by Valdis Bell

TODAY MARKS THE 100th anniversary of the largest and most-well funded hate and defamation group in the history of mankind: the Anti-Defamation League, or “ADL.” The organization was originally called the “Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith” after its parent group, the Jewish fraternal order B’nai B’rith (meaning “Sons of the Covenant,” or, literally, “Sons of the Cut” — referring to circumcision). (ILLUSTRATION: Abraham Foxman, director of the ADL)

The ADL was founded in the immediate aftermath of the conviction of Atlanta B’nai B’rith President Leo Frank for the strangulation and sex murder of a 13-year-old factory girl, Mary Phagan. The international Jewish community did not believe that Frank should have been convicted. They had mounted a huge press, publicity, legal, and lobbying campaign to convince officials and the public that a Black man, James Conley, was the real killer. But the evidence against Frank was so strong — and the evidence against Conley so thin — that the Southern, all White, and doubtless philo-Semitic (like most of the Christian South) jury unanimously convicted Leo Frank and sentenced him to hang. Two months after Frank’s conviction, on October 20, 1913, the ADL was formed. To this day, the ADL and its allies promote the fiction that Frank’s conviction was a result of “anti-Semitism” and use the case a rallying cry to garner support and funding. (“100 Reasons Leo Frank is Guilty,” The American Mercury, 26 April 2013)

The ADL operates as a private intelligence agency, sending spies, infiltrators, disruptors, and agents provocateurs into the camps — both Jewish and non-Jewish — of those who disagree with its radically pro-Israel and Jewish supremacist agenda. Also like an intelligence agency, it maintains a huge database containing personal information on politicians, writers, dissidents, activists, publishers, bloggers, and even unaffiliated private citizens so that — should any of these people “get out of line,” in the opinion of the ADL — they can be threatened, “exposed,” blackmailed, and thus silenced with maximum effectiveness.

Roy Bullock

In 1993, an ADL operative, Roy Bullock, was caught corrupting police officials and illegally obtaining police files to add to the ADL’s dossiers on “thought criminals” Left and Right. Despite this, the ADL audaciously uses its money and influence to “educate” law enforcement officials through a subsidiary called the “Law Enforcement Agency Resource Network” (LEARN), which uses persuasive techniques to convince police authorities that individuals and groups that the ADL dislikes are dangerous criminals — and that the ADL and its allies are public-spirited, beneficial groups.

Ironically, considering its name, one of the main techniques used by the ADL, and for which its massive intelligence archive is most useful, is public defamation of those who the ADL has declared are its enemies.

The ADL is headquartered in New York City and has 29 offices in major cities in the United States, one in Israel, and two known offices in other countries. Abraham Foxman has been “national director” of the group since 1987. It has an admitted annual U.S. budget of $55 million, with listed assets in 2011 of $171 million.

The Bullock Case

In 1993, an ADL agent named Roy Bullock, a San Francisco art dealer and fairly well-known in the homosexual community there, whose specialty was the infiltration of patriotic, Arab-American, and other organizations on behalf of the League, was found to have in his possession illegally obtained and highly private and personal data on his targets — data which could only have been obtained from police and other confidential government files; data that was also discovered in the files of the ADL itself when police raided ADL headquarters in San Francisco and Los Angeles as result of Bullock’s exposure.

According to the Los Angeles Times of 9th April, 1993, “Police on Thursday served search warrants on the Anti-Defamation League here and in Los Angeles, seizing evidence of a nationwide intelligence network accused of keeping files on more than 950 political groups, newspapers, and labor unions and as many as 12,000 people.

“Describing the spy operations in great detail, San Francisco authorities simultaneously released voluminous documents telling how operatives of the Anti-Defamation League searched through trash and infiltrated organizations to gather intelligence an Arab-American, right-wing, and what they called “pinko” organizations….

“…Police allege that the organization maintains undercover operatives to gather political intelligence in at least seven cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“Groups that were the focus of the spy operation span the political spectrum, including such groups as the Ku Klux Klan, the White Aryan Resistance, Greenpeace, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the United Farm Workers, and the Jewish Defense League. Also on the list were Mills College, the board of directors of San Francisco public television station KQED, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper.

“People who were subjects of the spy operation included former Republican Representative Pete McCloskey, jailed political extremist Lyndon LaRouche and Los Angeles Times correspondent Scott Kraft, who is based in South Africa….

