Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein and Chairman Mark Levenson, Esq. released the following statement:

The ZOA is concerned about the lack of any mention of Islamic antisemitism, Islamic terrorism, and Islamic-terror-affiliated BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) in ADL’s recent email promoting ADL’s 2019 antisemitism summit. Instead, ADL’s email states that its 2019 agenda will be “focusing on topics like extremism, white supremacy, cyber hate, campus activism and free speech.”  

ZOA urges ADL to add the major and serious issue of Islamic antisemitism and Islamic terrorism to its 2019 agenda. 

It is particularly important to include and emphasize Islamic antisemitism in view of recent trends including:

• Imams have been videotaped preaching to murder Jews in American mosques in North Carolina, New Jersey, California, Texas, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. (See, e.g., “ZOA: Fire Four Imams Who Called for Murder of Jews,” Jan. 15, 2018, and “Morton Klein Written Testimony to the House Judiciary Committee,” April 9, 2019, pages 11-15.)

• Islamic terrorists have attacked and attempted to attack Jews in the U.S., including the November 2018 Islamist attack on Jewsoutside an orthodox Jewish synagogue in Los Angeles; hundreds of antisemitic incidentsperpetrated by Islamists against Jews on American college campuses each year, radical Muslim plots to blow up American synagogues in Florida, New York and elsewhere; the murderous Islamist shooting attack on Seattle Jewish Federation employees; the brutal beheading-style triple murder of three young Jewish men by the Islamic perpetrators of the Boston Marathon; the Jew-hating San Bernardino Islamists’ specific targeting and murder of a pro-Israel Messianic Jew at the outset of the San Bernardino massacre; and numerous others.

• Hezbollah and other Jew-hating Islamic terror organizations’ operatives have infiltrated into the U.S. Just this week, a Manhattan jury held that a Lebanese Muslim immigrant living in the Bronx (employed as an UGGs salesman) was a Hezbollah sleeper agent, who was guilty of helping Hezbollah prepare attacks on New York City.

• ADL’s own data (ADL’s worldwide survey of 100 countries) found that: 

  • 49% of Muslims throughout the world harbor a high degree of antisemitic attitudes (versus only 17% to 24% found among persons of other faiths);

  • 34% of Muslims in the United States exhibit a high degree of antisemitism, versus 14% of the general population – meaning that American Muslim antisemitism is two-and- a-half greater than that of the general U.S. population;

  • The 16 countries and territories having the highest levels of antisemitism were all in the Muslim Middle East, where levels of antisemitism ranged from 74% to 93% of the population;

  • There is increased anti-Jewish violence, and “extremely high” levels of antisemitism among Muslims in Western Europe, up to four and a half times the level in the general population. For instance, 68% of Muslims in Belgium harbor antisemitic attitudes, versus 21% of the general population.

  • (See also “Morton Klein Written Testimony to the House Judiciary Committee,” April 9, 2019, page 10.)

• Muslim Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar have repeatedly expressed Jew-hatred, with no consequences.

• A few weeks ago, at the Muslim American Society (MAS) Islamic Center in Philadelphia, young indoctrinated Muslim school children wearing Palestinian-Arab scarves sang songs and read poetry about killing and chopping off heads, “leading the army of Allah” to obtain the mosque in Jerusalem and “Palestine,” and “subjecting them [Jews] to eternal torture.”  The MAS Center then posted the videoon Facebook.  The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported: “These are not isolated incidents; they are happening in major centers of the country.” 

• Muslims carry out frequent antisemitic attacks on Jews in Israel – including knifings, car-rammings, drive-by shootings, “intifadas” and rocket attacks, maiming and murdering thousands of innocent Jews over the years (including murdering 83 innocent Jews and wounding 1,282 innocent Jews in the most recent Palestinian-Muslim wave of terror which began in 2015). 

