ZOA Criticizes ADL for Featuring Hostile-to-Israel Speakers at ADL Never-Is-Now Conference
News Press Release
November 8, 2021

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:

ZOA is appalled by ADL featuring hostile-to-Israel speakers at its “Never is Now” conference this week. These speakers include:

  • Dr. Sara Yael Hirschhorn’s extreme demonization of Israel has included accusing Israel of perpetrating “ethnic cleansing” and “daily violations of human rights,” and calling Israel’s lawful Nation-State law “horrific.” 

Hirschhorn also condemns “denial of Palestinian sovereignty.” In other words, she views Palestinian Arab demands for a 23rd Arab nation-state as valid; but condemns Israel for identifying as a Jewish state.

In response to widespread condemnation of having Israel-demonizer Hirschhorn speak at ADL’s “Never is Now” event, ADL “doubled down” and issued a statement supporting Hirschhorn’s appearance, falsely claiming that “any casual look through her social media feed, will reveal a thoughtful and active voice speaking out against antisemitism.” ZOA looked through Hirschhorn’s twitter posts, and found that Hirschhorn continues to frequently wrongly and harshly condemn Israel. 

For instance, Hirschhorn tweeted that Israeli official Ayelet Shaked was pitting Druze Israelis “against Palestinian citizens of Israel” when Shaked praised a Druze town becoming a Druze city. Hirschhorn also retweeted that an Israel demonstration flyer was wrong to emphasize preserving Israel’s “Jewish” values over Israel’s “democratic” values. (The flyer sought to preserve both Israel’s Jewish and democratic values: “Jewish” was simply in slightly larger type – which is perfectly appropriate for the Jewish state.) Hirschhorn also frequently accuses “settlers” (Jews) of “terrorism” against Palestinian Arabs (a rare to non-existent occurrence), and falsely criticizes Israel for not taking sufficient action against “settler terrorism.” Meanwhile, Hirschhorn is silent about the hundreds of Palestinian Arab attacks against Jewish Israelis, including in Judea and Samaria.

Hirschhorn also called for Pres. Biden to employ “sticks” against Israeli settlements, and stated that quiet pressure was insufficient “BS.” Hirschhorn also called the Jewish religious trusts who own the land in Shimon HaTzadik / Sheikh Jarrah a “dodgy landlord,” and intimated that the proposed “compromise” of letting Arab squatters remain in the buildings for minimal rent was still not reasonable. (The religious trust have been trying to recover their land from non-paying Arab occupants for 50 years!)

  • Sheera Frenkel is a New York Times contributor who falsely called Hamas and PFLP attacks on innocent Jews “lone wolf” attacks; and who tweets Palestinian Arab allegations against Israel as fact. In 2014, Frenkel falsely failed to report that the Israeli police stated that a Hamas cell murdered three Jewish boys. Instead Frenkel falsely claimed that Israel “admitted” that the murderers were a “lone cell.” (See Dan@danfined tweet; Daniel Greenfield article, quoting journalist Seth Frantzman.)

Frenkel likewise falsely failed to report that PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) terrorists massacred five innocent Jewish worshipers and a security guard in a synagogue in Har Nof, Jerusalem, with meat cleavers, guns and axes. In her appearance on MSNBC, Frenkel downplayed this brutal massacre by falsely calling it “a lone wolf attack by two cousins” whose family members knew nothing about it. Frenkel also sought to excuse the attack by claiming that the cousins’ relatives were imprisoned by Israel for a rock-throwing incident, and misleadingly claimed: “Both Palestinians and Israelis have been killed in increasing violence.” Frenkel never identified the victims of the Har Nof massacre or other terror attacks as Jews, and never identified the perpetrators as Muslim, Arab or Palestinian. 

CAMERA reported that Frenkel also wrote an NPR news story accusing Israel of plotting to eradicate all Palestinian Arabs.

  • Vice President Kamala Harris: On September 29, at George Mason University, a student accused Israel of “ethnic genocide and a displacement of a people.” Instead of correcting these blood libels, Harris seemed to promote them, by telling the student: “your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth cannot be suppressed, and it must be heard.” Harris has still not personally publicly apologized. Only her office issued an insufficient statement that she “disagrees” with the student’s statement; she didn’t condemn the student’s outrageous, false, antisemitic statement. 

In addition, earlier in the day, after Harris’s office released that Harris would be condemning antisemitism, Meghan McCain aptly tweeted: “Does this include calling out the squad or is that the continued loophole?” As Ms. McCain suspected, Harris’ speech ignored the squad of radical Democratic Jew-haters in Congress (Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Betty McCollum, etc.).

Caroline Glick thus tweeted: “Too bad the @ADL refuses to call out anti-Semitism wherever it exists.

  • John C. Yangis President of Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAAJ) which gave antisemite Linda Sarsour its 2017 “Changemaker Award.” (See tweet by DanFined.) Yang also retweeted a “call to action” to help Jew-hating, Israel-hating racist Kristen Clarke to be confirmed as Biden’s assistant attorney general. Clarke’s long list of horrible statements include saying that the views of an antisemite (who called Jewish NAACP leaders “spies for the rest of the white race,” and called Zionism “a tool of imperialism”) were “based on indisputable fact.” Yet Yang’s retweet falsely called Clarke a “fearless champion for civil and human rights.”
  • Kara Swisheris an apparent apologist for the new antisemitism in the form of anti-Zionism. Swisher tweeted: “Yep: Anti-Zionism Isn’t the Same as Anti-Semitism,” together with a link to a New York Times article likewise promoting the bigoted view that that opposing the Jewish people’s right to the Jewish nation isn’t antisemitic.

JNS editor Jonathan Tobin aptly responded, “Jewish foes of Israel want to redefine Jew-hatred in order to give anti-Zionists a pass. Decent people on the left and the right shouldn’t let them get away with it. . . . What [the NY Times article author] is really trying to do is replace the whole idea of Jewish peoplehood with a loose universalism in which Jews will return to their old role of popular victims, dependent on the good will of others.” (“Antisemites and Their Jewish Apologists,” by Jonathan Tobin, JNS.) 

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