“…In addition to allegations of obtaining confidential information from police, the Anti-Defamation League could face a total of 48 felony counts for not properly reporting the employment of its chief West Coast spy, Roy Bullock, according to the affidavit filed to justify the search warrant.” (“ADL Vows to Cooperate With Spy Investigation,” Los Angeles Times, 9 April, 1993)

I’ll interrupt the article to inform you that those 48 felony counts were somehow suppressed and the ADL was never prosecuted. A sweetheart deal was worked out in 2000 under which the ADL admitted no wrongdoing, paid an out-of-court settlement — of under $200,000 — part of it for legal fees and the rest to “charitable groups” which “fight hate” (in other words, the kind of groups the ADL would support anyway — one such group was the “Hate Crimes Reward Fund”), issued a weak apology for dealing with “fact finders” who had violated the law, supposedly without the knowledge of the ADL, and then had the unbelievable audacity to reaffirm their “right” to spy on any group and anyone just as they always have!

Continuing:

“The Anti-Defamation League disguised payments to Bullock for more than 25 years by funneling $550 a week to Beverly Hills attorney Bruce I. Hochman, who then paid Bullock, according to the documents released in San Francisco. Hochman, a former president of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles and one of the state’s leading tax attorneys, will be out of the city until late next week and could not be reached for comment, his office said.

“Until 1990, Hochman, a former U.S. prosecutor, also was a member of a panel appointed by then-Senator Pete Wilson to secretly make initial recommendations on new federal judges in California. Hochman is a former regional president of the Anti-Defamation League….

“David Lehrer, executive director of the Los Angeles ADL office, said the organization has not violated the law….

“…But in an affidavit filed to obtain warrants for Thursday’s searches, San Francisco police allege that ‘ADL employees were apparently less than truthful’ in providing information in an earlier search conducted without a warrant….

“…The police affidavit contends that Lehrer had sole control of a secret fund used to pay for ‘fact-finding operations.’ Lehrer, according to the documents, signed checks from the account under the name ‘L. Patterson.’…

“…League officials will not confirm or deny whether Bullock was an employee and have said they simply traded information with police departments about people who might be involved in hate crimes.”

I’ll add here that the category of crime called “hate crimes” was virtually invented by the ADL. The purpose of such laws is to add extra penalties for acts which are already crimes under existing statutes — like murder, assault, etc. — if the perpetrator can be shown to have held prejudiced or “hateful” views which might have motivated his actions. Under “hate crime” laws, American citizens would receive different sentences for the same crime, depending on whether or not their thoughts are “Politically Correct” on issues relating to homosexuality, race, nationality, and politics. That such laws might have a chilling effect on free speech — for a thoughtful person would now realize that his every utterance on “sensitive” topics might someday be used against him in a court of law, should he be required to defend himself with force someday or even have an argument with a member of a “protected class” — was probably the ADL’s intention all along.

Enter Tom Gerard

From the Los Angeles Times, 13th April, 1993:

” To the outside world, Roy Bullock was a small-time art dealer who operated from his house in the Castro District. In reality, he was an undercover spy who picked through garbage and amassed secret files for the Anti-Defamation League for nearly 40 years.

“His code name at the prominent Jewish organization was Cal, and he was so successful at infiltrating political groups that he was once chosen to head an Arab-American delegation that visited Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) in her Washington, D.C. office.

“For a time, ‘Cal’ tapped into the phone message system of White Aryan Resistance… …From police sources, he obtained privileged, personal information on at least 1,394 people. And he met surreptitiously with agents of the South African government to trade his knowledge for crisp, new $100 bills.

“These are among the secrets that Bullock and David Gurvitz, a former Los Angeles-based [ADL] operative, divulged in extensive interviews with police and the FBI in a growing scandal over the nationwide intelligence network operated by the Anti-Defamation League….

“Transcripts of the interviews — among nearly 700 pages of documents released by San Francisco prosecutors last week — offer new details of the private spy operation that authorities allege crossed the line into illegal territory.

“At times, the intelligence activities took on a cloak-and-dagger air with laundered payments, shredded documents, hotel rendezvous with foreign agents and code names….

“On one occasion, Gurvitz recounts, he received a tip that a pro-Palestinian activist was about to board a plane bound for Haifa, Israel. Although the Anti-Defamation League publicly denies any ties to Israel, Gurvitz phoned an Israeli consular official to warn them. Shortly thereafter, another [Israeli government] official called Gurvitz back and debriefed him.