• The world’s leading imams, at Al-Azhar University, the pinnacle of Islamic academe (and the Sunni Islamic equivalent to the Vatican) train Imams who fan out all over the world, to preach Jew-hatred, and that Jews are evil and must be killed. The influential treatise by Al-Azhar’s former Grand Imam Tantawi, cites Koranic sources to justify Muslim Jew-hatred and violence, and advises that “gentle persuasion can do no good with [Jews], so use force with them and treat them in the way you see as effective in ridding them of their evil.” An Al Azhar Friday sermon, broadcasted on television, recited a hadith requiring genocide against the Jews in order to usher in the messianic Day of Judgment. The sermon urges Muslims to prepare to vanquish the Jews until the Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, but the stones and the trees will say: “Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”  The Hamas charter contains the same hadith calling for genocide against the Jewish people. (See Morton Klein testimony, supra, at page 12, and sources cited therein.) 

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  American universities are teeming with Muslim antisemites and antisemitic activities. Groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine put eviction notices under the doors of Jewish students; hold frightening demonstrations demonizing Jews with blood libels and calling for Jews to be ousted from colleges; and interfere, sometimes violently, with Jewish students’ activities – to name a few.  UCLA guest lecturer/ San Francisco State University (SFSU) Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, during a recent mandatory anthropology class lecture at UCLA, called pro-Israel students, Zionists and Jewish students “white supremacists,” and has a long history of inciting violence, using public funds to meet with Islamic Palestinian terrorists including hijacker Leila Khalid and other PFLP terrorists, praising terrorist Rasmea Odeh (who was convicted for murdering two Jewish students), demonizing Jews, and insisting that a professor’s accusations that Israel harvests Palestinian organs was professional non-libelous work. 

• SFSU the General Union of Palestinian Students 2013 President Mohammad G. Hammad posted pictures of himself with a knife and posted dozens of murderous rants threatening to decapitate and commit violence against Israelis and Americans. 

• Muslim Professor Marc Lamont Hill has still not been fired from Temple University despite Hill spreading outrageous PA/PLO/Fatah blood libels, including that Jews plant knives on Palestinian-Arab children in order to frame, kill and incarcerate Palestinian-Arab children, and that Jews poison the water. Hill also incites and justifies violence; disparages non-violence; praises and defends terrorists such as Arafat, hijacker Leila Khaled; and murderer Rasmea Odeh; and opposes Israel’s existence; and much more.

• And then there’s young Muslim Physician Lara Kollab, who threatened on social media to murder her Jewish “Yahood” patients by giving Jews the wrong medicines – and posted dozens of other antisemitic statements.   

• Muslim antisemite Linda Sarsour has praised convicted Jew killers by name, praised Louis Farrakhan, said “nothing is creepier than Zionism,” and supports BDS. 

ZOA’s concerns about ADL’s upcoming 2019 antisemitism summit also reflect the lack of attention to Islamic antisemitism and other problems at ADL’s 2018 antisemitism summit.  

For instance, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt never mentioned Islamic antisemitism during his lengthy keynote/opening speech in 2018. Greenblatt moreover completely omitted the Muslim identity of the perpetrators of grisly, deadly attacks on Jews. Instead, Greenblatt merely stated that unspecified “gunmen” perpetrated the Paris Hypercacher kosher grocery hostage-taking and murder of Jews; an unspecified “gunman” murdered a young Jewish man in front of a Copenhagen synagogue; and an unspecified “terrorist” perpetrated the murders at the Brussels Jewish Museum. Greenblatt also merely said that Jewish worshipers “were butchered in cold blood” at a Har Nof synagogue – without specifying who committed these horrendous murders.  (The perpetrators of the Har Nof synagogue slaughter were Islamic members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – a designated foreign terrorist groups that is part of the Palestinian Authority government.) In fact, Islamic terrorists perpetrated all four of the above atrocities.  Why was the critical fact that all these perpetrators were Muslim absent from Greenblatt’s speech?    

In addition, the entire 2018 antisemitism summit agenda published on ADL’s website never mentions Islamic antisemitism, or Imams calling for the murder of Jews in American mosques, or the virulent Students for Justice in Palestine – which harasses and intimidates Jews and promotes hating the Jewish State of Israel on college campuses throughout the country.

Instead, the ADL 2018 summit agenda portrays Muslims solely as victims.  For instance, the 2018 ADL agenda topic “How Anti-Semitism Drives Other Forms of Hate in America,” states: “Divisive public rhetoric about immigration, Muslims, Jews and women has empowered and energized white supremacists, whose hate was on full display in Charlottesville and in Pittsburgh, where overt, aggressive expressions of anti-Semitism served as precursors to unthinkable violence.”  

