The Decline and Fall of the Anti-Defamation League

By Rabbi Aryeh Spero, AMERICAN THINKER

The Alt-Left is at it again. This time they are using their internet and media echo chamber to malign Steve Bannon, concocting a narrative that is false but endlessly repeated by their soldiers in the never ending campaign to malign conservatives and members of the Trump campaign. Playing the race card has become the modus operandi of the liberal/left political world.

Mr. Bannon, who has been appointed Chief White House Advisor and political strategist for Mr. Trump, has been a staunch and reliable friend of Israel and has hired a host of Jewish journalists during his leadership at the conservative Breitbart news magazine. He has been an ardent supporter of the Jewish state at the very moment many liberal Jewish organizations were condemning Israel and spouting fashionable anti-Israel criticisms emanating from the Left.

Like Mr. Trump before him, who for four decades was known as a champion of Israel, generous in charitable contributions to her, and someone who routinely hired Jews and accommodated their religious Sabbath needs, Mr. Bannon is likewise being accused of being anti-Jewish ever since he came on board the Trump Express to install a nationalistic and politically conservative legislative approach at odds with the liberal agenda.

The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) last week accused Mr. Bannon of anti-Semitism because, in their words, he is associated with nationalistic movements and anti-Semitic white supremacist groups. He is not associated with any anti-Semitic groups, though he is, like me, an American nationalist. After being forced to supply concrete evidence of anti-Semitism, the ADL backtracked slightly and only accused him of countenancing anti-Semitism.

In its founding years the ADL’s task was to fight anti-Semitism, but in the last few decades it has, like other establishment Jewish organizations, become an ideological arm of the Democratic Party, carrying its water for them, and viewing all of American life through the prism of a neo-leftist agenda no longer rooted in classical liberalism.

Thus for them, as seen in their publications, the innocuous term “western values” becomes a code phrase for excluding non-whites, and the term “America First” becomes a racist code phrase. To most Americans, however, putting America and its citizens first is the most natural thing a nation should try doing — be it regarding jobs, physical security or pride in America’s historic outlook and values, in this case our founding principles and Judeo-Christian ethos.

While the ADL considers the predilection towards nationalism a disguised attempt to exclude Jews and others, to most sane people nationalism is pride in one’s country and her values, which in America’s case is something to be proud of, indeed. Loving one’s country, its western values, or pride and comfort in one’s ethnicity or race (even if white) are not disqualifying features in a human being. Those who see in American individuals proud of their Christian faith or their European ancestry people to be feared are themselves either very insecure or harbor a bigotry and discomfort with those in the majority. Truth be told, in liberal establishment organizational circles, the feeling is that nobility and fair-mindedness resides only in minority communities while the majority, in this case Christian and whites, are automatically suspect unless they prove otherwise, with advocating liberalism and cultural self-effacement as their only redeemable option.

The new head of the ADL, Jonathan Greenbaltt, is a former member of the Obama administration and, like so many heading up today’s establishment Jewish organizations, a high level advocate for left liberalism and in consonance with the Soros agenda and many of the disturbing societal upheavals sponsored by Soros. This despite the known quote where Soros calls his collaboration with the Nazis in Hungary during WW II “an exciting and happy time for him.”

Like so many others, the non-observant, secular Jewish leadership have replaced Judaism with liberalism, giving liberalism transcendence above all else, making political liberalism its new religion and calling. In fact, Greenbaltt and the ADL have recently become eager and severe critics of Israel’s necessary defense policies — and may be indicative of an alarming trend in the secular Jewish community of abandoning Israel when in conflict with the socialism and multi-culturalism that it holds dearer than religious doctrnes.

After the election showed that many Orthodox Jews voted for Mr. Trump because of years of humiliating anti-Israel bias in the Obama administration, as well as Obama’s and Mrs. Clinton’s enabling and masterminding Iran’s catapult to a nuclear power, many Manhattan Jewish liberals have begun speaking of their desire to “forget Israel’s needs if it makes the liberal agenda harder to realize: vote liberal, for the liberal agenda reigns supreme above all else”.