“The court papers also added to the mystery of Tom Gerard, a former CIA agent and San Francisco police officer accused of providing confidential material from police files to the Anti-Defamation League… …Bullock said it was Gerard who sold official police intelligence. Bullock said he split about $16,000… evenly with Gerard, telling him at one point, ‘I may be gay, but I’m a straight arrow.’…

“Gerard fled to the Philippines last fall after he was interviewed by the FBI, but left behind a briefcase in his police locker. Its contents included passports, driver’s licenses, and identification cards in 10 different names; identification cards in his own name for four different embassies in Central America; and a collection of blank birth certificates, Army discharge papers, and official stationery from various agencies.

“Also in the briefcase were extensive information on death squads, a black hood, apparently for use in interrogations, and photos of blindfolded and chained men.

“Investigators suspect that Gerard and other police sources gave the ADL confidential driver’s license or vehicle registration information on a vast number of people, including as many as 4,500 members of one target group, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee.

“Each case of obtaining such data from a law enforcement officer could constitute a felony, San Francisco Police Inspector Ron Roth noted in an affidavit for a search warrant.” (“New Details of Extensive ADL Spy Operation Emerge,” Los Angeles Times, 13 April, 1993)

Now we’re up to 4,500 felonies. Was the ADL brought to justice for even one of them? No. And what was revealed in the Gerard case was just the work of one ADL operative — and one group which the ADL had targeted! Evidence seized from Bullock’s computer indicate that the ADL was using him to compile data on individuals belonging to over 950 groups – and Bullock is just one agent. The rest of that iceberg must be most impressive.

As for Gerard himself — whom the ADL had sent on an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel two years before his arrest — he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized use of a police computer and was sentenced to three years’ probation, 45 days in jail, and a $2,500 fine.

The New York Daily News for 9th April, 1993 informs us that these were no “rogue” agents — the illegal spying was controlled directly from the ADL’s central office in New York City:

“Police in San Francisco and Los Angeles yesterday seized documents from a prominent Jewish-American organization accused of amassing confidential information — sometimes illegally — on thousands of people in the United States.

“The alleged operation was directed from the New York City offices of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, ABC News reported last night.

“The ADL has long been one of the most respected civil rights organizations in the country, tracking hate crimes and exposing prejudice.

“But ABC said that for several decades the spying operation has snooped into the records and activities of more than 10,000 people in the United States, including many who simply opposed the policies of Israel and South Africa….

“The report identified the leader of the intelligence ring as Irwin Suall.

“Sources told the Daily News that Suall is one of about 15 people in the ADL’s research department in Manhattan. Neither Suall or other ADL officials could be reached for comment.

“‘We’re talking about the use of information from Department of Motor Vehicles files, other confidential files of state and local agencies, illegally furnished and illegally received by private agencies,’ San Francisco District Attorney Arlo Smith told ABC.” ( Mark Mooney, New York Daily News, 9 April, 1993)

Irwin Suall, the former National Secretary of the Socialist Party of America, was the chief of the “fact-finding” (that is, espoionage) division of the ADL from 1967 to 1997. According to the Baltimore Sentinel for September, 1993 “In a memo dated July, 1992, Suall praised Roy Bullock as “our number one investigator” — just months before Bullock’s illegal activities were exposed. (“Is the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith Spying on You?”, Bill Hughes, Baltimore Sentinel, September 1993)

According to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, the ADL offered money to corrupt law enforcement officers and officials in return for illegally-obtained personal information that was supposed to have been destroyed. How many of these corrupt officials were never prosecuted, and how many were recruited during the “educational” conferences, and trips to Israel, arranged for them by the ADL’s law enforcement liaison division? The Report states:

“After COINTELPRO, a still-controversial FBI operation to destabilize black nationalist and other groups in the ’60s and ’70s, the FBI, state and local law enforcement authorities were ordered out of the business of gathering information about legitimate political activity by American citizens. But in some major American cities, law enforcement files relating to legitimate and Constitutionally protected political activities that had been ordered destroyed instead found their way to the offices of the ADL, which quickly became a clearinghouse for such illegally obtained and illegally retained information.

