier, Vermont, about a major turning point in his life.

Yonatan is a lover of his country, a composer, and a handler of extraordinary machines. He was dismissed from Israel?s air force in 2003 because he refused to take part in aerial attacks in areas of the Occupied Territories of Palestine where there exist large concentrations of civilians liable to become a ?collateral damage.? In Yonatan?s view, such attacks are both illegal and immoral because of the near-inevitability of their killing innocent civilians. In support of his position, Yonatan cites the authority of the Israeli army?s own code of ethical behavior, and the fact that, (by a recent reckoning) of 2,289 Palestinians killed by the Israeli Defense Forces in the current Intifada, less than a quarter (550) were bearing arms or were fighters.

At the same time, Yonatan has declared himself absolutely ready to fight in the defense of Israel proper.

* * *

Yonatan was shocked into his refusal to obey orders by two occurrences, among others.

One was the action of a fellow Israeli pilot who fired a 1-ton bomb from his F16 fighter jet, as ordered, at a house in Al-Deredg, where a suspected Palestinian terrorist was staying. Yonatan identifies Al-Deredg as one of the most crowded districts of Gaza, and indeed of the world. Besides the targeted Palestinian, 13 local people were killed in that attack: 2 men, 2 women, and 9 children, one of whom was 2 years old. 160 other people were wounded in the explosion. A 1-ton bomb, Yonatan calculates, has approximately 100 times the explosive power of the type of lethal belts worn by Palestinian suicide bombers. In proportion to the US population and the fatalities of the original 9/11 disaster, now an icon and classic measure of terrorist devastation, the fatalities of that single attack on tiny Gaza (population 1,200,000) were greater by 10% than the fatalities in America?s own 9/11.

Nor was the bombing of Al-Deredg unique in the scale of its impact on civilian life. Yonatan has cited the casualties resulting from 7 other targeted assassinations conducted in Palestine by the Israel Defense Forces, where, along with 7 other targeted individuals, 44 bystanders were killed. Taking Palestine?s overall population at 3,500,000 and that of the US at 290 million, those 44 bystander deaths would represent, in proportion to the US population, another one and a-third 9/11?s.

As a volunteer in Selah, a group that assists victims of Palestinian terror, Yonatan has first-hand knowledge of the appalling effects of the multiple 9/11-scale attacks that Israel has itself experienced, at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. He was nevertheless or consequently appalled by the action in Al-Deredg of his fellow pilot. He considered the means used in the attack, a 1-ton bomb, and its goal, the assassination of one man, to be wildly disproportionate to the attack?s predictable collateral effects, and a violation of the rules of engagement concerning which all Israeli soldiers are instructed. Those rules, as Yonatan has understood them, include the obligation to refuse to obey orders that are clearly illegal and immoral.

The other occurrence Yonatan cited, that pushed him to become a refuser, came out of a disturbing exchange he had with the commander of the Israeli Air Force, General Dan Halutz, concerning his refusal to serve on a mission in the Occupied Territories. In Yonatan?s words:

In the discussion of my dismissal, I asked General Halutz if he would allow the firing of missiles from an Apache helicopter on a car carrying wanted men, if it were traveling in the streets of Tel Aviv, in the knowledge that that action would hurt innocent civilians who happened to be passing at the time. In answer, the general gave me his list of relative values of people, as he sees it, from the Jewish person who is superior down to the blood of an Arab which is inferior. As simple as that.

As simple as that.

Yonatan is convinced that actions like those of his fellow-pilot and attitudes like those of his commanding general are destroying Israel from within, whatever their effect on Palestine.

* * *Superficially, Yonatan conforms to a stereotype of a career military officer, air force style. He?s tall and lithe, dresses trimly and wears his hair closely clipped.

He departs from the military stereotype in other respects. There?s nothing of the eagle in his bearing. He?s unassuming, and in conversation and argument, he?s almost humble in his appeal to his interlocutor?s reason and understanding. He listens and speaks with the innate respect and the close attention of a scholar pursuing an investigation, or a navigator studying a chart.

If you do not condemn such behavior as anti-Semitism against Arabs, by your international stature, you are not restraining the present Israeli government?s sense that it can conduct such operations with impunity, with a free pass from moral condemnation by a man so accustomed to moral condemnations.

Attached is a copy of my letter to you of August 5, 2004 in which I urged you once again to address. In addition, would you use the same words in your previous letter regarding my characterization of the puppeteer-puppets relationship to the writings of Tom Friedman, Rabbi Michael Lerner and many other Americans and Israelis of the Jewish faith? If not, why not? Is there a thinly veiled bias working here or would you have to use another one of your semantic sallies portraying them as ?self-hating Jews??

In conclusion, Abraham Foxman has a problem. He is in a time warp and cannot adjust to the new age of total Israeli military domination of the Palestinian people. A majority of the Israeli and Palestinian people believe in a two state solution an independent, viable Palestinian state and a secure Israel. This is the way to settle this conflict and live in peace for future generations. The ADL should be working toward this objective and not trying to suppress realistic discourse on the subject with epithets and innuendos. As former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak stated in Chicago last June, Israel needs to begin disengaging from the occupied territories and not wait for the right Palestinian Authority. The overwhelming preponderance of military force permits this to happen.

If you have not met frequently with the broad and deep Israeli peace movement, you might wish to change your routine so that you can play a part in the historic effort to establish a broad and deep peace between the two Semitic peoples. The exchanges should be videotaped and widely distributed to further the cause of peace and to witness Abraham Foxman dialoguing without his customary lines that evade the issues.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Nader vs. the ADL[/large]

By Brian FalerThursday, August 12, 2004RALPH NADER, THAT master of controversy, has a new bete noire: theAnti-Defamation League. The independent presidential candidate has becomeembroiled in an ugly exchange with the Jewish organization, after hesuggested that President Bush and Congress were ?puppets? of the Israeligovernment.?The days when the chief Israeli puppeteer comes to the United States andmeets with the puppet in the White House and then proceeds to Capitol Hill,where he meets with hundreds of other puppets, should be replaced,? Nadersaid earlier this summer. That prompted an angry letter from the league,which complained that the ?image of the Jewish state as a ?puppeteer,?controlling the powerful US Congress feeds into many age-old stereotypeswhich have no place in legitimate public discourse.?Nader is not backing down. In a letter to the group that will be releasedtoday, he reiterated his arguments, challenged the league to cite a recentexample of when American leaders have pursued a policy opposed by theIsraeli government and pointed to Israeli peace groups that he said sharehis criticism of that country?s leadership. ?There is far more freedom inthe media, in town squares and among citizens, soldiers, electedrepresentatives and academicians in Israel to debate and discuss theIsraeli-Palestinian conflict than there is in the United States,? Naderwrote.The longtime consumer advocate?s willingness to criticize Israel may win himsome votes, since both Bush and Democratic nominee John F. Kerry stronglysupport Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. But not if Abraham H. Foxman,the national director of the league has anything to say about it. ?What hesaid smacks of bigotry,? Foxman said.==================================================August 5, 2004Abraham H. FoxmanNational DirectorAnti-Defamation League823 United Nations PlazaNew York, NY 10017Dear Mr. Foxman:How nice to hear your views. Years ago, fresh out of law school, I wasreading your clear writings against bigotry and discrimination. Your charterhas always been to advance civil liberties and free speech in our country byand for all ethnic and religious groups. These days all freedom-lovingpeople have much work to do.As you know there is far more freedom in the media, in town squares andamong citizens, soldiers, elected representatives and academicians in Israelto debate and discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than there is in theUnited States. Israelis of all backgrounds have made this point.Do you agree and if so, what is your explanation for such a difference?About half of the Israeli people over the years have disagreed with thepresent Israeli government?s policies toward the Palestinian people.Included in this number is the broad and deep Israeli peace movement whichmobilized about 120,000 people in a Tel Aviv square recently.Do you agree with their policies and strategy for a peaceful settlementbetween Israelis and Palestinians? Or do you agree with the House Resolution460 in Congress signed by 407 members of the House to support the PrimeMinister?s proposal? See attachment re the omission of any reference to aviable Palestinian state ? generally considered by both Israelis andPalestinians, including those who have worked out accords together, to be asine qua non for a settlement of this resolvable conflict ? a pointsupported by over two-thirds of Americans of the Jewish faith. Would such areasonable resolution ever pass the Congress? For more information on thegrowing pro-peace movements among the American Jewish Community see: EsterKaplan, ?The Jewish Divide on Israel,? The Nation, June 24, 2004.Enclosed is the ?Courage to Refuse ? Combatant?s Letter? signed by hundredsof reserve combat officials and soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces. Itis posted on their web at : [small]www.seruv.org.il/defaulteng.asp[/small]. One highlightof their statement needs careful consideration: ?We shall not continue tofight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve andhumiliate an entire people. We hereby declare that we shall continue servingin the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel?s defense.The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose ? andwe shall take no part in them? (Emphasis in original). Do you agree withthese patriotic, front line soldiers? observation that Israel is dominating,expelling, starving and humiliating an entire people ? the Palestinianpeople ? and that in their words ?the Territories are not Israel??What is your view of Rabbi Lerner?s Tikkun?s call for peace, along with theproposals of Jewish Voice for Peace, the Progressive Jewish Alliance andAmericans for Peace Now? As between the present Israeli government?sposition on this conflict and the position of these groups, which do youfavor and why?Do you share the views in the open letter signed by 400 rabbis, includingleaders of some of the largest congregations in our country, sent this Marchby Rabbis for Human Rights of North America to Ariel Sharon protestingIsrael?s house-demolition policy?Have you ever disagreed with the Israeli government?s treatment of thePalestinian people in any way, shape or manner in the occupied territories?Do you think that these Semitic peoples have ever suffered from bigotry anddevastation by their occupiers in the occupied West Bank, Gaza or insideIsrael? If you want a reference here, check the website of the great Israelihuman rights group B?T selem.Since you are a man of many opinions, with a specialty focused on theSemitic peoples, explain the United States? support over the decades ofauthoritarian or dictatorial regimes, in the greater Middle East, over theirown people which is fomenting resistance by fundamentalists.These questions have all occurred to you years ago, no doubt. So it would behelpful to receive your views.As for the metaphors ? puppeteer and puppets ? the Romans had a phrase forthe obvious ? res ipsa loquitur. The Israelis have a joke for the obvious -that the United States is the second state of Israel.How often, if ever, has the United States ? either the Congress or the WhiteHouse-pursued a course of action, since 1956, that contradicted the Israeligovernment?s position? You do read Ha?aretz, don?t you? You know of thegroup Rabbis for Justice.To end the hostilities which have taken so many precious lives of innocentchildren, women and men ? with far more such losses on the Palestinian side- the occupying military power with a massive preponderance of force has aresponsibility to take the initiative. In a recent presentation in Chicago,former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made the point explicitly ? Israelshould take the initiative itself unilaterally and start disengaging fromthe West Bank and Gaza and not keep looking for the right PalestinianAuthority. Amram Mitzna, the Labor Party?s candidate for Prime Minister inthe 2003 election, went ever further in showing how peace can be pursuedthrough unilateral withdrawal. Do you concur with these positions?Citizen groups are in awe of AIPAC?s ditto machine on Capitol Hill as aremany members of Congress who, against their private judgment, resignthemselves to sign on the dotted line. AIPAC is such an effectivedemonstration of civic action ? which is their right ? that Muslim Americansare studying it in order to learn how to advance a more balancedCongressional deliberation in the interests of the American people.Finally, treat yourself to a recent column on February 5, 2004 in The NewYork Times, by Thomas Friedman, an author on Middle East affairs, who hasbeen critical of both the Israeli and Palestinian leadership. Mr. Friedmanwrites:?Mr. Sharon has the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat under house arrest inhis office in Ramallah, and he?s had George Bush under house arrest in theOval Office. Mr. Sharon has Mr. Arafat surrounded by tanks, and Mr. Bushsurrounded by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vicepresident, Dick Cheney, who?s ready to do whatever Mr. Sharon dictates, andby political handlers telling the president not to put any pressure onIsrael in an election year-all conspiring to make sure
the president doesnothing.?These are the words of a double Pulitzer Prize winner.Do you agree with Mr. Friedman?s characterization? Sounds like apuppeteer-puppet relationship, doesn?t it? Others who are close to thisphenomenon have made similar judgments in Israel and in the United States.Keep after bigotry and once in a while help out the Arab Semites when theyare struggling against bigotry, discrimination, profiling and race-basedhostility in their beloved adopted country ? the U.S.A. This would be inaccord with your organization?s inclusive title.Sincerely,Ralph Nader[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Neighbors' Spat Leads to a Huge Award Against the Anti Defamation League[/large]