During the 2012 Democratic National Convention there were tremendous boos when support of Israel and Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal capital were proposed. This was done, as seen on TV, by hundreds of delegates. Indeed, Black Lives Matter has spoken in rabid anti-Jewish and anti Israel terms. The ADL has not denounced them and seemingly remains sympathetic, just as have Clinton and Obama. The ADL and the Reform Jewish Movement knew full well of Obama’s association with the notorious anti-Semites Rev. Wright, Rashid Kahlidi, and Al Sharpton.

Yet, no matter the preponderance of anti-Israel leading lights on the Left and thousands of anti-Jewish people found in the Democratic Party, the ADL and the Reform Jewish denomination retain their affiliation and affection for the leftwing community, ignoring its blatant anti-Semitism. Both organizations have been silent over the years regarding the harassment of Jewish students at the direction of Muslim organizations on college campus and, similarly, quiet about the threats to Jews and synagogues coming from mostly Muslim individuals and groups. Yet, the ADL is now sponsoring conferences with the specific intent of people finding and reporting acts of anti-Semitism it implies are coming from Trump supporters. It seems that harassment of Jews can be overlooked by the Jewish Alt-left if coming from a “minority” community.

The Jewish members of the Alt-left are eager to turn neutral and positive phrases into anti-Semitism and cast friends like Bannon and Trump (Trump with religious Jewish grandchildren) into figures to be feared, jeered, and demonized outside the pale…as “deplorables.” Why? Because they have sold their soul to the ideology of leftism and class warfare. It has become their identity. Their power resides in the Democratic Party, and power is a powerful aphrodisiac.

These organizations have not, and will never genuinely accept the results of the election. They will try to stop Trump’s policies, and thwart the will of the people they consider inferior and uneducated, by tarring and discrediting Trump’s people and appointees as racist and anti-Semitic. Too many are whipping themselves up into hysteria based on prejudicial presumptions they themselves have created over the years. They are setting up tribunals that label their opponents hate-mongers when, in reality, they themselves have become bigoted and act hateful. We should no longer allow them to impugn good, patriotic individuals.

Unlike what the ADL, the Alt-left and the Reform Jewish movement claim, the American people voted for Mr. Trump not out of racism or anti-Semitism, but because they and their families had become voiceless and ignored, cannon fodder, the forgotten people, with legitimate needs that were for decades dismissed by the elites and now, finally, championed by Mr. Trump and his newly appointed advisor, Steve Bannon. May God bless them and their work for America.

Rabbi Aryeh Spero is author of Push Back: Reclaiming our American Judeo-Christian Spirit

Read more:
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

November 20, 2016 | 33 Comments »

Subscribe to Israpundit Daily Digest

Leave a Reply

33 Comments / 33 Comments

  1. To add to #26 above, My cousin Eddie of the same family name as myself, 10 years older than I, was the long time Superintendent of the big hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. He had to change to a non Jewish name to get the post.

  2. Not for me. In New York, it’s legal, I believe. Not that I need it. Record your interviews. Is there a civil rights organization that will help Jews? I think they did that for African-Americans in the ’60s.

  3. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    I know it used to be illegal but I seem to recall reading that over the past 5 or more years it has become OK. There are a few different laws or requirements in some states in the US. I recall reading a case history where only one party was required to know; I don’t think it mentioned which person.

    But don’t take my comments as legal advice……..As the Talmud dictum says, “respect but suspect”….. so check up on it…..

  4. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    Yiddishe gesheft, complicated and always messed up by some schlemiel.

    The reason I didn’t give any details was because it is fairly lengthy and I didn’t know if it would be allowed. Briefly, I was sent for an interview with the Canadian Bank of Commerce (Today It has “Imperial” added), and the manager was delighted with me. I was educated, and etc. He said that even though I was much older than the kids straight from school, they’d put me on a fast track. All during the interview I was holding a letter from my home town Lord Mayor and MP (a member of the shool of which my father was the many years President) recommending me highly. But I didn’t have to show it. We discussed opera, Greek mythology and als ding. He was delighted with me. He said he’d see me Monday morning at 9.a.m. So…just with my foot over the doorstep, I remembered the letter and showed it to him anyway. He became very flustered, because he’d mistaken the pronounciation of my name. Eventually, he stuttered,, “that’s a Jewish name, isn’t it”. “Yes”, I said. He stuttered some more. After a while he said well…. the Jewish holidays would interfere with the bank’s business, so… “I interjected brightly..”Jewish Law makes an exception where one’s living is involved”… More and longer pause. Eventually said…”I’m afraid I have to withdraw the position, you see…….. it’s the policy of all the banks, not to employ Jews”…. he had to come straight out with it because I had an answer for all his other excuses. So, embarrassed…for him actually…I said goodbye and left.