“The absence of the FBI, state, and local police investigators in the field therefore created a void the ADL rushed to fill, with remarkable success, by increasing its in-house ‘fact-finding’ assets and capabilities and developing enhanced working relationships with ‘official friends” — government officials, investigators, and intelligence officers. Some of these were the officials who had not destroyed files of illegally obtained materials, or had made private copies of the official files before they were destroyed in compliance with the court order.

“The ADL favored many of its ‘official friends’ with expense-paid trips to Israel, where they met with and were entertained by friendly officers of Israel’s espionage and counter-intelligence organizations, Mossad and Shin Bet, thus creating a major conduit for the flow of sensitive and useful U.S. domestic political intelligence to Israel’s spymasters in Tel Aviv.” (“Los Angeles Court Hands Down Final Judgment in Anti-Defamation League Illegal Surveillance Case,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 1999)

Despite its obvious — and admitted — ties with the state of Israel, and its agenda of advancing Israel’s policy objectives, and gaining power to blackmail or otherwise intimidate perceived enemies of Israel, the ADL has never been required to register as a foreign agent as other, far more benign, organizations have been required to do.

Arnold Forster, right, with Yitzhak Shamir

ADL’s former National Director Benjamin Epstein, in an internal letter disclosed during discovery proceedings in a lawsuit against the ADL in 1970, spoke with pride about the close cooperation that existed between the ADL and Israel’s intelligence apparatus. In his 1988 autobiography, ADL general counsel Arnold Forster specifically named the Mossad as as having a close connection with the League . The Mossad routinely engages in political assassinations of those it deems to be “Israel’s enemies” around the world. (Square One, Arnold Forster. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1988)

More Than Just Spying?

According to investigator William Norman Grigg, Bullock did much more than spy for his ADL bosses: “In 1993, it was discovered that Roy Bullock had been attempting to arrange a political marriage between the Institute for Historical Review, a holocaust revisionist organization, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (AADC) so the ADL could ‘out’ [AADC] members as neo-Nazis.” (William Norman Grigg, “ADL Campaign Against Tolerance,” New American, September 19, 1994)

But it wasn’t just Bullock, and it wasn’t just setting victims up for bigger and better smears. One ADL agent provocateur had a role as a leader and speaker for groups targeted by the ADL — doubtlessly steering the clueless radicals in directions helpful to the ADL agenda and against their own interests. And he also staged completely phony “extremist incidents” for the media to inflame fears of “racism” and “anti-Semitic” violence.

Investigative journalist Laird Wilcox tells us: “James Mitchell Rosenberg, a career infiltrator for the Anti-Defamation League, regularly attended and was a speaker at Ku Klux Klan rallies and meetings of the Mountain Church in Cohoctah, MI, considered a gathering place for neo-Nazis of all kinds. For the benefit of television reporters, Rosenberg also posed as a leader of a para-military group called the ‘Christian Patriot’s Defense League’ which was the subject of a breathless exposé entitled ‘Armies of the Right.’ In 1981, Rosenberg and an associate were arrested on a New York City rooftop and charged with carrying an unregistered rifle. The two were posing as paramilitary extremists for a photographic fabrication exaggerating the threat from the far right. The charges were subsequently dropped at the request [of] the ADL’s Irwin Suall, Rosenberg’s direct supervisor.” (The Watchdogs, Laird Wilcox, Editorial Research Service, Olathe, Kansas, 1998)

And these are just the ADL agents who have come to public attention and been exposed in the newspapers. Do you really believe that they were rare, exceptional cases? Or were they part of a much, much larger coordinated operation? With its multimillion-dollar budget and cozy relationship with corrupt law enforcement officials — and with murderous intelligence agencies and their unfathomably deep pockets — how many undiscovered agents does the ADL employ, and what might their functions be?

Seeing Anti-Semitism Where There Is None

In Denver, Colorado in 1994, an argument over pets and garden plants betweeen two couples — next door neighbors — became the focus of ADL public relations and legal action because of the alleged “anti-Semitism” of one of the couples toward the other, who were Jewish.

Candace and Mitchell Aronson were the Jewish neighbors of William and Dorothy Quigley.

The Aronsons used a VHF scanner radio to listen in on the cordless telephone conversations of the Quigleys. They heard Mrs. Quigley discuss with a friend — it turns out, in joking tones — a possible campaign to drive the Aronsons from the neighborhood by frightening them with “pictures of ovens” and throwing gas at one of the Aronson’s children. Mrs. Quigley was also heard “wishing that the Aronsons would be killed in a suicide bombing.” Although the conversations were obviously facetious, and at one point Mrs. Quigley even said she was saying some “sick” things, the Aronsons decided to contact the Denver office of the ADL.

