Open Letter to Abe Foxman, National Director ADL
Dear Mr. Foxman;
I write to you with the utmost respect for you and the work of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). You work diligently to achieve your mission and this letter is to urge you to continue to do so, but to also to plead with you to redirect your focus to the most real and present danger confronting the Jewish people today.
As you yourself have said, Islamic anti-Semitism constitutes the largest threat faced today by world Jewry. Funded in the main by Saudi petro dollars, mosques and madrassas around the globe teach millions of Muslims that Jews are the ‘sons of monkeys and pigs’ and ‘the murderers of prophets and the enemies of Islam’. This poison has reached beyond Muslim lands, engulfed Europe where Jews and Jewish institutions have come under increasing physical assault and now is reaching America where radical Muslim leaders constantly preach to their people hatred of Jews. Muslims have targeted and murdered Jews in America and mounted many plots to attack Jewish institutions. Even you on a number of occasions have said that this development is extremely dangerous for our people.
Yet the ADL, the Jewish people’s largest and most important defense organization, has done little to educate Jews about this daunting problem. Nor has the ADL developed a strategy or even a campaign to adequately address it.
Indeed, in a recently completed study – at www.charlesjacobs.org — , fewer than 8% of ADL press releases over the last 15 years address Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism and terrorism. And, as the problem continues to grow, ADL generates even fewer press releases on these issues. If this problem is one of our most pressing, why are the resources expended on it so small relative to other things that you do? Certainly the traditional sources of anti-Semitism in this country are worthy of your scrutiny, but the lack of emphasis on this present existential threat to world Jewry and its new found presence in America is telling.
Further, while FBI statistics show that hate crimes against Jews in America are eight times the number of crimes against Muslims, the ADL has sought to validate the Islamist claim of victimization – contrary to all objective data — that hatred of Muslims is a major problem in America, and spends Jewish resources to fight “Islamophobia” because, in your words, “You can’t fight the fight against anti-Semitism without fighting against bigotry.” And “You cannot ask people to stand with you unless you are ready to stand with them.”