Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League, formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is a New York-based international advocacy organization founded in 1913 with the stated purpose of combating antisemitism, as well as other forms of bigotry and discrimination. The ADL is also known for its pro-Israel advocacy, and, since the 1970s, it has promoted the concept of a new antisemitism, describing criticism of Israel or opposition to Zionism as antisemitic. The ADL is a non-governmental organization, its CEO is Jonathan Greenblatt, and its headquarters are located in Murray Hill, in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It has 25 regional offices in the United States including a government relations office in Washington, D.C., as well as an office in Israel and staff in Europe. In 2023, the ADL reported total revenue of $38.3 million, the vast majority from contributions and grants. Its operating expenses for 2023 were reported at $57.9 million.
It was founded in late September 1913 by the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, a Jewish service organization, in the wake of the contentious murder conviction of Leo Frank. In 2009, the ADL became independent from B'nai B'rith and continued as an independent US section 501 nonprofit. In an early campaign, the ADL and allied groups pressured the automaker Henry Ford, who had published virulently antisemitic propaganda. In the 1930s, the ADL worked with the American Jewish Committee to oppose pro-Nazi activity in the United States. It opposed McCarthyism during the Cold War, and campaigned for major civil rights legislation in the 1960s. During this period, it also worked with the NAACP to discredit far-right organizations such as the John Birch Society. In the 1980s, it was involved in propaganda against Nelson Mandela of South Africa before embracing him the following decade.
After the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, and especially with the publication of its 1974 book The New Anti-Semitism, the ADL has sought to popularize the concept of a 'new antisemitism' identifying opposition to Zionism and some criticism of Israel with antisemitism. It has received criticism, including from members of its staff, that such advocacy has diverted the ADL from its historical fight against antisemitism. During the Gaza war and genocide, the ADL has been criticized for exploiting this conflation to delegitimize and silence criticism of Israel.
History
In its early decades, the ADL benefited from being among the few highly centralized Jewish community relations organizations alongside the American Jewish Committee and American Jewish Congress. This characteristic gave these three organizations greater influence on the national Jewish community at a time when most local congregations and organizations were splintered, with little outreach to the broader community. By the 1970s, decentralization yielded greater influence. By this point the ADL had succeeded in developing local branches, though the central office remained significant even in terms of local branch activities.Origins
The ADL was founded in late September 1913 by B'nai B'rith, with Sigmund Livingston as its first leader. Its goals were to counter antisemitism, prejudice and discrimination. Initially the league largely represented Midwestern and Southern Jews concerned with antagonistic portrayals of Jews in popular culture along with social and economic discrimination. In 1913, Atlanta B'nai B'rith President Leo Frank was convicted of the murder of a 13-year-old employee at a factory where he was superintendent; historians today generally consider Frank to have been innocent. Jewish leadership viewed Frank as having been wrongly prosecuted and convicted because of local antisemitism and agitation by some of the local press. The role that prejudice played in Frank's conviction was mentioned by Adolf Kraus when he announced the creation of the ADL. According to historians, the ADL's early strategy would be to pressure newspapers, theaters, and other businesses seen as defaming or discriminating against Jews; proposed methods included boycotts and pressuring advertisers, and it also considered demanding prior reviews of theater productions for antisemitism. After Georgia's outgoing governor commuted Frank's death sentence to life imprisonment in 1915, a lynch mob abducted Frank from prison and killed him. Frank was granted a posthumous pardon from Georgia in 1986 after ADL requests.1920s through 1960s
The historian Leonard Dinnerstein writes that until after World War II, the ADL had limited impact, particularly less than the American Jewish Committee. One of the ADL's early campaigns occurred in the 1920s when it organized a media effort and consumer boycott against The Dearborn Independent, a publication published by American automobile industrialist Henry Ford. The publication contained virulently antisemitic articles and quoted heavily from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic hoax. The ADL and allied organizations pressured Ford until he issued an apology in 1927.In 1933, the ADL moved offices to Chicago and Richard E. Gutstadt became director of national activities. With the change in leadership, the ADL shifted from Livingston's reactive responses to antisemitic action to a much more aggressive policy.
During the 1930s, the ADL, along with the AJC, coordinated American Jewish groups across the country in monitoring the activities of the German-American Bund and its pro-Nazi, nativist allies in the United States. In many instances, these community-based defense organizations paid informants to infiltrate these groups and report on what they discovered. The longest-lived and most effective of these American Jewish resistance organizations was the Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee, which was backed financially by the Jewish leaders of the motion picture industry. The day-to-day operations of the LAJCC were supervised by a Jewish attorney, Leon L. Lewis. Lewis was uniquely qualified to combat the rise of Nazism in Los Angeles, having served as the first national secretary of the Anti-Defamation League in Chicago from 1925 to 1931. From 1934 to 1941, the LAJCC maintained its undercover surveillance of the German-American Bund, the Silver Shirts and dozens of other pro-Nazi, nativist groups that operated in Los Angeles. Partnering with the American Legion in Los Angeles, the LAJCC channeled eyewitness accounts of sedition on to federal authorities. Working with the ADL, Leon Lewis and the LAJCC played a strategic role in counseling the McCormack-Dickstein Committee investigation of Nazi propaganda activities in the United States and the Dies Committee investigation of "un-American activities". In their final reports to Congress, both committees found that the sudden rise in political antisemitism in the United States during the decade was due, in part, to the German government's support of these domestic groups.
Paralleling its infiltration efforts, the ADL continued its attempts to reduce antisemitic caricatures in the media. Much like the NAACP, it chose a non-confrontational approach, attempting to build long-lasting relationships and avoid backlash. The ADL requested its members avoid public confrontation, instead directing them to send letters to the media and advertising companies that included antisemitic or racist references in screening copies of their books and movies. This strategy kept the campaigns out of the public eye and instead emphasized the development of a relationship with companies.
The ADL was critical of red-baiting and McCarthyism in the 1950s. However, during the Second Red Scare, the ADL expelled Jewish communists from the organization, cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee, and supported the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The ADL rejected accusations that the Rosenberg trial was influenced by antisemitism. Judge Irving Kaufman, who ordered the execution of the Rosenbergs, was a member of the ADL's Civil Rights committee. In 1952, Lucy Dawidowicz wrote in Commentary that Jewish communists viewed the ADL and other mainstream Jewish organizations as "reactionary, fascist-collaborating oligarchs and conspiratorial enemies both of democracy and their own oppressed people." In 1952, the ADL and other Jewish organizations released a joint statement rejecting the claims of the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case that the trial was motivated by antisemitism. The statement characterized the Rosenberg Committee as trying to "inject the false issue of anti-Semitism". A 1952 ADL document claimed that "The Communists, in their worldwide propaganda attack defending the convicted atom spies, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, provide a vivid example of the technique of falsely charging anti-Semitism to hide conspiracy."
The ADL campaigned for civil rights legislation including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The ADL and the NAACP worked together to discredit the far right in the United States, according to Mathew Delleck, the ADL was perhaps the most effective group in discrediting extremist right wing elements in the United States. The ADL conducted a spy operation headed by Isadore Zack, against the far right.
After the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, the ADL, with the support of AIPAC founder Isaiah L. Kenen, "sought to portray certain 'anti-Israel' actions as anti-Semitic," especially with regard to international calls for Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank, according to historian Ilan Pappé. From the early 1970s, the ADL sought to popularize a discourse of 'new antisemitism' identifying anti-Zionism with antisemitism.