Upon the advice of the ADL, the Aronsons began recording the Quigleys’ private telephone conversations — an illegal act. Astoundingly, ADL attorneys then advised the Aronsons to use the illegal recordings as the basis for a federal civil lawsuit against the Quigleys for “ethnic intimidation.” Meanwhile, the ADL defamation and PR machine geared up to “expose” yet another “anti-Semitic incident” and, not coincidentally, totally ruin the Quigleys’ lives.

Saul Rosenthal, Regional Director of the ADL, appeared at a news conference describing the Quigleys as engaging in “a vicious anti-Semitic campaign.” Rosenthal also appeared in local media making the same claims, and succesfully urged local prosecutors to use the tape recordings in filing criminal charges against the Quigleys.

The Quigleys became pariahs in their own community, receiving so many threats that they felt compelled to hire security guards. Animal feces was sent to their home. Mr. Quigley’s lost his job at United Artists. The family had to drive long distances to shop in stores where they would not be recognized.

However, the cases against them quickly began to fall apart. The local prosecutor dropped the charges upon hearing the obviously non-threatening nature of the conversations. He even apologized to the Quigleys and publicly stated that the accusations against them were untrue. The federal case was dead because the recordings were themselves illegal and therefore inadmissible,

The Quigleys countersued the ADL, Rosenthal, the Aronsons, and two ADL volunteer attorneys. Ultimately the Quigleys received a judgement of some $12 million, including interest, in their favor for the devastation that the Aronsons and the ADL had caused in their lives. (By the way, the Quigleys employed a Jewish lawyer, Jay Horowitz, to argue their case.)

Meyer Lansky

The ADL probably lost this one case only because they were not fully conversant with wiretap law. Had they not tripped up on that technicality, they, their well-funded attorneys, and their massive PR machine (aided by an ADL-friendly media) would have prevailed and the Quigleys would have been forgotten, impoverished, possibly imprisoned, and without recourse. How many other cases have there been? — how many unsung victims of the ADL have suffered that fate — or worse?

Crime Connections

The ADL operates much like an organized crime gang, as their intimidation and in-your-face life-ruining tactics make clear. And that’s not just a result of “overzealousness” or an unreasoning fear of persecution. The ADL has direct connections to numerous notorious crime figures:

Moe Dalitz

Meyer Lansky, one of the architects of modern organized crime in the United States and connected woth “Murder, Incorporated,” was a strong supporter of and donor to the ADL. His granddaughter, Mira Lansky Boland, was an ADL official — ironically, her position is listed as “liaison to law enforcement.” She arranged expense-paid luxury tours to Israel, the world capital of sex trafficking, for certain key law enforcement officials who had “something to offer” the ADL in return — among them Tom Gerard.

Moe Dalitz, organized crime boss of Las Vegas, was a long-time supporter of the ADL and a close friend of Meyer Lansky. In 1982, Dalitz received the “Torch of Liberty” award from the ADL.

Theodore Silbert, mafia front man worked simultaneously for the ADL and the Sterling National Bank (a mafia operation controlled by the Lansky syndicate).

Michael Milken, convicted financial criminal of “junk bond” fame, was a major contributor to the ADL.

Marc Rich

Marc Rich, international fugitive and financial criminal was hiding out in Switzerland to avoid prosecution for his crimes when he wrote a check for $100,000 to the ADL, who then proceeded to pull the necessary strings. He was then pardoned by President Bill Clinton on his last day in office. Rich later admitted he had worked with the ADL-linked Mossad for years, and Israeli officials also intervened on his behalf with Clinton.

Jewish Critiques

The ADL routinely smears those who have criticized its goals and methods by calling them “anti-Semites” — an amazing, invented word, by the way: No other ethnicity, so far as I know, has created a comparable neologism to demonize, isolate, and ostracize its critics. But so outrageous has been the behavior of the ADL that it has garnered much criticism from Jewish writers, activists, and dissenters from the “mainstream” Jewish establishment.