New York Times
May 13, 2000

Neighbors' Spat Leads to a Huge Award
Against the Anti-Defamation League

By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

DENVER, May 12 -- As a dispute with their neighbors
intensified in 1994, Mitchell and Candace Aronson of
Evergreen, Colo., tuned in a police scanner to intercept
private phone conversations and heard the neighbors make
what the Aronsons perceived were anti-Semitic remarks
about them. The Aronsons immediately sought help from the
Anti-Defamation League, whose local director publicly
called the neighbors anti-Semites.

Over the next five and a half years, the conflict
widened into a vicious legal battle over issues of
privacy and defamation, ending in a Denver federal court,
where a jury recently returned the first verdict ever
against the league, a unit of the B'nai Brith that has
fought anti-Semitism, racism and bigotry for 87 years.

The jury also awarded the neighbors, William and
Dorothy Quigley, $10.5 million in damages -- a quarter of
the league's annual budget.

The Aronsons, who are now divorced, were not
defendants in the case.

Lawyers for the league filed motions today asking
the trial judge to set aside the verdict or, failing
that, reduce the award. But the case has focused a rare
spotlight on how aggressively an organization that prides
itself on exposing anti-Semitism responds to perceived
threats that, for many Jews, carry the emotional weight
of historical persecution. In testimony, the Quigleys,
who are Roman Catholic, insisted that their language did
not mean to convey anti-Semitic feelings.

Still, by ruling that Saul F. Rosenthal, the
director of the league's Mountain States regional
chapter, defamed the Quigleys with public remarks that
relied upon phone conversations taped in violation of
federal wiretap laws, the jury put limits on how far an
organization can go toward fulfilling its mission. It
also sent a message that protecting the privacy of
personal telephone conversations is more important than
punishing offensive language they might include. While
some legal experts agreed with the jury's findings,
others said that if the judgment survives appeal, the
organization might have to temper its responses in the
future. Barry Curtiss-Lusher, chairman of the Mountain
States chapter, said that the possibility that the
verdict could have a chilling effect on the organization
was "one of our fears."

"It's frightening," Mr. Curtiss-Lusher said. "It's
why we will appeal."

Abraham Foxman, the league's national director and
a Holocaust survivor, disagreed, insisting that Mr.
Rosenthal did nothing wrong on behalf of the Aronsons and
that the league would respond in the same way again.

"We are always concerned about attitude because we
don't know what the flash point is," Mr. Foxman said,
referring to remarks made by the Quigleys that the
Aronsons taped and found offensive. "With latent
anti-Semitism, at what point is attitude converted into
action or violence? This is what concerns us, and I would
hope this verdict does not have a chilling effect on what
we do.

"We will continue to stand up against racism and
anti-Semitism. Even though we are sometimes misconstrued,
that has always been our strength."

Only once before has the league been a defendant in
a defamation case that went to trial, winning in 1984.
Many other cases against the league were dismissed.

Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, who
is not affiliated with the league, said: "In the final
analysis, this could chill the work of a very important
organization that lives by its freedom of expression.
Sometimes they make a mistake, but the essence of
American free speech is that you have the right to be
wrong."

With appeals ahead, neither the Aronsons, the
Quigleys, Mr. Rosenthal nor their lawyers would comment
on the case.

The story of the Aronsons and Quigleys, as told
through court documents and trial testimony, began the
summer of 1994, when the two families lived two houses
apart in Evergreen, an upscale suburb west of Denver in
the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Former New Yorkers
all, they occasionally socialized; their children played
together.

But starting with arguments over the behavior of
their dogs, the friendship deteriorated, leading to an
incident in which Mr. Quigley drove his car toward Mrs.
Aronson, sitting in her car, before he turned away. In
court papers, Mr. Quigley contended that Mrs. Aronson was
taunting him by blocking his passage; Mrs. Aronson
claimed Mr. Quigley was speeding to intimidate her.

In either case, after Mrs. Aronson told her husband
what happened, he turned on a police scanner that he
often used and picked up Mrs. Quigley speaking on a
cordless telephone with a friend. Hearing Mrs. Quigley
talking about him and his wife and discussing ways to
drive them out of the neighborhood, Mr. Aronson began
taping a conversation that lasted nearly two hours and
included references to Holocaust imagery, like "painting
a facsimile of an oven door" on the Aronson house, and
suggestions that they would harm the Aronson children.

But Mrs. Quigley and her friend laughed about their
conversation, as if to suggest that Mrs. Quigley was
letting off steam. At one point, Mrs. Quigley conceded to
her friend that their remarks were "sick."

The Aronsons were not so amused. In the days that
followed, they complained to David J. Thomas, the
Jefferson County district attorney, contending that the
Quigleys had violated Colorado's ethnic intimidation law,
which prohibits intimidation, harassment or actions
against a person based on race, religion, ancestry or
national origin.

They also contacted the Anti-Defamation League,
saying they had become victims of anti-Semitism. At the
suggestion of lawyers for the league who later
represented them, the Aronsons continued taping the
Quigleys' phone conversations, amassing almost 100 hours
worth in the next seven weeks.

Some tapes, testimony showed, included other
derogatory comments about Jews and references to the
Holocaust -- all by Mrs. Quigley -- which the Quigleys'
lawyer, Jay S. Horowitz, characterized in court papers as
"facetious or sarcastic."

Mr. Aronson dismissed that interpretation,
testifying that he and his wife "lived in great fear" of
the Quigleys because of what they had heard.

The tapes led to no physical actions by the Quigleys
and they revealed no anti-Semitic remarks by Mr. Quigley,
but they became the source of almost everything that
followed and, ultimately, the reason the league lost in
court.
Unknown to anyone at the time that the Aronsons were
taping -- including Mr. Thomas, -- Congress amended the
federal wiretap law, making it illegal to record
conversations on a cordless telephone, to transcribe the
material and to use the transcriptions for any purpose.
The law already covered conventional telephones and
cellular phones.

