ThinkProgress: ADL Chief Smears Time Magazine's Joe Klein As Anti-Semite (along with Jimmy Carter)

[Poll_Blind]

From Matt Duss at ThinkProgress:

In examining some of the bad thinking that caused the U.S. to invade Iraq, Time’s Joe Klein wrote “the fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives — people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary — plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.”

This elicited a response from Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman, who accused Klein of trafficking in anti-Semitic canards, insisting that “whether or not one feels that America’s war on Iraq was justified, the charge that it is being fought by the United States on behalf of Israel is both offensive and categorically false.”

Klein responded, “I have never said that Jewish neocons were the primary reason we went to war in Iraq”:

The reason we went to war was that George Bush was foolish and uninformed, and his primary advisors were even more foolishly bellicose. But Jewish neoconservatives certainly played a subsidiary role in providing an intellectual rationale for the war. In a 2003 column, I called their arguments “the casus belli that dare not speak its name.” The notion of a “benign domino theory”–benign, that is, for the interests of Israel—was certainly abroad in the community during that time.

The “benign domino theory” is rooted in The Clean Break Strategy, a national security proposal written for Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu by a committee chaired by Richard Perle, and which also included Doug Feith and David Wurmser, along some other hardline pro-Likud think tankers.

--snip--

  The letter sent to Klein by the Anti-Defamation League chief includes a short list of new anti-Semites- naming Jimmy Carter, and professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

  The ADL is a $50-million dollar a year organization with around 30 offices located in the United States and a few offices in other countries as well. It is not the Michael Savage show. It is, in fact, a mainstream organization which works closely with the police forces around the world to combat bigotry and has been recognized as such. Mr. Foxman (who's been the chairman of the ADL for 30 years now) has been given awards several times by organizations and statesmen, recently including France's Legion of Honor award.

Further reading:
Anti-Defamation League at Wikipedia
New York Times (1/14/07) Does Abe Foxman Have an Anti-Anti-Semite Problem?
DU (12/1/06) http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2842251&mesg_id=2842251">Jimmy Carter, the Anti-Defamation League, The New Anti-Semitism and YOU.

PB

[Mari333]

1. good for Joe Klein. nt

[Howardx]

2. foxman

would claim god was anti semitic if it suited his purpose.

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4. 1/9/2009: FBI Director Honors ADL With Community Leadership Award

"ADL has been an invaluable partner in our community outreach efforts," said John Miller, Assistant Director, FBI Office of Public Affairs. "The work they have done to help the public and the law enforcement community to understand the origins and consequences of bias crimes, hate groups and terrorists has been exemplary. The Director's Community Leadership Award is just one way to recognize years of service."

  With the L.E.A.R.N. program, the ADl has positioned itself to define hate, including training programs for American law enforcement organizations around the country.

  It is an interesting bully-pulpit for Mr. Foxman to head.

PB

[Howardx]

7. adl is a criminal organization

"In 1993, the District of Attorney of San Francisco released 700 pages of documents implicating the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that claims to be a defender of civil rights, in a vast spying operation directed against American citizens who were opposed to Israel's policies in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza and to the apartheid policies of the government of South Africa and passing on information to both governments.

Under great political pressure, Smith later dropped the charges. One wonders what would have happened had an Arab-American or Muslim organization been caught spying with the names of 10,000 people and 600 organizations in their files.

Not only were critics of Israel under ADL's surveillance,including thousands of Arab-Americans, but labor organizations such as the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, and the Oakland Educational Association, and civil rights groups such as the NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council and the Asian Law Caucus were also found in the "pinko" files of ADL's undercover operative, Roy Bullock.

Moreover, Bullock, who had worked, off the books, for the ADL for more than 25 years, admitted that he had been reporting on the activities of black South African exiles and American anti- apartheid activists for South African intelligence."