Similarly, in his 2018 keynote speech, Jonathan Greenblatt declared:  “the fight against racism, xenophobia, misogyny, anti-Muslim bias, and homophobia – as a proud Jew with so much privilege, these are my fights, too.” 

We also find it rather disturbing that ADL’s CEO portrayed Jews as having “so much privilege” – when Jews are the victims of the majority (60%) of religious-based hate crimes in the United States.

ADL’s 2018 antisemitism summit also promoted ADL’s pro-immigration agenda, and included an immigration award.  ADL’s published 2018 agenda failed to acknowledge any legitimate concerns about immigration into the United States of persons who cannot be properly vetted, persons who have terror connections, and persons with extreme antisemitic attitudes. Instead ADL’s 2018 agenda condemned “nativist and racist reactions to immigrants” and “xenophobic scapegoating of immigrants.” 

ADL 2018 panelist Bret Stephens moreover falsely portrayed pro-immigration views as a Jewish value – when this is not so: Judaism in fact favors strong borders to protect a country’s safety and its population’s lives.  (See, e.g., “Torah Values and Why We Oppose Resettling Syrian Refugees,” by Morton Klein and Liz Berney, Algemeiner, Feb. 8, 2016; and “ZOA’s Amicus Brief in Support of Pres. Trump’s Immigration Proclamation,” Feb. 28, 2018, and summary.)

Last year, ADL also issued a report downplaying Islamic immigrant terrorism.  (See “ADL Report Underestimates/Downplays Islamist Migrants’ Terrorism: E.g. Claiming Islamist Terrorist Murder of Jews at Los Angeles El Al Counter Was Not Islamist Terrorism Because It Was “Likely Politically Motivated”,” May 7, 2018.)

Jonathan Greenblatt in his 2018 keynote speech, and 2018 panelist Emory’s Deborah Lipstadt also complained about politicians’ statements attacking Israel-hater George Soros. Greenblatt and Lipstadt never mentioned the immense harm that avowed non-Zionist Soros has done to the Jewish people: Soros continues to pour millions of dollars into at least 26 anti-Israel NGOs (including J Street, B’tselem, Breaking the Silence, and many more) that are at the forefront of attacking and demonizing the Jewish nation and her people. ADL has also wrongly condemned those who correctly point out Soros’ horrendous record, on other occasions.  (See “ZOA to ADL: Apologize/Retract ADL’s “Abhorrent” Attack Against Pro-Israel Cong. Gohmert,” Dec. 11, 2018.)

ADL’s 2018 summit was also marred by efforts to wrongly portray President Trump and right-wing world leaders who truly love Israel and the Jewish people as antisemites or as empowering antisemitism. ADL CEO Greenblatt, in his 2018 keynote address, castigated President Trump for using the term “globalists” – and tried to portray “globalists” as a euphemism for Jews – when in fact “globalists” is today understood as a term for those who would cede national rights to the United Nations and other international agencies and compacts, or put supposed world interests ahead of one’s country’s survival and welfare. ADL panelist Deborah Lipstadt characterized “my daughter is married to a Jew” as an excuse used by antisemites.  

And panelist Bret Stephens shamefully described pro-Israel right-wing world leaders as engaged in “blue-washing” – meaning, using closeness to Israel as an excuse and disguise for antisemitism. Incidentally, “blue-washing” is a term used by virulent anti-Israel groups, such as Electronic Intifada, to claim that anything good Israel does is merely done to disguise Israel’s [non-existent] crimes against Palestinian-Arabs.   

Similarly, at a “global antisemitism conference” co-sponsored by ADL at Long Island, NY in October 2018, the keynote speaker, Timothy Snyder, wrongly blamed global antisemitism on pro-Israel eastern European right-leaning leaders. Snyder also wrongly condemned Israeli settlements. Conference attendees were extremely upset by Snyder’s attacks on Israel and on Israel’s friends.  

Portraying friends as antisemites, and refusing to call out real antisemites, is counterproductive, if one wishes to combat antisemitism. ZOA thus urges ADL to improve its antisemitism summit this year – and to work with ZOA on combatting Islamic antisemitism.