Without knowing about the change, the Aronsons used
the tapes as the basis for a federal civil lawsuit
against the Quigleys in December 1994. A day later, Mr.
Rosenthal appeared at a news conference with the Aronsons
in which he described their encounter with the Quigleys
as "a vicious anti-Semitic campaign," based solely on
conversations he and associates had with the Aronsons.
Later that day, Mr. Rosenthal expanded on his remarks in
an interview on a Denver radio talk show.

Two days later, Mr. Thomas used the tapes as the
basis for filing criminal charges against the Quigleys.

But after Mr. Thomas learned of the change in the
wiretap law and heard on the tapes the context of Mrs.
Quigley's remarks, he dropped all charges but one, a
misdemeanor traffic violation against Mr. Quigley for the
incident in the street. In an open letter released to
reporters, Mr. Thomas apologized to the Quigleys, saying
he found no evidence that either had engaged in
"anti-Semitic conduct or harassment."

A swirl of lawsuits, countersuits and settlements
over the next four years left only the Quigleys' civil
complaint against the Anti-Defamation League and Mr.
Rosenthal. In a four-week trial that ended last month,
the jury determined that Mr. Rosenthal had made more than
40 statements defaming the Quigleys; their lawyers asked
the judge today to use his discretion to triple the
jury's damage award.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]New Film Defamation Is an Expose of Israel[/large]


FOCUS

Jewish directors challenge Israel
By Sakhr al-Makhadi at the London Film Festival

Eyes Wide Open, a love story between two Orthodox Jewish men, provoked anger at its screening


A series of controversial Israeli films are provoking outrage and plaudits in equal measure at the London Film Festival.

The best documentary award has gone to one of the year?s most controversial films.

Defamation is a polemic by Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir. In his expose of America?s Anti-Defamation League (ADL), he claims anti-Semitism is being exaggerated for political purposes. He argues that American Jewish leaders travel around the world exploiting the memory of the Holocaust to silence criticism of Israel.

He gets inside the ADL, which claims to be the most powerful lobby group of its type anywhere in the world. With unprecedented access, he travels with them as they meet foreign leaders, and use the memory of the Holocaust to further their pro-Israeli agenda.

At one point, an ADL leader admits to Shamir that ?we need to play on that guilt?.

Shamir says his film, Defamation, started out as a study of ?the political games being played behind the term anti-Semitism?.

?It became more a film about perceptions and the way Jews and Israelis choose to see themselves and define themselves ? a lot of the time unfortunately choosing the role of eternal victims as a way of life.?

Israel?s national psyche

He wanted to find out how this mentality has become part of Israel?s national psyche.
The film suggests that the attitude is thrust upon children from an early age. School trips to concentration camps in Poland run year-round.

From just 500 children in the 1980s, he claims around 30,000 are now flown to Europe every year.

He discovers that the trips are not designed to educate, but to provoke an emotional reaction. They fly out of Israel euphoric, and end their journey in tears, talking about their shared hatred.

They are accompanied by secret service agents who prevent them from talking to any locals ? they are led to believe that most Poles are anti-Semites.

The end result is disturbing. The victim mentality is being used to justify Israel?s occupation and colonisation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza.

In the film, one Israeli Jew tells Shamir that she refuses to get upset by Israeli aggression against the Palestinians because ?we? faced worse. To her, the Holocaust justifies anything the Israeli army does.

And for Shamir, that is the real danger. ?We are experiencing the most right-wing government we?ve ever had, and there is very little room for discussion. Putting so much focus on hate and the negative, I don?t see it as a healthy thing.?

In Israel, the film has received a mixed response. ?It?s kind of a love or hate type of response to the film,? Shamir says. ?It?s very hard to get people to come and watch documentaries in the cinemas in Israel.?

Touchy subject

In the UK, too, there is anger towards Defamation.

Mark Gardiner from one of Britain?s biggest anti-Semitism campaign groups, the Community Security Trust, believes the film could put Jews at risk.
Samuel Maoz?s film, Lebanon, has sparked debate inside Israel

?All of a sudden some bloke appears out of nowhere, oh he?s an Israeli, oh he?s a Jew, therefore what he says must have more credence than what organisations like my own and the ADL have said for years ? I think that shows a deep-seated bias.?And he is furious at the suggestion that anti-Semitism is being used for political purposes.

?This assumption that people are saying it because they?re being malicious, because they know that it?s not anti-Semitic, but hey lets use anti-Semitism in order to win the Israel case, that?s what I find really really offensive,? Gardiner says.

Shamir is not surprised by reactions like that.

?Anti-Semitism is a very touchy subject and making a film about anti-Semitism is almost like walking on thin ice, you?re going to hurt people?s feelings.?

Martial Kurtz from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) believes the film can make a difference to activists like him.

He says all too often Israel?s supporters label groups like the PSC as anti-Semitic.

?There are many Jewish organisations which campaign [with us] against the occupation, campaign against the siege in Gaza,? he says. ?So the whole argument falls flat.?

?Rocking the boat?

Defamation is not the only controversial movie at this year?s London Film Festival.

Eyes Wide Open provoked anger and walkouts when it was screened.

It is a love story between two Orthodox Jewish men set in Jerusalem. Despite trying to keep their affair secret, the pair are threatened with violence by the community?s elders, leading to tragedy.

Director Haim Tabakman knew the film would not be easy for some Jews to watch. ?This film has a provocative pitch,? he says. ?Every good film is political.?

But he just wants people to face reality. ?If you talk about it, it exists, so it?s not in their interests to talk about it,? he told Al Jazeera.

?It?s like the flood with Noah and his ark ? the water came to destroy everything but something new came out of it. Sometimes it?s good to shake the boat.?

?Victims of war?

Another director causing waves is Samuel Maoz, whose war film Lebanon is sparking debate inside Israel.

?You can?t change anything without first of all talking about it,? he says. ?The film moves people to talk, even to argue with each other.?

Maoz?s film, which won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival in September, is based on his own experiences as his army invaded Lebanon in 1982. He says he made the film because of the guilt which still haunts him to this day.

?I?m not comparing between the suffering of a Lebanese woman who lost her family to the suffering of a soldier who fell into a no way out situation and needs to kill. If I can make some kind of scale, she is in level 10 and he is in the bottom, he is in level two. But both of them are victims of war.?

He knows words like that will cause controversy in Israel, but he is ready for the backlash.

?The army is not something holy, especially after the 2006 Lebanon war. In war itself there are no good guys and bad guys. The war is the bad guy.?

Maoz believes that Israel will only become less belligerent when civilians are shown the realities of war.

?First of all it was a need to unload and expose the war as it is, naked, without all the heroic stuff and the rest of the cliches.?

But Maoz has a bigger aim ? to stop Israel launching attacks on Palestinians and Lebanese.

?Every film has its ambition to change something ? the film is attacking war itself,? he says.

?Peace will come but it?s just a question of time and time is blood. If we can find a short cut we can save a lot of blood for both sides.?
Source: Al Jazeera[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify]Source: Naom Chomsky?s Necessary Illusions, [small]http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/ni/ni.html[/small]

[large]Noam Chomsky Describes the ADL[/large]

As eloquently described by Noam Chomsky in his book Necessary Illusions (1989):

The leading official monitor of anti-Semitism, the Anti-Defamation League of B?nai Brith, interprets anti-Semitism as unwillingness to conform to its requirements with regard to support for Israeli authorities?. The logic is straightforward: Anti-Semitism is opposition to the interests of Israel (as the ADL sees them). ?
The ADL has virtually abandoned its earlier role as a civil rights organization, becoming ?one of the main pillars? of Israeli propaganda in the U.S., as the Israeli press casually describes it, engaged in surveillance, blacklisting, compilation of FBI-style files circulated to adherents for the purpose of defamation, angry public responses to criticism of Israeli actions, and so on. These efforts, buttressed by insinuations of anti-Semitism or direct accusations, are intended to deflect or undermine opposition to Israeli policies, including Israel?s refusal, with U.S. support, to move towards a general political settlement.

?Through its 31 offices across the country, the ADL monitors school curricula, library acquisition lists, and public conferences and symposiums, working behind the scenes to stifle intellectual freedom.? Robert Friedman, The Jewish Thought Police: How the Anti-Defamation League Censors Books, Intimidates Librarians, and Spies on Citizens, The Village Voice, July 27, 1993.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Peninsula Professor Targeted by ADL for Criticism of Israel[/large]


------------------------------------------
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
San Francisco Bay Area Chapter
522 Valencia St San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 861-7444 adcsf@hotmail.com
[small]www.adcsf.org[/small]
-------------------------------------------

PLEASE ACT AND FORWARD!:

Professor Under Attack at Foothill College!

Take action to defend free speech!

Adjunct Political Science Professor Leighton Armitage of Foothill
College is being targeted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other
pro-Israel groups for comments he made in an interview in the student
newspaper The Sentinel. According to the San Jose Mercury News article
below, Armitage said the following:

"Armitage said, of Israeli treatment of Palestinians: 'And what are
they doing with Palestinians, every day? They're killing them. They're
walling them in, they're essentially doing the same thing that was done
to them. . . . It's exactly what Hitler did to the Jews.'"

