RUTHFULLY YOURS

But in cities across America, Foxman’s policy has led the ADL to stand with people and organizations whose mission it is to defame and harm Jews. To defend its policy of “outreach,” the Anti-Defamation League vigorously defames as “bigots” citizens who question radical Islamists’ true aims. This pattern of allying with Muslim anti-Semites to fight “Islamophobia” and then defaming legitimately concerned citizens can be clearly seen in three cases:

1. Detroit Imam Mustapha Elturk spoke at an interfaith event on the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks at Congregation Shaarey Tzedek, a synagogue with a proud and longstanding pro-Israel reputation. According to locals, the ADL branch in Detroit blessed the invitation — ignoring reports (available on ADL’s own website) that Elturk’s group — the Islamic Organization of North America — has a history of anti-Semitism.

The ADL has an annual $55M budget; presumably some of it is used to seek out enemies of the Jewish people. But any unfunded but curious citizen could have found on Elturk’s own website (it was on his homepage) the following sermon:

If the Zionists don’t repent and stop their aggression… they will be rest assured punished by God as he twice punished them here in this world… Who are the Zionists? … Allah said, “Every time they enter into a covenant, they breach it. {…} People who break their covenant are worse than animals in God’s sight.”

During this sermon, the imam solicited his congregation for donations to Hamas-affiliated charities in the Gaza Strip, and he praised dead Gaza fighters as martyrs. In other sermons posted on his open site, Elturk defames American democracy, American society, and moderate Muslims — and he describes in exquisite detail the ways in which Westernized Muslim women will suffer in Hell for their libertine ways.

When some members of the Detroit Jewish community spoke out online against the synagogue’s embrace of Imam Elturk, 38 Detroit rabbis — following Foxman’s logic, it would seem — co-signed a letter (a Jewish fatwa?) condemning the anonymous dissenters for being “uncivil.” The president of the local Jewish Community Relations Council came out in favor of silencing the “online demagogues” and, channeling Stalin or Mao, promised to “set appropriate standards for conversation.” Daniel Levy, executive board member of Detroit’s ADL, defended Elturk’s invitation to speak at the synagogue because — again following Abe Foxman’s reasoning — the Detroit Jews and Mr. Elturk need to be “working together in mutual respect [as] the only way to move forward and not back.” He then accused those who disagree with Elturk’s invitation of “doing the work of our enemies.” Apparently irony is not Mr. Levy’s strong suit.

2. In Florida, the ADL is doing the work of CAIR (Committee for American Islamic Relations) — a group identified by a federal judge as an American front for Hamas. Florida’s ADL recently helped CAIR defeat that state’s “American Laws for American Courts” law. The ALAC law was meant to prevent judges from taking into account foreign or religious laws, as was the case two years ago in New Jersey when a judge denied a Moroccan woman a restraining order against her estranged husband, who wouldn’t stop raping her. The Jersey judge ruled that because they were still married, Islamic law allowed the husband full rights to her body and that the poor woman must submit to rape at his leisure.

After the ADL helped defeat the law, a gleeful Ahmed Bedier, CAIR-Florida director, was caught on tape bragging that “when we go lobbying [against] the bill today, we will be using the talking points of the Anti-Defamation League.” (Bedier is close supporter of convicted Islamic Jihad terrorist Sami Al Arian.) Hassan Shibly, CAIR-Tampa’s executive director, said that “[o]ur victory tonight is a great example of how the interfaith and civil rights community united can make a positive difference for all Americans.” Mr. Shibly is a man who has claimed that Hezb’allah is a legitimate resistance movement. On Facebook — where he was once “friends” with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad — Shibly would post messages such as:

How Jews and Christians lost the teachings of their Prophets and how Muslims can avoid falling into the same mistakes.

Niqab [full face veil for women] is Required in Islam!!

The Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors from World War II are doing to the Palestinians exactly what was done to them by Nazis

Its time Americans WAKE UP to the ATROCITY that is Israel!!

3. In Michigan’s Farmington Public Schools district, not far from Dearborn and Detroit, the Islamic Cultural Association of Michigan (ICA) got what seemed to many as an inside deal to purchase an abandoned school in order to build a mosque. (They beat out the bid of a Jewish religious school.) The deal was negotiated when the district’s school board was led by former ADL Detroit Director Howard Wallach. The ICA mosque-builders are affiliated with the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) — which is, according to federal authorities, a Muslim Brotherhood front. They have invited the Jewish anti-Semite Norman Finklestein to lecture to their members.

Last June, at an explosive school board meeting, concerned locals questioned the manner of the sale. They were opposed by speakers, including Dawud Walid, executive director of Detroit’s branch of CAIR, who hurled accusations of Islamophobia at anyone who disagreed with the deal. Joining CAIR’s Walid in support of the mosque were Betsy Kellman, the Michigan director of the ADL, and Detroit Jewish Community Relations Council executive director Robert Cohen.

Jewish leaders, defending the deal, accused Farmington residents of having “strong anti-Muslim feelings” and “making generalizations about Muslims.” They said nothing about the proposed mosque’s radical links or its likely animus toward their own Jewish constituents. The next day, CAIR issued a statement thanking both for their support and unfoundedly attacking the pro-Israel group StandWithUs for instigating the opposition.

In a phone interview, Kellman told us she did not know that ICA is linked to NAIT or that NAIT is a Muslim Brotherhood front. (The ADL has an annual budget of over $50M. The facts about NAIT are easily available from public, open sources.) Currently, Kellman chairs an interfaith group that includes — and thereby legitimates — CAIR. In 2010, Kellman spoke at a Detroit conference that also featured Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim Brotherhood leader who has called Israel the “enemy of Allah” and prayed for it to be struck down.

Such are the people and organizations that Foxman’s policies have this country’s largest Jewish defense organization allying with, as it aggressively attempts to silence, intimidate, and smear those who would criticize its actions, or its allies.

Recently, the National Conference on Jewish Affairs (NCJA) called for ADL head Abe Foxman to resign. We concur. The words used by Detroit ADL official Daniel Levy to describe the ADL’s critics apply most appropriately to Foxman: he is — with precious sums of Jewish money meant to protect Jews from their foes — doing the work of Jews’ enemies. This should be stopped.

For more on the ADL’s failures: www.charlesjacobs.org

Charles Jacobs is president and Ilya Feoktistov is research director, Americans for Peace and Tolerance.