    When I later got a temporary make-work job with a prominent Jewish businessman, (in fact my late father was in much the same business, so he talked to me a lot) he said coincidentally one day, “You know, you should be in a much better job than this, let me put some thought into it”. Two days later he said, “how would you like to work in a bank, that would be very suitable for you”.

    So I said I’d love to work in a bank and told him the above. He made me type it down word for word, which I could, and did. In fact it was too slow for him and he got me to dictate to his secretary. He told me that most of the money in the bank was both his and his wife’s. Then he phoned the manager…..This was the first and only time I ever saw a man’s face go purple, he shouted at him for about 20 minutes. The manager finally admitted it. He told me that the manager was pleading with him because he’d been recently married and had a big mortgage etc, and he’s be fired for disclosing the secret about…. “no Jews allowed”…

    That was that. There was a bit more to it involving the Vancouver Jewish Representative Council who were pretty useless, and their lawyer gave me some very bad advice-which I didn’t take.

    I related the sequel above.

  5. Edgar G. Said:

    “Yiddishe Macharai.”

    I don’t know this term. I googled it and I got irrelevant links having to do with Klezmer music. What does it mean, please?

    Also, what happened in the interview? You provided no detail.

  6. @ Birdalone:
    I could relate a most serious Jew hatred crime which happened about 2 months after I’d arrived in Canada many years ago. It cost me a good job in the biggest bank, (given and taken away in the same hour interview) and a huge feeling of indignation–which I still have… I never got any satisfaction, even though my later employer raged at the bank manager (he also banked there) and actually got an admission from him; and I also got an apology from the Superintendent of Banks-2 years later. A fat lot of good that was.

    I saw in the Jewish paper that Bnei Brith are very hot after such things, so I detailed it to them in a Letter to Toronto….. and never even got a response. After reporting 2-3 times over a several year period…still no acknowledgement… I just let it go, more convinced than ever that Jewish “Machers” only are interested in their own publicity, and who they can get handshakes from.

    I have a very low opinion of the Machers in ALL Jewish organisations. I was not on a Shool Committee for years, without learning about “Yiddishe Macharai.”…….

  7. @ Edgar G.:
    Most of this is unfamiliar to me; it’s not really an area of primary interest being spiritually more of a Jubu myself, but I did look up Testimonium Flavianum and it seems that the predominant view is that some of it is forged but that he probably existed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus

    As for the rest, you need to substantiate with links for me to comment.

    I have read or heard comments by Indian gurus that he spent the missing period in India. It makes sense to me, since there was a lot of back and forth between Judea and India at that time and some of his views seem more Hindu or Buddhist in origin even if they use a Jewish storyline.

    For example, the “sermon on the mount” that emphasizes the afterlife rather than how to live in the present and emotional states rather than the law. And the magnification of the serpent (who is not all-powerful in the Jewish narrative) into a powerful being, not just a tempter.

    And definitely, all that turn the other cheek rather than go to court or even if it costs you your life stuff. Not just love your neighbor but love your enemy.

    Also, The idea of redemption from original sin. In Judaism, that ends with the flood and only applies to Cain’s descendants. But this sounds sort of like Karma and the idea of a semi-divine human who relieves Mankind of collective bad karma through his own sacrifice; this sounds a lot like a Boddhisatva in the Mahayana tradition which was developing at the same time as early Christianity who swears not to go on to nirvana but stay behind in a nearby realm to help until every blade of grass is enlightened. Buddhism doesn’t have a creator god, when Hindu Gods are mentioned they are redefined as what Judaism would call divine beings, hence limited and are used as metaphors for forces in the mind. But Mahayana has something like saints. Actually, the Hinayana or older Buddhist tradition also emphasizes the sacrifice of the historical buddha as a prince who gave all that up and went into the jungle as a poor beggar monk to find the cure for suffering.