This valid critique of Israeli government policy is being labeled by
the ADL as "anti-Semitic" and Armitage could be subject to disciplinary
action, or possibly termination.

Foothill College and Professor Armitage have been receiving hundreds of
phone calls and emails condemning Armitage and demanding Foothill to
take action against him. They are under tremendous pressure and need
to be urged to uphold the values of the freedom of speech and the right
of academics, and everyone else, to present criticism of any
government's policies. This is just one instance in a string of
attacks on college professors by groups such as the ADL and Daniel
Pipes' CampusWatch.

Please contact the President and Vice President of Foothill College,
supporting Armitage's right to freedom of speech and urging them not to
cave in to those who wish to silence academic debate about the
Israel/Palestine conflict.

President Bernadine Fong:
fongbernadine@foothill.edu
650-949-7425

Vice President of Technology and Instruction Penny Patz:
patzpenny@foothill.edu
650-949-7070

Please also send letters to the editor of the Mercury News regarding
this issue:

letters@mercurynews.com

[small]http://www.mercurynews.com[/small]

News

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted on Tue, Feb. 10, 2004
Remarks spur college probe
ANTI-ISRAEL: FOOTHILL INVESTIGATES PUBLICATION OF PROFESSOR'S COMMENTS
By S.L. Wykes and Thaai Walker
Mercury News

Two weeks after a newspaper interview with a professor prompted a furor
over what some on campus believed were anti-Semitic comments, Foothill
College administrators are investigating how the story came to be
published and are scheduling a meeting with the Anti-Defamation League.

In a letter about the situation, college President Bernadine Chuck Fong
called the interview with adjunct political science Professor Leighton
Armitage ``regrettable.'' Neither she nor other administration
officials could be reached for comment beyond her letter, and it was
unclear whether Armitage would be subject to disciplinary action.

In the question-and-answer style interview, published Jan. 28 in the
student-funded paper The Sentinel, Armitage said, of Israeli treatment
of Palestinians: ``And what are they doing with Palestinians, every
day? They're killing them. They're walling them in, they're essentially
doing the same thing that was done to them. . . . It's exactly what
Hitler did to the Jews.''

Fong's letter apologized to those offended by the article and said it
``includes various allegations regarding the Israeli people and the
state of Israel that are of serious concern to me and many members of
the Foothill community.''

She continues, ``Our goal as a higher education institution is to
ensure proper dialogue takes place.''

Faculty newspaper adviser Paul Starer could not be reached for comment.

Fong has agreed to meet with the Anti-Defamation League's Central
Pacific regional director Jonathan Bernstein in about two weeks,
something she would not do in October 2002 when the ADL wrote her a
letter with another complaint. A student had dropped out of a class
after the teacher opened the semester with remarks that Israel was
engaging in ethnic cleansing, adding, something it had probably learned
from the Nazis.

After the first incident, Fong sent an e-mail to the ADL saying
Foothill had ``policies in place that protect everyone, not just
students, of their First Amendment rights.''

Bernstein said the ADL had recently conducted a workshop on hate speech
for students and faculty members at De Anza College in Cupertino. ``We
were asked to do that because there'd been a problem.'' he said. But,
he added, ``these same issues exist at most schools, and what ends up
happening is that generally administrators don't want to acknowledge
the problems. . . . As a result the problem festers and you have
this.''

Foothill student Tatyana Povolotsky, president of Foothill's Jewish
Student Union, was very upset by the Sentinel piece. ``It wasn't just
him attacking the political issue of the Israeli government. Instead he
was attacking the Jewish people in general,'' she said. ``I think this
is a hate thing.''

Armitage would not comment beyond saying, ``I'm so disgusted with the
whole thing.'' He also said that none of the people ``giving me flack''
have been his students.

He teaches an introductory political science course at Foothill and
also teaches at the College of San Mateo.

Bernstein said that the ADL was very concerned about the atmosphere
Armitage might be creating in his classes. ``Every instructor has
opinions, and we all have our own biases,'' he said. ``The key is to be
open to differing viewpoints in the classroom so you don't shut people
down.''[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify]Source: The Jewish Bulletin of Northern California

[large]Pentagon lambasted by ADL for doubting Jews? U.S. loyalty[/large]

MATTHEW DORF

Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 2, 1996

WASHINGTON, D.C. ? Under fire from the Anti-Defamation League, the Department of Defense has repudiated a memo by its security agency warning government contractors that ?strong ethnic ties? to American Jews allow Israel to steal military and industrial secrets ?aggressively.?

A low-level field official in upstate New York issued a confidential memo to defense contractors in October putting them on alert for Israeli espionage.

?The strong ethnic ties to Israel present in the U.S., coupled with aggressive and extremely competent intelligence personnel, has resulted in a very productive collection effort,? the three-page memo states.

After the memo?s existence was first reported in the February issue of the Jewish monthly magazine Moment, the Defense Department went public with its disdain for the memo.

?I want to stress that the content of this document does not reflect the official position of the Department of Defense,? Assistant Secretary of Defense Emmett Paige Jr. wrote to Abraham Foxman, the ADL?s national director.

?While we object to the document in general, singling out ethnicity as a matter of counterintelligence vulnerability is particularly repugnant to the department,? he wrote.

The department stopped distribution of the memo in December and, as a result of the public outcry, has ?canceled? the memo.

In a letter to the department, Foxman had chastised it for singling out Israel and its strong ethnic ties in the United States.

?This is a distressing charge which impugns American Jews and borders on anti-Semitism,? Foxman wrote.

?In addition, we are disturbed by the general tenor of the memorandum considering the fact that Israel is America?s longtime ally, considering the fact that only five years ago Israel refrained from taking military steps against Iraq despite Scud missile attacks because its U.S. ally asked for restraint.?

Foxman called the department?s response ?the beginning, but not the answer.?

?To issue a blip that the memo was canceled doesn?t mean anything? unless there is a new memo sent detailing the department?s policy, Foxman said.

In addition, Foxman belittled the department?s claim that the author of the original memo was a low-level staffer. ?That?s her job? to write security memos, he said.

In a second letter Foxman sent on Tuesday, the ADL reiterated its request for an internal investigation into the matter.

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), who is Jewish, added her voice to those calling for an investigation.

In a letter to Secretary of Defense William Perry, Lowey wrote: ?I deeply resent the implication that American Jews would commit treason against their nation because of their Jewish heritage.?

For their part, the department has ?instructed appropriate personnel that similar documents will not be produced in the future,? Paige wrote.

The memo labeled Israel a ?nontraditional adversary? and warned contractors that ?Israelis have a voracious appetite for information on intentions and capabilities relating to proliferation topics, i.e., nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.?

The memo cited the case of Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst serving a life sentence for spying for Israel, as a prime example of the danger faced by government contractors.

Pollard, who is Jewish, cited his loyalty to Israel as a reason for his espionage work.

?Pollard conveyed vast quantities of classified information to Israel for ideological reasons and personal financial gain,? the memo stated.

Other incidents alleged include a 1986 theft of proprietary information from Chicago-based Recon Optical Inc., for which Israel paid $3 million in damages in 1993, according to the memo.

The memo concluded with an oft-cited charge that Israel gave China U.S. technology for the Communist regime?s fighter-plane program. The United States has never proven the charge, which Israel has vehemently denied.

An Israeli official in Washington refused to address the charges in the memo but said the Pentagon response speaks for itself.

While the memo drew swift condemnation, the charge that American Jews have greater loyalty to Israel than the United States is not new.

Polls consistently show over the past 30 years that about one-third of all Americans believe that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the United States.

Another 20 percent of Americans routinely answer that they do not know where Jews? loyalties lie, according to ?Anti-Semitism in Contemporary America,? a study published by the American Jewish Committee.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify]Source: The Boston Globe, December 14, 2000,

[large]Police Get Help Putting Hate in its Place[/large]

By Emily Shartin, Globe Correspondent

Now that more police officers are schooled in the complexities of investigating hate crimes, the Anti-Defamation League wants to help police departments build a more unified and thorough approach to those investigations.

At police roll calls across the state today ? including those in Framingham, Holliston, Hudson, Lincoln, Sherborn, and Wayland ? the ADL will distribute laminated cards detailing strategies for investigating crimes that appear to be motivated by hate or bias.

The ADL says the 3-by-7-inch cards, which will be distributed to 16,000 officers in 170 departments, are meant to encourage police to carefully examine the motivations for a crime. Officers are reminded to consider whether victims may have been singled out because of their race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or gender ? all indicators of hate crimes.

?It just gets them to be thinking a little more globally around the incident,? said Christina Bouras, executive director of the Governor?s Task Force on Hate Crimes, a partner in the campaign.

John Collins, general counsel for the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, estimated that instruction on hate crimes has only become standard for most police departments within the last 10 years. ?Hate crimes [are] one of the areas where traditionally we didn?t train people,? he said.

Although some hate-crime investigations are relatively cut and dried, police say the motivations for certain incidents cannot always be quickly identified.

?There?s still that gray area that will always remain,? said Medfield Police Chief Richard Hurley.

The cards remind officers to look for telltale signs or symbols, to take into account the history of the neighborhood, and to consider whether the incident occurred on a significant date, such as Hitler?s birthday; and offers strategies for talking with victims.

