(To add your name as an individual, sign on this page. To add an organizational endorsement, please send a message to jfpror@gmail.com)

June 16, 2022

We, the undersigned, unequivocally condemn the Anti-Defamation League’s recent slanderous attack on the movement for Palestinian liberation.

At the organization’s Virtual National Leadership Summit on May 1, 2022, National Director Jonathan Greenblatt not only explicitly peddled the lie that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” but left no doubt as to how the ADL intends to muzzle and/or punish those who oppose the apartheid Israeli regime. “We will use our litigation skills to hold [anti-Zionists] accountable for their harm,” he declared, “[and] use our advocacy muscles to push policymakers to take action.” 

Greenblatt specifically targeted Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) — who issued a joint statement in response (a group of prominent Jewish Palestine supporters also published an open letter answering ADL’s attack) — but his warning was clearly directed at all who stand up for Palestinian rights. 

The ADL’s threats should not be taken lightly. In 2020, it reported net assets of $152m. The organization has close ties with police and the FBI (and a sordid history of surveilling anti-racist activists). It supports unconstitutional “anti-BDS” laws designed to silence Palestine advocacy. As Mondoweiss recently noted, “the ADL would be laughable if it weren’t dangerous.”

Greenblatt’s chest thumping, however, cannot save the Israeli regime’s crumbling public image. Three high profile reports in the past year — from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B’Tselem — exposed the regime as an apartheid state, affirming what Palestinians themselves have been telling the world since the Nakba of 1948. The current ethnic cleansing in Masafer Yatta, approved by the Israeli High Court, is a stark reminder that the Nakba is not a distant memory but a permanently operating feature of the settler-colonial Zionist state.

Meanwhile, the Zionist establishment, desperate to distract from this exposure, and spreading its own version of white supremacist “replacement theory,” frames the mere presence of Palestinians in their homeland as a demographic and existential threat to Jewish people.  

Ten days after Greenblatt’s address, and two days before Nakba Day, Israeli forces attacking the Jenin Palestinian refugee camp murdered Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a longtime reporter for Al Jazeera. Two days later, with the whole world watching, Israeli police violently assaulted mourners at her funeral procession, “a response,” wrote fellow journalist Belen Fernandez, “that can only be classified as acute and multitiered state savagery, in keeping with Israel’s modus operandi of refusing to let Palestinians live, die, or be buried in peace.”

In honor of Shireen, and in the spirit of anti-racist resistance from the Warsaw Ghetto to apartheid South Africa to the Jim Crow South to Standing Rock to Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate, we serve the ADL notice: your slanders and your threats will never silence the growing movement for a free Palestine from the river to the sea with equal rights for all.

Signed (in alphabetical order),

Adalah Justice Project

#Africa4Palestine

Al-Awda NY: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition

Al Quds Day Committee of New York

Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine

American Muslims for Palestine - NJ

Arab Resource and Organizing Center

Black Lives Matter Paterson

Canada Palestine Association

Canadian BDS Coalition

Catalyst Project

Chicago Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression

Clarion Alley Mural Project

Collectif Palestine Vaincra

Council on American-Islamic Relations - NJ 

CUNY for Palestine

CUNY Jewish Law Students Association

Decolonize This Place

Democratic Socialists of America BDS and Palestine Solidarity Working Group

Democratic Socialists of America North New Jersey

Democratic Socialists of America Metro DC

Democratic Socialists of America Charlotte Metro

Episcopal Peace Fellowship-Palestine Israel Network

Equality for Flatbush

Football Against Apartheid

Free Democratic Palestine Movement

Freedom Socialist Party

Friends of Sabeel North America

Good Shepherd Collective

Green Mountain Solidarity With Palestine

Green Party of New Jersey

Haiti Action Committee

ICNA Council for Social Justice

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Jewish Voice for Peace - Bay Area

Jewish Voice for Peace - Boston

Jewish Voice for Peace - Central NJ

Jewish Voice for Peace - Los Angeles

Jewish Voice for Peace - Portland, OR

Jewish Voice for Peace - Northern NJ

Jews for Palestinian Right of Return

Jews Say No!

Just Peace Advocates/Mouvement Pour Une Paix Juste

Labor for Palestine

Majlis Ash-Shura: Islamic Leadership Council of New York

North Alabama Peace Network

North Coast Coalition for Palestine

Not In Our Name: Jewish Antizionist CUNY Coalition

Oakville Palestinian Rights Association (Canada)

Pacific Social Justice

Palestine Legal

Palestinian American Community Center

Palestinian and Jewish Unity

Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans

People’s Defense Initiative

People’s Organization for Progress

Radical Women - U.S

Rochester Witness for Palestine

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network

South Asian Americans Leading Together

Stand with Kashmir

Students for Justice in Palestine at Rutgers - New Brunswick

Students for Justice in Palestine at Rutgers - Newark

Students for Justice in Palestine - Drew University

Tzedek Chicago

United American Indians of New England

USA Palestine Mental Health Network

U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights

U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

U.S. Palestinian Community Network

Vermonters for Justice in Palestine

Voices for Justice in Palestine, North Carolina

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

Yalla Indivisible

Young Democratic Socialists of America, San Francisco State University chapter