    I have a joke about that:
    Q: In what way is Buddhist dietary law stricter than Jewish Dietary Law?
    A: Judaism frowns on shellfish. Buddhism goes one step further and frowns on shellfish desire.
    (Just a joke, there is no Buddhist dietary law except for Theravadin (Hinayana) monks who, following the Buddha’s example, only eat one small meal a day shortly before noon – whatever leftovers adherents put in their begging bowl with the proviso that nothing can have been killed for them.)

    Whenever I’m feeling spiritually conflicted, I enjoy articles like this:
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/13/burmese-buddhist-monks-love-muslim-hating-trump.html

  8. @ Sebastien Zorn:

    Sebastien…. I’m surprised…indeed I am..that you have even considered that there ever was such a person as Jesus. I mean the Christian one, not the several mentioned in the Talmud.

    A myth made up of a combination of The Egyptian Sun god Ra, Appolonius of Tyana, and several others. You know that there is no mention of his antecedents or family by Paul, the real founder of Christianity, about half of whose “letters”, incidentally, have been found to be forgeries.

    Not to mention the Testimonium Flavianum, and the few words on his “brother” (in the “flesh” or spirit, it doesn’t say) another well-known forgery of 4th Cent. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, regarded as “interpolation”, the euphemism for “pious fraud”….

    Palestine then, was a huge cauldron of war, battle, bandits, assassinations, and generally in the worst constant upheaval until the war against the Romans, and impossible to traverse…..

    Christianity is full of legends and myths, like the legend that Paul-a lowly tent-maker- was a”Roman Citizen” by inheritance,,, living in Tarsus of all places, where probably only the governor was a Roman Citizen and that not certain.

    I am surprised, as you may have heard me say a time or two.

  9. @ honeybee:

    Jazz blends many streams of influence. Jazz absorbed a multitude of both musical and cultural traditions yet those of Africa and Europe are the dominant influences. The separate traditions emphasize competing values that successfully co-exist within jazz.

    http://highered.mheducation.com/sites/007297642x/student_view0/chapter2/index.html

    and

    “…I take no issue with what Nat Hentoff and others have said about the origins in the black American experience. But the well-documented fact is that from almost the music’s earliest days, there were white musicians active in and contributory to, and in sometimes major ways, the music that was evolving. Which means that in a way I am most uncomfortable with the entire question of whether jazz is black music or jazz is white music. I think by defining it along those lines and by introducing race as a determinant we divert attention away from the place that we could be concentrating on, and that is to say, the music itself.

    From its earliest times on record, we have examples of music that is recognizably and discernibly jazz played by black bands, by white bands, and, starting at the end of the 1920s, by racially mixed bands…”

    https://jazztimes.com/articles/20120-black-white-and-beyond

    And now, of course it is international, including Europe and Asia.

    The same goes for Classical music, which began in mostly Italian Catholic churches and and is now international and not necessarily religious or even tonal.

    The Violin was invented in one town in Italy, Cremona, in the 1500s though there were string instruments already in Africa, the Middle East, the rest of Europe and everybody influenced everybody else. Like now.

    http://www.therestisnoise.com/2006/02/you_vill_enjoy_.html

    Marco Polo – Tan Dun – Zagreb (Croatia)
    https://youtu.be/6U9Rl1hNgEw
    http://tandun.com/about/

    Treemonisha
    https://youtu.be/ukgWU6JCZkg
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemonisha

  10. @ honeybee:
    My deepest empathy. I have not recovered – from either the hate crime, or the ADL gone dhimmi.

    It was the movers who packed me, still can not finish unpacking. They also charged me 60% more than the written quote, because, after all, all Jews must be rich. Still feels like 5 Cossacks bullied me that day.

    Found out inter-state moves are protected by a Federal Law – they can do whatever they want, and NO lawyer can help.
    Changing that law is on my Dear President To-do list.