Those kinds of reminders, says Framingham Police Lieutenant Lou Griffith, can help officers collect a more complete set of facts at the scene of a crime, which can ultimately lead to a more successful review of the incident, and possible prosecution.

?The more complete the initial investigation is, the better off we?re going to be down the road,? Griffith said.

According to Andy Tarsy, ADL civil rights director, the campaign is not intended to criticize the ways police have traditionally handled investigations into hate crimes; instead, it aims to foster trust and communication between victims and police. The ADL is concerned that victims of hate crimes are often reluctant to report incidents to authorities.

?The more that police officers demonstrate they understand the unique pain of a victim,? Tarsy said, ?the more likely victims will be to come forward.?

Under Massachusetts law, penalties for assault or vandalism motivated by hate can be more serious than penalties for other crimes. For example, while an assault is punishable by a $500 fine and a 21/2-year jail term, a hate-motivated assault that results in injury can carry a fine of $10,000 and a jail term of five years, according to the Middlesex district attorney?s office.

But just as important as prosecuting hate crimes, officials say, is bringing to light the antagonism causing those incidents.

?It?s an indication that there?s an undercurrent that we all as a community should know about,? said Charles McDonald, director of communications for the state?s Executive Office of Public Safety.

The most recent statistics compiled by state public safety officials show that 497 hate crimes were reported across Massachusetts in 1998, as compared with 29,708 aggrevated assaults for the same year.

Police officers across the region served by Globe West say local incidents of bias-motivated crime are rare, and usually involve vandalism, assault, or spoken epithets. Newton, for example, has dealt several times with swastika graffiti around the city and in the schools, Newton Police Lieutenant Paul Anastasia said. Hurley recalled two cases over his 12-year tenure in Medfield, both involving what appeared to be anti-Semitic vandalism.

The infrequency of hate crimes in Massachusetts is one reason why police say the ADL project will be helpful. Many officers already carry cards reminding them of procedures for certain obscure motor vehicle violations, domestic violence, or arrests.

?When things don?t happen on a regular basis, you lose your sharpness,? said Needham Police Chief William Slowe. But when something does happen, the community counts on the police to respond thoroughly and appropriately. Westborough Police Chief Glenn Parker notes that ignoring the seemingly lesser hate-motivated incidents can lead to more serious problems in the future. ?It can escalate into something you really don?t want to happen,? he said.

Police should adopt a zero-tolerance approach to hate crimes, Slowe says, because of the way those incidents attack the very core of a person?s sense of identity. ?They?re treated very seriously because ? it?s the ultimate personal affront,? he said. ?All your other defenses are gone. What?s left??

This story ran on page 01 of The Boston Globe?s Globe West section on 12/14/2000.

© 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Professors in Britain Vote to Boycott Two Israeli Schools[/large]

Professors in Britain Vote to Boycott 2 Israeli Schools

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
May 8, 2005

LONDON, May 7 - Acting in response to an appeal by 60 Palestinian
organizations, Britain's leading higher education union has voted to boycott
two Israeli universities.

The boycott, which has prompted outrage in Israel, the United States and
Britain, would bar Israeli faculty members at Haifa University and Bar-Ilan
University from taking part in academic conferences or joint research with
their British colleagues.

The resolution on the boycott, passed by the Association of University
Teachers in late April, would allow an exception only for those academics at
the two schools who declare opposition to Israeli policies toward the
Palestinians.

The move has so angered Jewish groups in the United States that one
organization, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is considering
calling on American universities to carry out a counterboycott against
British universities.

"This is unreal," said Abraham H. Foxman, its national director. "These are
not ignorant peasants or extremist ideologues. They are intellectuals
teaching future generations to respect, to dialogue and to cooperate, and
they are saying boycott the Jews again."

"What about those who are suffering in Cuba and China and Rwanda?" he asked.
"Where is the support to deal with Sudan?"

Critics of the boycott have denounced it in newspapers, on the Internet and
in government declarations as antithetical to academic freedom, ill-timed,
misguided and, at worst, anti-Semitic. Both sides see it as part of a larger
trend of increasing pressure on Israel to withdraw from occupied lands.

Last year, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) opted to begin divesting from
companies that it believes benefit from the Israeli occupation. A similar
call is being considered by the United Church of Christ.

But Britain and the rest of Europe tend to be considerably more outspoken in
their support of Palestinians and in opposition to the Israeli occupation. A
sponsor of the boycott proposal, Sue Blackwell, an English professor at the
University of Birmingham, said the move was taken because the Palestinian
organizations asked for it. Had a similar call been issued by groups in
Cuba, China or Sudan, she said, it might also have been heeded.

"Delegates were moved by the pictures we showed of Palestinian families
being evicted," she said. "They were moved by stories of attacks on a Jewish
Israeli academic. They were moved by an account of the settlements and what
they are doing in making a Palestinian state impossible. It was a response
to the overall plight of the Palestinian people."

At the conference, delegates were told of the difficulty Palestinians face
traveling from the occupied territories to Israeli universities; learned
about a college in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, which bars
Palestinians; and heard about the treatment of a professor, Dr. Ilan Pappe,
an Israeli Jew who is an outspoken anti-Zionist. Parallels were drawn
between Israel and South Africa, where education was racially segregated
under apartheid.

Using language lifted from a Palestinian call to action, the British motions
framed the boycott as a "contribution to the struggle to end Israel's
occupation, colonization and system of apartheid."

Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the
Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which pushed for the union vote in
Britain, said comparing Israeli occupation to South African apartheid was a
fair parallel. While Palestinians are not officially barred from Israeli
universities, they are effectively kept out, he said.

"Palestinian academics have been denied the right to move, to travel and
often to teach due to occupation policies," Mr. Barghouti said.

"They have been effectively subject to a de facto boycott for decades," he
said. "Aren't they part of the academic community that deserves academic
freedom?"

But some academics in Britain said severing ties to Israeli universities was
counterproductive because they provided opportunities to air differences and
hold debate.

"We think to target Israeli universities is to target some of the places
that have some of the most open spaces in Israel, spaces that are against
the occupation and against anti-Arab racism, spaces where Jews and
Palestinians learn together," said David Hirsh, a professor of sociology at
Goldsmiths College, University of London, who opposes the Israeli occupation
but is working to overturn the boycott.

"A lot of people who support this are motivated by an understandable want or
wish to help Palestinians," he said. "What we have also said is that the
union has adopted a position that is effectively anti-Semitic because it has
chosen to hold the Israeli Jewish academics responsible for the actions of
their state and university administrators, when the union doesn't hold any
other academic in the world responsible in that way."

Neil Goldstein, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, said the
boycott evoked "the sorts of techniques that were used to try to deny Jews
the right to participate in academic life in prewar Germany."

British professors have declined to work with individual Israeli academics
in the past, and a number of student unions have taken up the boycott cause.
In 2002, a professor at a university in Manchester fired two Israeli
academics from journals that she owned, saying that although they were
friends, they represented the state of Israel. In 2003, an Oxford professor
denied a student at Tel Aviv University permission to work in his laboratory
because the student had served in the Israeli Army.

In Britain, where some leading academics, including some Nobel Prize
winners, have been highly critical of the boycott, 25 union members are
trying to overturn it. They petitioned last week for an emergency council
meeting, which now has been called for May 26 in order to hold another
debate and a new vote.

The approval of the boycott appeared to surprise even its framers; it had
failed in 2003 and was opposed by the academic union's executive board. This
time, the authors of the motions narrowed the boycott to select universities
and underscored its endorsements by Palestinian organizations, including the
Palestinian higher education trade union.

Haifa University was singled out because Dr. Pappe, who teaches there,
maintains that he has faced harsh treatment for his views, particularly for
supporting a student's 1999 master's thesis charging that Israeli soldiers
massacred Palestinians in the village of Tantura during the 1948 war. The
explosive paper was examined both by a university panel and by Israeli
courts; all concluded the charges were not substantiated in the thesis. The
court also found that some quotations in the thesis had been altered.

Critics of the boycott say punishing Haifa University is a particularly
inappropriate way to pressure Israel, because it is one of the country's
most integrated institutions, with Israeli Arabs making up about 20 percent
of its student body.

Bar-Ilan University became a target of the boycott because it recognizes
credits from the College of Judea and Samaria in the West Bank settlement of
Ariel. Palestinians are barred from the settlement, and thus, the college.
The British academic union judged that Bar-Ilan had made itself "directly
involved with the occupation of Palestinian territories."

Just last week, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon elevated its status to
university, a move that riled many Israeli academics and was widely viewed
as a gambit to strengthen settlements in occupied territory.

© The New York Times[/justify]

[Dejuificator II]

[justify][large]Propagandizing the Police[/large]

by William Norman Grigg

Leftist ?watchdogs? posing as experts on extremism are advising police agencies in ?preemptive? law enforcement. The resulting dragnet will increasingly target law-abiding gun owners, pro-lifers, homeschoolers, and other foes of the total state.

A new state law that went into effect on October 1st permits law enforcement authorities in Connecticut to confiscate guns from anyone determined to be an ?immediate danger? to himself or others. State police Lieutenant Robert Kiehm explained to the Associated Press that the purpose of the measure is to give police officers the power ?to take some proactive steps instead of waiting for something to happen.? Although the circumstances under which such seizures can occur are narrowly defined, the Connecticut law represents a significant advance for the ominous emerging doctrine of ?pre-emptive? law enforcement.