"The ADL supplied confidential information to foreign governments that it obtained from police and federal agencies in the US,

Having infiltrated the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the ADL's "fact finder" performed a COINTEL-type operation at the convention of the Holocaust-denying Journal of Historical Review when he put ADC's literature on convention tables as a way of smearing the committee for "working with anti- Semites."

The ADL has organized to silence and eliminate all critical voices of Israel from academia and the media and has targeted professors , particularly those who are African American, and who are critical of Israel.

That at least 51% of the activities of its San Francisco office were devoted to defending Israel.

The ADL provided secret files to police agencies when these police agencies were prevented by law from collecting the files themselves,

Many questions must still be answered about the activities of the ADL and it's non-profit status as an "education organization". The settlement offered by the ADL is recognition on its part that it could not afford to go to a trial in front of a jury and face the likelihood that more of its dirty secrets would be revealed."
http://www.counterpunch.org/adlspying2.html

foxman should be doing time not getting awards.

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9. The Roy Bullock thing typifies the dichotomy...

The ADL paid Roy Bullock and police to commit crimes. The ADL are hypocrites- guilty of far worse, in court, than some of the charges they level against groups and individuals. The tricky bit here is the ADL does do some good work, making the distinction harder to make.

PB

[Howardx]

11. what "good work" do they do?

other than wrongfully accusing national figures of anti semitism if they dare utter a word against israel.

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12. They DO help keep track of all hate crimes, hate crime trends and...

...help disseminate this information between law enforcement agencies. This is a position they have courted, a vacuum they have filled. They have used their position, however, in order to push personal biases.

  Which can be a very dangerous thing seeing how close they have associated themselves with state and local police organizations, as well as the FBI. It gives them "legitimacy" in their absolutely over-the-top politically-motivated accusations of anti-Semitism and it lends some weight to their enforcement which, at the moment anyway, is merely social/political.

PB

[Howardx]

15. none of that should be done by a private organization

with a very clear bias. how are we to know if the information is accurate? the fbi tracks hate crime doesnt it? why isnt that good enough?

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16. Well, they've set themselves up as a "public service" and after becoming entrenched...

...uncover their slanderous bias.

PB

[Howardx]

18. after spying on american citizens for a foreign power

they ought to be persona non grata with law enforcement.

[Jim Sagle]

10. Time for me to rejoin ADL. Thanks for the reminder.

[Chulanowa]

13. Well, if you read the Bible, there's a strong claim for that...

No one fucks over the Jewish people as much as God, after all.

I think Foxman needs to take a step out of his air-conditioned offices and lavish homes and see about getting some real anti-semitism experience. Maybe it'll help him bring the definition of the term into sharper focus, 'cause it seems the concept is pretty fuzzy for him.

[FLAprogressive]

3. It's what AIPAC and other groups are famous for....speak out against Israel

and you're smeared as "anti-Semitic".

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6. And organizations like "Jewish Voices for Peace" get swept under the rug.

It's a terrible situation.

PB

[seemslikeadream]

5. that will shut him up

well it does most people

[laststeamtrain]

8. K & R. Journalists & career foreign policy people need to speak out.

They're brave to do so because they will be attacked when they do. The truth's the truth, though.

[Radical Activist]

14. Stopping Iraq from funding and supporting terrorism

is one of the reasons Bush gave for the invasion. He wanted to stop terrorism by taking out those who support it. Iraq wasn't supporting Al-Qaeda. The only terrorist groups Iraq helped support were ones attacking Israel. So in effect, Bush admitted that protecting Israel was one of the reasons for the Iraq War.

ADL is going to lose credibility if their definition of anti-Semite becomes anyone who disagrees with their views on Israeli foreign policy.

[Sebastian Doyle]

17. While Joe Klein may very well be a douchebag, I seriously doubt he's an "anti semite"

As for President Carter, being that he's the only man, living or dead who ever succeeded at bringing peace between Israel and one of her neighbors (Egypt in this case) it sickens me to hear him slandered by the Likudist right. And it proves that they have NEVER had any interest in peace, and probably hate Carter for pulling it off.