The
Anti-Defamation League tries to portray itself as an ally of
Black Lives Matter while shielding Israel from criticism for
its
abuses of Palestinian rights.
Wisam
HashlamounZUMA
Press
For those who yearn for an end to systemic racism, these are
exhilarating times as Black activists and organizations lead a
global uprising againstsymbols
and structuresof white supremacy.
But if you are a racist group masquerading as a civil rights
organization, these days are fraught with the danger that you’ll
get found out.
It’s a balancing act that has for years bedeviled theAnti-Defamation
League, a major Israel lobby group in the United States.
Its counterparts in the UK are facing the same challenge.
The crisis is particularly acute right now as the ADL tries to
portray itself as an ally of Black Lives Matter while also
shielding Israel from criticism over its plans toannexPalestinian
land in the occupied West Bank, further entrenching thesystem
of apartheid.
Aleaked
memoobtained last week byJewish
Currentswriter Josh Leifer highlights the
dilemma of ADL leaders.
The memo sets out how the lobby group can, in Leifer’s words:
“find a way to defend Israel from criticism without alienating
other civil rights organizations, elected officials of color and
Black Lives Matter activists and supporters.”
The gist of the strategy is to allow some soft criticism of
Israel while fending off more precise and accurate descriptions
of Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights as “apartheid” and
“separate but equal” – the latter atermlong
used to whitewash violently enforced, legalized racial
segregation and subjugation in the United States.
The authors of the memo fear that a clash with progressive
forces over annexation could put ADL on the “wrong side” of the
Black Lives Matter movement and “challenge relationships between
ADL and many civil rights organizations and coalitions.”
It is ironic that the ADL fears Israel being associated with
apartheid.
As well as infiltrating Palestine solidarity groups, the ADL spy
passed on confidential files about anti-apartheid activists to
South Africa’s brutal intelligence agency.
The latest ADL leak confirms concerns that were revealed in aprivate
reportobtained by The Electronic Intifada in
2017.
That report – jointly written by the ADL and the Reut Institute,
an Israeli think tank – lamented that Palestinian rights
campaigners have been “able to frame the Palestinian struggle
against Israel as part of the struggle of other disempowered
minorities, such as African Americans, Latinos and the LGBTQ
community.”
The report recommended that Zionist groups try to disrupt this
dynamic by “Partnering with other minority communities based on
shared values and common interests such as on criminal justice
reform, immigration rights or in fighting against racism and
hate crimes.”
Today the ADL sees Black Lives Matter as a chance to burnish its
“civil rights” street cred while advancing its anti-Palestinian
agenda.
Its effort to co-opt the Black Lives Matter movement – in order
to manage and diffuse criticisms of Israel’s harsh racist regime
against Palestinians – is currently on full display.
The group is apartnerin
the Stop Hate for Profit campaign which is pressuring major
corporations to pull advertising from Facebook during the month
of July to protest the social media giant’s supposed failure to
crack down on hate speech.
Already,major
namessuch as Unilever and Starbucks have
agreed to comply.
There are real reasons for concern about this campaign: In
effect it demands that Facebook act as a censor and arbiter of
truth, a role no one should want an unaccountable private
company to play.
It’s especially concerning given that Facebook has alreadyappointeda
former Israeli government official with responsibility for
censorship to its new oversight board.
While few may have qualms about seeing white supremacists and
Nazis having their public platforms taken away, the reality is
that Palestinians have been among the main targets of online
censorship,particularly
by Facebook.
They have pushed governments, institutions and social media
companies to adopt this bogus definition in order to muzzle
advocates for Palestinian human rights.
The Stop Hate for Profit campaignexplicitly
demandsthat Facebook “find and remove public
and private groups focused on white supremacy, militia,
anti-Semitism, violent conspiracies, Holocaust denialism,
vaccine misinformation and climate denialism.”
However much one may loath such viewpoints, that is a fairly
sweeping demand for censorship and regulation of opinion that is
unlikely to stop there.
Yet, notably, there is no demand that anti-Muslim groups be
removed, despite rampant Islamophobia on the platform. That kind
of hate is apparently just fine!
The Stop Hate for Profit campaign also provides an opportunity
for big corporations to gain positive publicity while doing very
little to address structural racism. No doubt such corporations
will be happy to start advertising again on a Facebook sanitized
of any dissenting views.
Boycott for me, but not for thee
There is also the rank hypocrisy of the ADL, which is calling
for a boycott of Facebook, whileattackingand
smearing BDS – the peaceful campaign for boycott, divestment and
sanctions to end Israel’s racist abuses and crimes against
Palestinians.
The Anti-Defamation League has even supported anti-BDS
legislation,knowing
full wellthat such laws are unconstitutional
because they violate free speech.
Undoubtedly, the ADL values its own constitutional right to call
for a boycott of Facebook even as it seeks to trample the free
speech rights of others, including whose who believe that
Palestinians should not have their rights denied in their own
homelandjust
because they are not Jewish.
But in backing the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, ADL is joining
forces with Black mainstream liberal civil rights organizations
such as Color of Change and the venerable NAACP – and thus using
these relationships to gain entirely undeserved credibility as
an anti-racist ally.
Black activists in UK call for Israel sanctions
The problem faced by the ADL and the Israel lobby more broadly
was highlighted over the weekend when Black Lives Matter UK, an
anti-racist coalition, tweeted its support for the Palestinian
struggle:
“As Israel moves forward with the annexation of the West Bank,
and mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to
critique Zionism, and Israel’s settler-colonial pursuits, we
loudly and clearly stand beside our Palestinian comrades,” the
group tweeted.
The tweet got tens of thousands of likes and retweets.
Black Lives Matter UK followed that with a series of tweets
debunking Israel lobby claims that criticism of Israel is
anti-Semitic.
One tweet declared that as annexation looms, “we stand with
Palestinian civil society in calling for targeted sanctions in
line with international law against Israel’s colonial, apartheid
regime.”
The tweets were particularly significant as British politics
remain in thegrip
of a witch huntagainst critics of Israel,
especially within the main opposition Labour Party.
Mike Katz, chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, said he was
“sad” to see the tweets from Black Lives Matter UK.
He also claimed that members of his organization “reject
annexation and settlements.”
That can be seen as another effort to steer criticism of Israel
into anacceptable
“soft” formfocused only on a limited number of
Israeli actions, while trying to put criticism of Zionism off
limits.
The Board of Deputies, a British Jewish communal organization
and leading pro-Israel group, predictably accused Black Lives
Matter UK of engaging in an “anti-Semitic trope.”
But the Board insisted that this would “not stop us from
standing alongside Black people in their quest for justice.”
But, in fact, supporting Israel and Zionism is totally
incompatible with any quest for justice. All the slick spin and
PR campaigns cannot hide this simple truth: You can’t bean
anti-racist racist.