?Lawmakers in other states say the focus on prevention is the law?s strength,? reported AP. ?The thing that frustrates me is that when they?re pulling bodies out of a house, neighbors are telling the police, ?Yeah, the guy who shot them was nuts ? we all knew that,?? declared Illinois State Representative Tom Dart (D), who plans to introduce a similar proposal in his own state. ?But everyone says that there?s nothing that they could have done to stop the shooting.?

?The value of this law is not so much that police will seize your guns,? explained Connecticut State Representative Michael Lawlor, who sponsored the law. ?It gives police a system to investigate a person who poses a threat. If the police never confiscate a person?s guns, they can at least look into the person?s behavior and perhaps prevent a tragedy by intervening.? AP paraphrased Lawlor as saying that the new law could ?stop people like Benjamin Smith, the white supremacist who killed two people and wounded nine during a two-state shooting spree targeting Jews, blacks and Asians. Smith?s criminal record and reputation for passing out hate literature could have prompted police to take action, Lawlor said.?

Lawlor?s reference to the Benjamin Smith case demonstrates that there is a political aspect to Connecticut?s model of ?proactive? gun confiscation, since Smith?s abhorrent political views would have played a role in defining him as a threat to others. But would the same be true of certain political views that are merely politically incorrect or unpopular? How about political affiliations with real or perceived ?extremist? groups that are tirelessly ?linked? in the media with unambiguous hate groups?

In principle, the Connecticut law is of a piece with recent proposals to give the FBI and other agencies enhanced power to keep political ?extremists,? almost always of the ?right-wing? variety, under special scrutiny. Those ?extremists? considered particularly prone to violence would be subject to interrogation as a means of deterring such outbursts. And, in some cases, ?extremists? would find themselves denied constitutional protections such as those contained in the First and Second Amendments.

In order to be effective, pre-emptive law enforcement measures would require citizens to maintain vigilance for signs of ?dangerous? attitudes on the part of their neighbors and associates ? and to act as informants out of a sense of public duty. They would also require the indoctrination of police agencies regarding ?danger signs? that evince an individual?s potential to carry out an armed rampage. The task of indoctrinating law enforcement officers is presently carried out by an array of left-wing ?watchdog? groups such as the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Anti-Defamation League of B?nai Brith (ADL), Political Research Associates (PRA), and the Justice Department?s State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training Program (SLATT), a quasi-private entity. These groups, as well as sundry ?experts? in loose orbit around them, provide much of the law enforcement training and intelligence information dealing with the threat posed by the ?radical right.?

Scripted Stories

In recent months, leftist ?watchdog? groups have skillfully capitalized upon recent gun violence episodes ? such as Benjamin Smith?s murder spree, neo-Nazi Buford Furrow?s shooting rampage at a Jewish day-care center, and Larry Ashbrook?s murderous assault upon the Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas ? to advance their campaign for new federal powers to keep ?right-wing extremists? under surveillance. In their eagerness to exploit these tragedies, the ?watchdogs? have often displayed a contemptuous disregard of the specific facts of each episode, as the Wedgwood Baptist Church incident illustrates.

Following Larry Ashbrook?s September 17th attack upon worshipers at the Wedgwood Baptist Church, in which the gunman murdered seven worshipers before killing himself, extraordinary efforts were made to depict the assailant as a white supremacist motivated by anti-Semitic or racist impulses. This was done despite the fact that Ashbrook?s crime ? the unprovoked mass murder of Christians gathered in a Texas sanctuary of worship ? more nearly resembles the federal massacre of the Branch Davidians than any crime carried out by neo-Nazis or anti-Semites. But the ?watchdogs? and their media allies had a carefully scripted story to tell, and they weren?t going to allow the facts to interfere.

Two days after Ashbrook?s murder spree, an advertisement by the Houston chapter of the AJC appeared in the Houston Chronicle. ?Hatred is spreading ? with fatal consequences,? declared the AJC ad. ?Action is necessary now. As a start, Congress must hold full-scale hearings on groups that preach hatred and glorify violence. Law enforcement must be empowered, within constitutional limits, to monitor and infiltrate hate groups that are poisoning America, threatening Jews, African-Americans and other minorities. How many more Americans have to die before our elected representatives make fighting hate groups a priority? What is the death threshold that will move Congress to finally have the courage to stare down the NRA and pass firm gun control laws??

Of course, the AJC?s pre-positioned ?solutions? didn?t comfortably fit the events of September 17th. Immediately after the church shooting, John Craig, co-author of the 1997 book Soldiers of God: White Supremacists and their Holy War for America, claimed that Ashbrook was a ?Phineas Priest? ? a terrorist committed to murdering Jews and non-whites. However, the Houston Chronicle reported on September 18th that FBI and police investigators who had examined Ashbrook?s home and personal journals ?said the journals provided no clue to Ashbrook?s motives or to any involvement in a white supremacy movement?.? Nor had Ashbrook previously caught the eye of ?organizations that monitor extremist and hate group activity.? In fact, Howard Bushart, who co-authored Soldiers of God with Craig, told the Chronicle not only that he had ?no evidence of whether [Craig] interviewed this individual? but that he was puzzled by his colleague?s depiction of the shooter as a Phineas Priest.

While Ashbrook?s motivations remain elusive, it is quite clear that the AJC was less interested in the specific crime committed at the Wedgwood Baptist Church than it was in advancing the two-pronged campaign of gun confiscation and expanded political surveillance of ?hate groups? by the federal government. This is why the AJC sought to shoehorn the Fort Worth shooting into the mold of previous shootings carried out by neo-Nazis Benajmin Smith and Buford Furrow.

Empowering the Feds

In an August 12th New York Times op-ed column, Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, cited the hideous crimes of Smith and Furrow to illustrate the supposed need for a more aggressive federal campaign against ?hate groups.? According to Foxman, ?the time has come to recalibrate that balance [between public safety and civil liberties] ? to permit law enforcement not only to get the man, but also to prevent the act. If law enforcement agencies should overstep the line, we should very swiftly take the authority away. But now is the time to give them that trust and that capability.? It was Foxman?s misfortune to urge such trustworthiness just prior to the avalanche of new revelations regarding the FBI?s lethal abuse of power in Waco (see ?Waco Deception Up in Smoke? in our September 27th issue).

In a Philadelphia Inquirer column published three days after Foxman?s essay saw print, Barry Morrison, the ADL?s regional director for eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware, recited the same arguments ? with significant embellishments. ?The time has come to re-think and re-examine the policies and practices that govern the ability of law-enforcement agencies to monitor hate groups,? declared Morrison. ?Present guidelines practically require a smoking gun ? compelling evidence that a crime has been committed or is imminent ? before an active investigation is undertaken. We need to review such policies and seek zealously to strike a careful balance between security needs and First Amendment protections.?

On the same day (August 15th), Yale University law professor Ruth Wedgwood advanced the same set of proposals in an op-ed column published in the Washington Post. Wedgwood, a former federal prosecutor, is an adviser to the FBI and Justice Department on investigative guidelines. More importantly, she is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a group with considerably more influence over public policy than the ADL. Thus it is of some moment that Wedgwood?s recommendations for federal action against ?hate groups? are even more radical than those prescribed by Foxman and his associates.

?Free speech and a largely unrestricted gun trade can be a heady combination for supremacist groups trawling the Internet for new recruits,? writes Wedgwood. ?We need to find a response that will not damage the traditional liberties of American society but will keep hate groups from using them as a shelter while they swagger and intimidate to win new converts. What can we do? One useful step would be for the FBI to expand its efforts to keep watch on hate groups and be in a better position to stop crimes before they happen.? Wedgwood points out that ?civil libertarians? (of the left-leaning variety, of course) had condemned the abuses the FBI had supposedly committed against ?civil rights, antiwar and radical groups in the 1960s and ?70s.? She continues, ?A reaction against those abuses led the Justice Department to shut down many of its domestic security operations? and adopt the current guidelines, which mandate ?an extremely cautious approach in opening new investigations.? However, Wedgwood declares, the FBI has been in the penalty box long enough: ?[N]ow that the FBI has had 20 years to rebuild its reputation for respecting civil liberties, we can seek a restored balance.? Presented more candidly, Wedgwood?s argument is this: Now that the radicals of the 1960s are in power, and the subject of federal scrutiny would be the ?radical right,? the FBI can be trusted with the power to conduct domestic surveillance.

According to Wedgwood, the FBI?s ?joint terrorist task forces,? which ?marry the FBI?s forensic talents and investigative reach with local police departments? savvy about suspect groups or individuals in their jurisdictions,? provide an initial framework for the expanded surveillance of ?hate groups.? Presently such task forces are operating in San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, D.C. To define the pool of potential suspects, Wedgwood cites an estimate from the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center that ?there are 537 white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups in the United States, and another 435 militia and posse groups.? Once a target is chosen, the feds should not be shy about throwing their weight around, according to Wedgwood: ?An extremist group that appears to be planning violence should not be shielded from FBI surveillance just because it sacrilegiously calls itself a church.? Of course, the federal assault on the Branch Davidians ? whose beliefs were aggressively ridiculed by FBI spokesmen and other federal officials during the 51-day stand-off ? was justified after the fact as a pre-emptive strike against planned violent acts.