  11. Sebastien Zorn Said:

    he is the pawn who has sold his soul to the devil (the Nazis.)

    “Tempt you not the Lord”!!!

    My Father was raised in a immigrant and African-Amer. neighborhood. On Sunday he would go to the Black churches, sit near the windows and listen to the music, plus a good dose of preaching. He could quote the Gospels chapter and verse. He often used that knowledge in his closing arguments confounding the jury.

  12. @ honeybee:

    I’m inclined to believe the theory that the missing years of Jesus’ life were spent in India as some of his views sound more like distorted Buddhism and not very Jewish. This is one. Remember Buddha lived 5-600 years earlier:
    http://buddhism.about.com/od/iconsofbuddhism/a/mara.htm

    But, that’s a very indirect origin, the Faustus Legend is based on the play by Shakespeare’s contemporary, Christopher Marlowe:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Faustus_(play)

    The Faust Legend is used in the film as a non-religious political metaphor. The actor believes he is playing Mephisto in real life, as in the play only to discover too late that in real life, it is he playing the role of Dr. Faustus — in other words, he is the pawn who has sold his soul to the devil (the Nazis.)

  13. I reported a hate crime to ADL in March, and was ignored.

    Except then I started getting Greenblatt’s emails, and saw the change to Soros-world.

    I unsubscribed, specified the reason. Might be too late to salvage the ADL – too many American Jews agree.

  14. @ honeybee:
    This movie is neither. It’s about a “nice guy” who becomes a Nazi collaborator, all the while thinking he’s in control and that he can use his position to protect his friends. Until he realizes the awful truth, too late. Read the plot in the Wikipedia article.

  15. met·a·phor
    ?med??fôr,?med??f?r/
    noun
    a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.
    ““I had fallen through a trapdoor of depression,” said Mark, who was fond of theatrical metaphors”
    synonyms: figure of speech, image, trope, analogy, comparison, symbol, word painting/picture
    “the profusion of metaphors in her everyday speech has gotten pretty tiresome”
    a thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract.
    “the amounts of money being lost by the company were enough to make it a metaphor for an industry that was teetering”
    Translations, word origin, and more definitions

    @ honeybee:

    “The plot’s bitter irony is that the protagonist’s fondest dream is to be Germany’s greatest actor playing Hamlet and Mephisto but to achieve this dream he sells his soul and realises too late that he is not playing the Mephisto but the Faustus role; it is the Nazi leader having a major role in the film (modeled on Hermann Göring) who is the real Mephisto.”

  16. bernard ross Said:

    When are fool jews going to wake up?

    when I was a kid the ADL would call my Dad for a donation. He would ream them out, and up the phone curse in Yiddish and spit.

  17. ADL Chief Who Smeared Steve Bannon Directed Project at Soros-Funded Institute written by Aaron Klein

    ZOA contended that Greenblatt “falsely accused fellow Jews of ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘marginalizing Palestinians’ and claimed that the ‘Palestinian narrative’ is ‘legitimate.’”

    http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2016/11/20/adl-chief-smeared-steve-bannon-directed-project-soros-funded-institute/

    just one more proof that the ADL is a fraud taking Jewish money while employed to a proven nazi collaborator who does everything he can to destroy and demonize Israel. Jews need to end this ADL charade stealling Jewish money while doing nothing for Jews, working for the nazi collaborator who funds the floods of muslim jew killers into europe, the nazi collaborator who seeks Israels destruction at every turn, who set up the fake Jstreet merely to back up obama against Israel. ADL’s main thrust is fighting islamaphobia not anti semitism.
    Greenblatt spreads the nazi soros propaganda among the Jews that the real problem is islamaphobia, palestinian rights, etc……. a trojan horse traitor fraud.
    When are fool jews going to wake up?

  18. We endured for decades the same garbage in control of the “media” here as well. Time to even the playing field.
    I know in person some of the older ADL ball carriers.
    Blatantly anti Israel if not worse. At least one of the key persons in one of the Midwest states worked to advance Arafat’s plans. Even in the 90’s.
    They must be harshly denounced and actively undermined for resources.
    Establish a US Constitutional RADIO and TV network. O some similar framework.