Noam Chomsky, leftist Jewish activist and Professor of Linguistics at MIT on the ADL: “[O]ne of the ugliest, most powerful pressure groups in the U.S… Its primary commitment is to use any technique, however dishonest and disgraceful, in order to defame and silence and destroy anybody who dares to criticize the Holy State (‘Israel’)…” “[The ADL is] engaged in surveillance, blacklisting, compilation of FBI-style files circulated to adherents for the purpose of defamation, angry public responses to criticism of Israeli actions, and so on. These efforts, buttressed by insinuations of anti-Semitism or direct accusations, are intended to deflect or undermine opposition to Israeli policies…”

Robert Friedman, liberal Jewish journalist, says of the ADL: “[T]he largest private spy agency in America… Through its 31 offices across the country, the ADL monitors school curricula, library acquisition lists, and public conferences and symposiums, working behind the scenes to stifle intellectual freedom.” (Robert I. Friedman, “The Jewish Thought Police”, Village Voice, July 27, 1993)

Norman Finkelstein, Jewish author and academic, says of the ADL’s long-time director Abraham Foxman that he is “a hoodlum and a thug.” (Defamation, video documentary, 1999 — see link in references)

Monty Warner, conservative Jewish writer and director of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, says that “the ADL has devolved into an opportunistic, intolerant, grief-grubbing stench” and says of ADL boss Abraham Foxman that he is “a disgrace to my religion.”

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, president of Toward Tradition, a Jewish religious group called ADL leader Abraham Foxman “Our own worst enemy.” Toward Tradition said it picked Foxman “from among other representatives of the Anti-Semitism industry” because of his pivotal role in former president Clinton’s pardon of fugitive Jewish financial criminal Marc Rich: “After the ADL received a $100,000 check from the Rich Foundation, Foxman wrote to Bill Clinton urging the pardon.”

Midge Decter, Dennis Prager, and 75 prominent Jewish writers and leaders issued a public statement in 1994 charging the ADL with “engaging in defamation” in the ADL’s attacks on rightists and Christians, routinely using “such discreditable techniques as insinuation and guilt by association” by finding and publicizing “links” between its targets and allegedly more radical (read: already smeared) figures in its voluminous dossiers of personal information obtained largely through espionage.

Steve Zeltzer, Jewish labor activist and himself a victim of ADL spying, states of the ADL: “They have always had enemies lists, and they have always wanted to control the flow of information.”

The ADL and the post-9/11 National Security State

Post-9/11 hysteria led Americans into illegal and unjustified wars in the Middle East and has brought us such unconstitutional erosions of our rights as the misnamed Patriot Act and its secret laws, secret courts, secret trials, and secret prisons; the massive illegal spying operations of the NSA and other agencies; and the maintenance of a “kill list” under which anyone on Earth can be marked for death by the President. Within months after the attacks, the ADL had already organized conferences to “help” the secret police take advantage of their new ill-gotten powers — as this ADL press release makes clear:

ADL Press Release – June 6, 2002

More than 500 representatives of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies were briefed on extremist and terrorist threats during a daylong conference co-sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The May 31 program, held at the FBI Academy in Quantico, VA, was an outgrowth of ADL’s longtime involvement in providing information and training to law enforcement on threats posed by extremists. The conference, “Extremist and Terrorist Threats: Protecting America After 9/11? included presentations from ADL, FBI and other nationally recognized experts on extremist groups, investigative techniques, counterterrorism strategies, domestic security and threat assessment.

“Now more than ever, law enforcement must have the resources and know-how to prevent future acts of terrorism,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “In order to assess threats against the United States, law enforcement must have credible information about domestic and foreign extremists whose rhetoric promotes violence. Through our network of regional offices and our experts in the field, ADL is uniquely suited to aid in the war against terrorism. This conference was an opportunity for law enforcement and extremism watchdogs to compare notes and forge alliances.”

Somehow I doubt that Roy Bullock’s name was brought up at the meeting.

Rabbi Spitz’s Vision

Rabbi Spitz

It seems that the “Anti-Defamation League” has taken to heart the words of Rabbi Leon Spitz, writing in The American Hebrew of March 1, 1946: “American Jews too must come to grips with our contemporary anti-Semites. We must fill our jails with anti-Semitic gangsters, we must fill our insane asylums with anti-Semitic lunatics, we must combat every alien Jew-hater, we must harass and prosecute our Jew baiters to the extreme limits of the laws, we must humble and shame our anti-Semitic hoodlums to such an extent that none will wish to dare to become ‘fellow-travelers’.” (“Glamorous Purim Formula,” Rabbi Leon Spitz, The American Hebrew, March 1, 1946)

Spitz is speaking in coded language, but the veil is rather thin. He’s not talking about prosecuting criminals per se, for the whole force of law enforcement was already doing that when he spoke.