In order to determine whether a ?decision to commit a crime has been made,? Wedgwood suggests that the FBI learn from the Secret Service. ?To deter real threats to the President?s life, Secret Service agents have long sought out and interviewed anyone who speaks of using violence against the President, even when the statement may have been uttered in jest or in a moment of anger. These interviews allow the agents to evaluate the threat at closer hand, and let them take precautions if the threat seems serious. Are we sure that threats against racial and religious groups cannot be equally serious?? Wedgwood?s proposal assumes that the FBI would have detailed, specific intelligence to act upon, and a mandate to ?deter? those suspected of planning violent acts.

The appeal of Wedgwood?s proposal resides in the notion that a single visit from the FBI may have prevented Benjamin Smith?s killing spree, or stopped Buford Furrow from attempting to slaughter Jewish children at a day-care center. However, there is no reason to believe that the wrap-around surveillance and pre-emptive harassment envisioned by Wedgwood would be confined to murderous bigots and other genuine radicals without bringing law-abiding critics of unchecked government power within the compass of political scrutiny.

The groundwork for a system like that recommended by Wedgwood has been laid by left-wing ?watchdog? organizations that are demanding that the FBI be given expanded powers of surveillance. Pending such a development, civil libertarian Laird Wilcox told The New American, such leftist groups are ?operating as intelligence networks for the FBI and other law enforcement bodies, but their information is highly prejudiced by their political outlook. The danger inherent in this arrangement is that these groups compile lists of organizations and individuals for police intelligence divisions, and then the police are expected to use that information to keep tabs on such people, who may have done nothing more than express a political view the ?watchdogs? disagree with.?

Wilcox, the founder of the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements at the University of Kansas, is considered by many academics to be one of the nation?s foremost experts on ?fringe? political movements. A longtime member of the ACLU and veteran of the 1960s Civil Rights movement, Wilcox is nonetheless a forthright critic of professional anti-right activists. In his study The Watchdogs, Wilcox points out that ?the watchdogs engage in ?political profiling.? Major watchdog groups, particularly the ADL, hold law enforcement conferences, seminars and training sessions on this ?profiling? behavior against their enemies and critics.? For the most part, the ?watchdogs? have ?roots in the extreme Marxist left of the American political spectrum,? observes Wilcox. While they offer ritual recognition of ?freedom of expression and other constitutional guarantees,? they advocate ?formal censorship or government reprisals against their ideological opponents simply because of their values, opinions, and beliefs?. They appear to regard their opposition and critics as sub-human and not deserving the amenities ordinarily afforded to other human beings.?

Kenneth Stern and the AJC

The American Jewish Committee (AJC), which describes its mission as that of battling anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice, helped pioneer the dehumanization process described by Wilcox. In 1950 the AJC published a study supposedly documenting that conservative mainstream Americans display ?fascistic? tendencies. Entitled The Authoritarian Personality, the study was compiled under the supervision of German Marxist Theodor Adorno, who was a prominent figure in the Institute for Social Research, a group organized by the Communist International in Frankfurt, Germany in 1933.

Political historian Paul Gottfried of Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania notes that the AJC used the Adorno report as a weapon to ?pathologize dissent by claiming that conservatives are either psychologically unfit or concealing bigoted motivations.? According to legal activist Elliot Rothenberg, a former vice president of the AJC?s Minnesota chapter, the AJC?s leadership has ?a very effective set of ideological blinders on?. The AJC, like the ADL, prefers to concentrate its fire on whatever conservative group happens to provoke its disfavor at any given time.?

The AJC?s point man on the ?radical right? is Kenneth S. Stern, who serves as ?program specialist on anti-Semitism and extremism? for the organization. In 1996 Stern published A Force Upon the Plain: The American Militia Movement and the Politics of Hate. Stern has been featured in newscasts, documentaries, and congressional hearings as an authority on the ?mindset? of ?right-wing extremists,? and his book was heavily promoted by Calibre Press, a specialized on-line newsletter and catalog service catering to active-duty police officers. Stern?s 1994 book Loud Hawk, which chronicled the legal services he rendered as a young attorney on behalf of the Marxist/terrorist American Indian Movement (AIM), has gotten significantly less publicity. To date The New American is the only publication that has documented the fact that the AJC?s chief ?counter-terrorism? specialist in the 1990s was an apologist for anti-government terrorism in the 1970s. (See ?Flower Child Fascism: A Case Study,? in our March 18, 1996 issue.)

?In 1975,? wrote Stern in Loud Hawk, ?I was zealous, thinking that the rightness of the cause justified nearly everything ? good ends excusing almost any means?. In my youth I would have thought bombing property was almost romantic.? During the time frame in which Stern ?would play with? the law on behalf of AIM, ?pull[ing] it apart, put[ting] it back together,? the group was working with Soviet and Cuban intelligence agents, and collaborating with both domestic and international terrorist groups. Stern wrote: ?This was the mid-1970s, when the ultra-left became the freaky left, when the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army and even part of AIM thought social change came through bombs.?

Stern proudly recalled how he lent his services to such subversive groups as the George Jackson Brigade and the New World Liberation Front, and came to suspect that he was under FBI surveillance ? which would be entirely appropriate, given his close collaboration with terrorists who were targeting police and innocent civilians for attack.

He also recalled how an AIM member who was involved in the 1975 murder of FBI agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler justified the crime by comparing the G-men to Nazis. ?Their death generated pride and maybe, in a way, even hope,? wrote Stern, without expressing a syllable of criticism for either the crime or the calumny directed at the murdered law enforcement agents.

Stern?s case is noteworthy because it perfectly illustrates one of Laird Wilcox?s chief indictments of the activists who compose the left-wing ?watchdog? groups. ?Many of these people are doctrinaire Marxists and nihilists who come from the most destructive elements of the 1960s new left,? Wilcox pointed out to The New American. ?These were hateful people ? self-hating, nation-hating, highly ideological radicals who gravitated toward the leadership ranks of these groups. And now through the ?watchdog? groups they?re working with the same law enforcement bodies they warred against in the 1960s and 1970s as part of their continuing effort to bring about a social revolution.?

ADL Spy Network

One of the preferred tactics of revolutionaries is the use of agents provocateurs ? planted operatives within opposition groups who commit crimes or perform other outrageous acts which are used to discredit such groups and, in some cases, to justify a crackdown by state authorities. As Wilcox documents in his book The Watchdogs, the ADL has excelled at the agent provocateur tactic.

?James Mitchell Rosenberg, a career infiltrator for the Anti-Defamation League, regularly attended and was a speaker at Ku Klux Klan rallies and meetings of the Mountain Church in Cohoctah, MI, considered a gathering place for neo-Nazis of all kinds,? writes Wilcox. For the benefit of television reporters, Rosenberg also posed as a leader of a para-military group called the ?Christian Patriot?s Defense League,? which was the subject of a breathless exposé entitled ?Armies of the Right.? In 1981, Rosenberg and an associate were arrested on a New York City rooftop and charged with carrying an unregistered rifle. ?The two were posing as paramilitary extremists for a photographic fabrication exaggerating the threat from the far right,? explains Wilcox. ?The charges were subsequently dropped at the request [of] the ADL?s Irwin Suall, Rosenberg?s direct supervisor.?

In 1993, it was discovered that Roy Bullock, described by Wilcox as ?a paid ADL operative and well-known figure in the San Francisco homosexual community,? had been attempting to arrange a political marriage between the Institute for Historical Review, a holocaust revisionist organization, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (AADC) ?so the ADL could ?out? [AADC] members as neo-Nazis.? Bullock had also developed an illegal ?intelligence sharing? relationship with Tom Gerard, an intelligence officer with the San Francisco Police Department. According to Wilcox, Gerard ?regularly took information from police files for transmittal to the ADL and in some cases to Israeli intelligence agencies, with whom the ADL works closely.?

After the ADL?s illicit relationship with the San Francisco Police Department became public knowledge, an investigation revealed that ?Bullock and Gerard ?clones? were positioned in or close to police departments throughout the country,? continues Wilcox. A source in the official investigation of the scandal told the April 1st San Francisco Examiner that ?the ADL is doing the same thing all over the country. There is evidence that the ADL had police agents in other cities. The case just gets bigger every day. The more we look, the more people we find are involved.?

ADL asset Tom Gerard escaped prosecution by fleeing to the Philippines; the ADL and its spy, Roy Bullock, avoided criminal prosecution when the organization offered a $75,000 ?donation? ? which could be viewed as a bribe ? to a San Francisco area ?hate crimes reward and education fund.? (See ?The ADL?s Campaign Against Tolerance? in our September 19, 1994 issue.) However, on November 17, 1998, the 1st District Court of Appeals in San Francisco ordered the ADL to surrender information it had illegally obtained through the Gerard/Bullock spy network, thus preparing the way for a civil lawsuit against the organization.

After the ADL spy scandal broke, Abraham Foxman took to the New York Times op-ed page to protest that the negative coverage of his organization was a ?Big Lie? that had given anti-Semites cause to ?rejoice.? Laird Wilcox, whose liberal credentials are unimpeachable and whose opposition to anti-Semitism and all other forms of bigotry is beyond dispute, insists that the episode typifies the ?espionage, disinformation and destabilization operations? regularly carried out by the ADL.

