In a fight between the NEA and ADL, the Jews lose Jeff Ballabon
https://www.jns.org/in-fight-between-the-nea-and-adl-the-jews-lose/
The progressive coalition that the Anti-Defamation League helped midwife now rejects it as impure.
When America’s largest teachers’ union severs ties with the Anti-Defamation League, it’s tempting to reach for the popcorn. After all, few organizations have done more to undermine Jewish security and moral clarity in recent years than the ADL—and few institutions have been more responsible for indoctrinating children with radical, antisemitic ideologies than the National Education Association.
But the spectacle is no cause for amusement. It is, in fact, a grim warning—another signpost on the road to civilizational hell. Because while the NEA and ADL trade rhetorical blows, it is the Jews who lose. Again.
How did we get here?
Once the flagship of Jewish communal defense against hate (though even then embarrassingly tone-deaf, left-leaning, and partisan), the ADL was commandeered and repurposed as a political weapon by its Obama-operative CEO and national director, Jonathan Greenblatt, who transformed the organization from self-important partisan hackery into a focused partisan war room.
Under Greenblatt, the ADL adopted a strategy of ideological weaponization: labeling mainstream conservatives and pro-Israel leaders as extremists if they dared praise friendly Republicans—or, worse, chastise hostile Democrats—while redefining antisemitism to provide cover for progressive politics, partnering with the very forces that enable and spread anti-Jewish hatred and enmity towards Israel.
Now, having helped define deviancy down to the point where silencing Jews based on the hateful and inane ideology of identity “privilege,” indoctrinating whole societies with blood libels, and calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state are considered legitimate forms of expression in polite society, the ADL finds itself—inevitably—on the receiving end of the very Jew-hating culture it helped foster. The NEA, wallowing in the intersectional dogma Greenblatt championed, has declared the ADL insufficiently “inclusive,” i.e., too Jewish.
This, as the late, great (Democrat) Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned when he popularized the concept of “defining deviancy down,” is what happens when moral standards are corrupted by political agendas. It’s also how the Overton window shifts: Greenblatt’s ADL has muddied the waters of antisemitism so thoroughly that even organizations explicitly hostile to Jewish identity and Israel could pose as anti-racist champions. Meanwhile, Jews who resisted this betrayal—especially Orthodox, Zionist or politically conservative Jews—were smeared as bigots or racists, including by the ADL itself.
But the rot goes deeper than politics. Greenblatt didn’t merely tolerate or defend the identity-resentment culture that is the underpinning of all socialist and progressive politics and the core of the post-Obama Democrats’ culture—and which sees Jews and Israel as the worst of all oppressors—he ratified and promoted it.
He accused Jews of “white privilege,” importing the logic of critical race theory into Jewish communal life and hollowing out the moral foundation of Jewish advocacy. The ADL has indeed been fighting the culture war—for the other side.
As celebrity Democrats and their allies—teachers’ unions, LGBTQ activists, and BLM—became more explicit in their anti-Israel rhetoric and Jew-hatred, Greenblatt continued his balancing act: currying favor with left-wing donors, media, and bureaucrats while cultivating symbolic ties to Orthodox communities under siege by the very forces the ADL empowered.
These gestures bought him just enough cover among the unwary. He also began appearing on right-leaning platforms, granting legitimacy to conservative media outlets desperate for guests who offered a veneer of “balance.” The result: cynical handouts and strategic ambiguity masking moral bankruptcy.
The record is damning. The ADL inflated the threat of fringe right-wing groups and fabricated supposed “dog whistles” among Republicans, all while minimizing or ignoring the far more potent antisemitism emanating from the left—from campus radicals to black nationalists to the progressive “Squad” in Congress. Even after the terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the ADL defended the Biden administration’s disgraceful equivocations. Meanwhile, it targeted conservative organizations and individuals, including Jews and allies confronting the real enemies of the Jewish people.
The political rise of Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman and supporter of the politics of Jewish annihilation, is the latest crisis triggering Jewish alarm. But Mamdani isn’t the core problem. He’s just the latest fruit of the poisoned tree—a direct descendant of the politics and ideology the ADL helped legitimize.
The fact that a candidate whose worldview erases Jewish self-determination and excuses the murder of Jewish innocents is now electorally viable in New York—of all places—says far less about Mamdani than it does about the rot the ADL helped entrench in service to the DNC.
The NEA’s vote is not evidence that the ADL is on the right side. It’s a declaration that the ADL—after years of serving the revolution—has become too Jewish for the antisemitic mob it helped empower. The progressive coalition that the ADL helped midwife now rejects it as impure.
For years, critics warned the ADL was leading the Jewish community off a cliff. They were ignored. Now the damage to Jewish credibility, communal strength and basic safety has been done. And those rushing to applaud Greenblatt’s belated, woefully inadequate course-correction appear just as myopic as those who enabled him in the first place.
Worst of all, the ADL’s legacy brand and monopoly on antisemitism data mean it’s still treated as the authoritative voice of American Jewry by media, politicians and institutions. Until a serious, principled, well-funded alternative emerges, the ADL’s moral and political corruption will continue to endanger Jews everywhere.
The NEA’s split from the ADL is not a battle to be mourned or cheered; it’s not a spectator sport. It is a reckoning. Jews must stop outsourcing their safety to political operatives and stop selling their dignity to self-promoting hucksters.
It’s a sad reality that what the NEA has now voted to do is what Jews who genuinely care about combatting hate and antisemitism should have done long ago: declared that they ”will not use, endorse, or publicize any materials from the ADL, such as its curricular materials or its statistics” or “participate in ADL programs or publicize ADL professional development offerings.”
If we are to reclaim the fight against antisemitism, we must begin by rejecting those who sold us out for a seat at the table. And that’s true whether the table is the globalist progressive left’s or the reactionary isolationist right’s. Because there’s one thing both sides increasingly agree on—and we’ve heard it before: Die Juden sind unser Unglück.
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