He’s calling for for especially intense scrutiny of perceived “anti-Semites” by law enforcement, and the use of any and all technical violations that might be discovered to prosecute them. In our law-happy society, it’s doubtful that anyone could escape such close scrutiny unscathed — Google the Internet meme “three felonies a day” if you don’t believe me.

He doesn’t actually believe that gangsters are disproportionately “anti-Semitic” — in fact, no one has ever alleged that. What he’s saying is that the perceived enemies of the Jewish people should be criminalized in the public mind and in the minds of law enforcement officers so that they will be treated like gangsters. And that, in fact, is what the ADL has done, with their close liaisons with police (and secret police) authorities, alerting them to the “dangers” of patriot militia “hate groups,” traditionalist religious groups, alleged “neo-Nazis,” and the like — those whom the ADL sees as vociferous critics of Israel or Jewish power. In fact, few of these groups have any desire to harm Jews in any way, though they may criticize the ADL, Israel, or other parts of the Jewish establishment.

Criticism of Jews as Jews, or public doubt of their tales of suffering in World War 2, is a prosecutable offense in some countries today, in part due to the lobbying activities of the ADL and its allies.

Spitz doesn’t actually believe that his perceived enemies are insane, and therefore belong in asylums. (Elsewhere in his article he credits them with only with avarice, jealousy, and hatred.) He is intimating, though, that they will by some means be redefined as insane and literally fill the asylums. The mass media, heavily influenced by the ADL and disproportionately staffed with Jews, do present caricatured portraits of “conspiracy theorists” and “racists” who dislike Jews, and it is often implied that they are lunatics, “evil geniuses,” or some dangerous mix of the two. Critics of Jewish power today are never, to my knowledge, ever presented in a sympathetic manner by the media.

When Rabbi Spitz tells his fellows that “we must harass and prosecute our Jew baiters to the extreme limits of the laws, we must humble and shame our anti-Semitic hoodlums to such an extent that none will wish to dare to become ‘fellow-travelers’,” he is telling us that the laws must be stretched to their “extreme limits” to prosecute — and harass! — those who criticize Jews in order to “humble” them and shame them — that is, ruin their reputations — so that no one will dare to join them, publicly share their opinions, or value their friendship. This has nothing to do with enforcing the laws equally for all — and everything to do with destroying lives and suppressing the freedom to speak and organize through pure intimidation. Though The American Hebrew was not an ADL publication, and I don’t know if the good rabbi supported the ADL, I think it’s fair to say that his view represented a significant and influential strain in American Jewish thought in the aftermath of World War 2, a strain eagerly taken up by the ADL. Spitz’s hatefully poetic words are in the League’s spirit, and, considering the League’s ongoing, lavishly-funded, and largely successful defamation of those they label “anti-Semites,” perhaps Rabbi Spitz should be regarded as a kind of latter-day prophet, with the ADL his Heavenly Host of Hate.

References

“100 Reasons Leo Frank is Guilty,” The American Mercury, 26 April 2013

“ADL Vows to Cooperate With Spy Investigation,” Los Angeles Times, 9 April, 1993

“New Details of Extensive ADL Spy Operation Emerge,” Los Angeles Times, 13 April, 1993

“Police Seize Documents from Jewish Group,” Mark Mooney, New York Daily News, 9 April, 1993

“Is the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith Spying on You?”, Bill Hughes, Baltimore Sentinel, September 1993

“Los Angeles Court Hands Down Final Judgment in Anti-Defamation League Illegal Surveillance Case,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 1999

Square One, Arnold Forster. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1988

“ADL Campaign Against Tolerance,” William Norman Grigg, New American, September 19, 1994

The Watchdogs, Laird Wilcox, Editorial Research Service, Olathe, Kansas, 1998

“The Jewish Thought Police,” Robert I. Friedman, Village Voice, July 27, 1993

“Glamorous Purim Formula,” Rabbi Leon Spitz, The American Hebrew, March 1, 1946

* * *

MAKE SURE to check out the FULL American Mercury series on the Leo Frank case by clicking here.

Resources

Annual Report of the ADL

“Defamation”: A Jewish filmmaker’s interesting study of “anti-Semitism” and the ADL (video, 90 minutes)

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