Backlash From Berlet

Ironically, the ADL spy scandal provoked outrage on the left when it was learned that the subjects of the ADL?s illegal surveillance included left-wing organizations and activists. In his New York Times column defending the ADL, Foxman denied charges that ?in recent years the ADL has taken on a right-wing perspective?.? To illustrate his organization?s leftist bona fides, Foxman pointed out that between 1980 and 1992, the ADL ?published 63 reports ? on the far right and 20 exposed the far left. Similarly, the ADL Law Enforcement Bulletin, published since 1988, contains 68 articles on the far right and seven on the left.?

Among those who had accused the ADL of right-wing deviationism was Boston-based Marxist agitator John Foster ?Chip? Berlet. While insisting that there was ?nothing wrong? with the ADL ?maintain[ing] an information-sharing arrangement with law enforcement,? Berlet condemned the group for its supposed lack of zeal in crusading against the right wing. In a May 28, 1993 New York Times column (run as a counter-point to Foxman?s column) co-authored with former ADL freelancer Dennis King (who was himself a 10-year veteran of the Stalinist Progressive Labor Party), Berlet accused the ADL of down-playing the right-wing ?threat? and focusing instead on left-wing groups ?backed by the Soviet Union.?

From Berlet?s perspective, it is apparently appropriate to conduct political surveillance through illegal means, as long as such surveillance advances the agenda of the radical left. Six years before explicitly endorsing the ADL?s supposed right to ?monitor bigots? in collaboration with police agencies, Berlet published a column in Overthrow, an organ of the militant, far-left Youth International Party (Abbie Hoffman?s ?Yippies?), entitled ?Secret Police Political Spying Network Revealed.? Berlet?s column condemned the domestic counter-terrorism policies of local police agencies in Chicago, Texas, Indianapolis, and Detroit. Berlet, a member of the notorious National Lawyers Guild (cited as a Communist Party front by a committee of Congress), was also opposed to grand jury investigations of left-wing militant groups. In 1984, observes Laird Wilcox, Berlet signed an open letter to Judge Charles Sifton entitled ?Political Grand Juries Must Be Stopped!? The letter protested that grand juries were being used to investigate left-wing revolutionaries who ?supported mass struggle against the military ? development of an armed clandestine movement [and a] broad struggle against repression.?

Berlet was also a signatory ? alongside convicted terrorists David Gilbert, Kathy Boudin, and Judith Clark, who were serving prison sentences for the murder of a Brinks armored truck guard in 1981 ? to an open letter published in the July 11, 1984 issue of the Marxist-Leninist Guardian. Describing themselves as ?grand jury resisters, people who have been targets of grand jury investigations, and people who have consistently fought for non-collaboration with the grand jury,? the signatories urged readers ?to join us in refusing to collaborate with the grand jury or the FBI? and help build ?a powerful resistance movement? in alliance with ?national liberation struggles and progressive movements? worldwide. So deeply committed was Berlet to ?progressive? movements that he was a founding member of the Chicago Area Friends of Albania (CAFA), an organization created in 1983 by self-described friends and supporters of the ?People?s Socialist Republic of Albania,? which at the time was arguably the world?s most monolithic Stalinist dictatorship.

Despite ? or, perhaps, because of ? the fact that Berlet is a creature of the farthest fringes of the far left, his ?expert? opinions regarding ?right-wing extremism? are consistently solicited by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and other establishment media organs. Berlet was among the ?experts? quoted by the New York Times in an August 16th story describing the ?disparate assortment of violent right-wing groups and individuals scattered across the country? as the chief domestic terrorism threat. The story referred to Berlet as ?president of Political Research Associates [PRA], a company based in Somerville, Mass., that tracks extremist groups.? The Times neglected to mention that, as Laird Wilcox points out, Berlet, by whatever title he is known, ?is, in fact, the only analyst in [PRA?s] three-person office.? Chip Berlet?s chief associate at PRA is veteran radical Jean Hardisty, who, Wilcox observes, ?holds the distinction of having been inducted into the ?Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame? in October 1995.?

Berlet is also prominently and repeatedly cited as an ?expert? source in The Militia Threat: Terrorists Among Us, a study recently published by Captain Robert L. Snow of the Indianapolis Police Department ? one of the police agencies whose counter-terrorism section was specifically condemned by Berlet in his 1987 Overthrow article. One may reasonably wonder if Captain Snow was aware that in writing a book intended to guide the perceptions of fellow police officers he was drawing upon the tainted expertise of a Marxist militant and longtime police critic.

Dangers of ?Political Profiling?

The Connecticut gun-seizure law and the accelerating drive for pre-emptive federal action against ?hate groups? suggest that ?political profiling? of the sort conducted by the AJC, ADL, Chip Berlet, and other ?watchdogs? will become a civil liberties issue. With law enforcement agencies depending upon committed leftists and unreconstructed revolutionaries for intelligence on domestic enemies, the anti-?extremist? dragnet would gather from many kinds ? including patriotic, law-abiding Americans whose sole ?offense? would be a commitment to the U.S. Constitution and national independence.

Lest this prediction be dismissed as hyperbole, it is useful to describe once again the case of John J. Nutter of the Ohio-based Conflict Analysis Group, an ?expert? on ?right-wing extremism? who has taught seminars for law enforcement officers in several states. (See ?No Enemies to the Left? in our May 13, 1996 issue.) Nutter (borrowing a theme originally found in the AJC?s Authoritarian Personality study) describes ?right-wing extremism? as a ?lightning rod for the mentally disturbed? and says that it threatens ?assassination, mass murder, and armed uprising.?

Nutter lists as ?danger signs? of potentially lethal ?extremism? such things as possession of ?extremist literature? (he specifically cites The New American), the display of ?firearms lapel pins, bumper stickers or window decals about the New World Order, Clinton Communism, ?I fear the government that fears my gun,?? and the like. Police are also advised to be wary of citizens who display ?excessive concern? over the federal government?s massacre of the Branch Davidians, the murderous federal assault upon the Randy Weaver family in Idaho, or similar abuses of power. Of particular concern, insists Nutter, are ?strong proponents of the Second Amendment? who believe in the ?right of individuals to possess ?arms?? and are ?fearful of any limitations on weaponry.?

Nor is Nutter the only ?expert? advising police officers regarding such ?danger signs.? In his book Freedom in Chains, scholar James Bovard reports: ?At a 1997 American Society of Criminology conference one professor argued that among signs of ?hate group ideology? were ?discussion of the Bill of Rights, especially the Second Amendment or the Federalist Papers,? ?discussion of military oppression, in the U.S. or elsewhere,? and ?discussion of the Framers of our Government.?? From that academic ?expert?s? perspective, all one needs to do to qualify as a potential ?hate criminal? is to profess a love for our Constitution.

Kay Stone and Jean Vallance of Alamogordo, New Mexico, discovered that these expansive definitions are being taken seriously by some law enforcement officers. As The New American has previously reported (see ?Mark Them as ?Extremists?? in our November 23, 1998 issue), Mrs. Stone and Mrs. Vallance, both of whom are retired grandmothers, found themselves under scrutiny by the New Mexico State Police after they had participated in talk-radio discussions of the United Nations on a local call-in program. The scrutiny of the two retired grandmothers followed the publication of a report entitled The Extremist Right: An Overview, which was compiled by the Criminal Intelligence Section of the New Mexico Department of Public Safety (DPS).

That report, which was larded with citations from the familiar pack of left-wing ?watchdogs,? described the ?radical right? as ?a continuum from those who disagree with government but operate within the law to those who work at nothing less than the overthrow of government. These groups call themselves ?Patriots.?? The roster of potential terrorists described in the DPS document included Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and other practitioners of violence, as well as ?militant abortion foes [and] radical anti-environmentalists,? and others who espouse political ?conspiracy theories.? The anti-?extremist? dragnet cast by the DPS must have been incredibly vast and tightly knit in order to snag two retired grandmothers ? one of whom, Mrs. Vallance, is married to an employee at Holloman Air Force Base ? as potential terrorists on the basis of remarks made on a radio call-in program.

Alluding to this incident in New Mexico, Laird Wilcox noted, ?The real danger posed by these ?watchdog? groups is that their intelligence is taken seriously by police officers, who don?t have the time or resources to examine that information carefully. Being a policeman is a dangerous job, and when a policeman is told by a supposedly authoritative source that a given individual belongs to a potentially violent group, he has to take such warnings seriously.? As a result, Wilcox continued, ?routine traffic stops can become ?incidents? that are good for neither the police nor the average citizen. Let?s say that a guy gets stopped for speeding and when his name is run through the computer he?s been red-flagged as a ?dangerous? person on the basis of information fed to the police by some left-wing radical posing as a ?watchdog.? So instead of merely asking the driver for his license and other information, the officer now approaches the car in a defensive posture, ready to draw his gun ? not because of anything the driver did, but because he somehow ended up on a list compiled by some self-appointed left-wing ?watchdog? group.?

The problem described by Wilcox becomes even graver when it is understood that in the near future, police and federal authorities may be using ?watchdog?-compiled lists to decide who is, and who is not, entitled to enjoy the protections offered by the Bill of Rights.[/justify]