From Bastion of Balance to Defamation of Israel

As a matter of policy, ADL’s office in Jerusalem had always fought to cope with any media coverage of Israel that would reflect any hint of either anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism.

The ADL office in Israel helped to expose the anti-Israel bias of the 1987 TV documentary on NBC entitled, Six Days and Twenty Years.

In 1988, the ADL investigated tendentious human rights reportage of AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL and published a study of the anti-Israel bias of human rights reports that were written by AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL. At the time, ADL helped to expose the fact that AMNESTY reports were based on fraudulent data and research provided to them by the PLO and PLO-organized human rights organizations.

In 1989, ADL helped to investigate and counter the anti-Israel PBS documentary entitled DAYS OF RAGE.

In 1990, ADL helped to investigate and eventually to expel an anti-Semitic bureau chief of a major TV news network in Jerusalem.

Also in 1990, the ADL helped to bring former US undersecretary of State Allen Keyes to Israel to counter Arab propagandists who were at the time overwhelming the media with anti-Israeli informants who were associated with the US state department.

In sum, throughout the Intifada, the ADL played an unsung role in issuing numerous position papers and leaflets that countered the numerous position papers that were provided to the media by a closely coordinated network of pro-Arab lobbyists.

Today, all that has changed. The ADL no longer responds to the organizations that orchestrate anti-Israel information for the media. Instead, the ADL staff director in Jerusalem is now an active member of the Rabbis for Human Rights, which is closely coordinating its efforts with the same organizations that have been placing anti-Israel material in the media for over a decade.

The RABBIS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS is part of an umbrella coalition known as Committee Against Home Demolitions, which claims that Israel has become an apartheid regime that has “destroyed” 30,000 Arab homes, making them all “homeless”. No mention that this figure is comprehensive, inclusive of 1967. No mention of the thousands of homes, medical facilities and Universities which Israel DID build for Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza since 1967. No mention of the 1,300 homes built by Israel for Arab refugees near Nablus that are unoccupied because of UNRWA’s refusal to allow Arabs to leave their shacks in refugee camps.

When the ADL was asked by the media to respond to this defamation campaign that has been promulgated by the Rabbis for Human Rights and the Committee against Home Demolitions, the ADL director asked his assistant to tell reporters that he agreed with their premise – that Israel is indeed behaving like a racist White South Africa regime and that it has indeed destroyed 30,000 homes.

Meanwhile, The ADL’s annual survey on anti-Semitism, issued on the day before HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY each year and produced in conjunction with Tel Aviv University’s prestigious Stephen Roth Institute of Anti-Semitism at Tel Aviv University, has for the past five years glossed over the consistent anti-Jewish expression of the official organs of the Palestinian Authority.

In 1994, 1995 and 1996, the full text distributed to the press of the ADL’s TAU international survey did not even mention the Palestine Authority.

In 1997, the full text of the survey mentioned the PA in only a few paragraphs and analyzed one PA poet.

The 1998 report mentioned only that the Israeli government had expressed concern about expressions of anti-Jewish sentiments in the official electronic media of the Palestinian Authority’s PBC.

The 1999 ADL annual survey on anti-Semitism chose to casually mention that the holocaust is often “discussed” within the Palestinian Authority,, “forgetting” to mention that the PA often describes Israel as a Nazi state in its broadcasts and telecasts.

ADL’s TAU The staff who present these reports have simply declined to study the output of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation TV and radio stations, and canceled the one session been had set up for them to visit a media lab that monitors the PBC.

Since the ADL and the staff of Tel Aviv University had not made any academic review of the PBC broadcasts and telecasts, that policy of oversight led to yet another glowing inaccuracy:

In the 1999 ADL survey on anti-Semitism, the PLO “nakba” observance last May 15, 1998, which the PA has declared to be “their” holocaust remembrance day, because it is the calendar day that marks Israel’s creation, was described by the report’s chief researcher as a “legitimate” form of Palestinian nationalism.

When I asked the researcher to comment on the official designation of the PBC TV of MAY 15, 1998 which described NAKBA as the day of war against the “Zionist-Nazi” enemy, the researcher simply denied it.

After all, she said, she had does not watch or review official Palestinian TV.

Perhaps the unkindest cut of all occurred at the presentation of the ADL annual survey on anti-Semitism, when the ADL was asked about the reports presented to the ADL concerning the new Palestinian Authority curriculum and a recent academic review of 140 PA schoolbooks which have been shown to teach hatred of Jews to a new generation of Palestinian children. This curriculum has been shared with the staff of the ADL.

Instead of responding with concern, the ADL director in Jerusalem preferred to repeat and give credence to the assurances of Yassir Arafat who had met with the ADL 6 months ago and had presented them with the information that the books were all published abroad that a peace curriculum was being prepared for the year 2002.

The ADL preferred to repeat Arafat’s statement, despite the fact that the ADL had already reviewed the evidence which showed that vast majority of the texts presented to the ADL for its review were marked, ‘Published in Ramallah by the Palestinian Ministry of Education’, which as a matter of course eliminates any reference of connections between Jews and the land of Israel.

The ADL director chose not to report the fact that his staff had met with the researchers who shared with ADL all of the evidence of this brand new curriculum that has been introduced into the school system of the Palestinian Authority which prepares Palestinian children for war.

It would seem that Arafat has more credibility with the ADL Israel office than the Israeli academics who are researching the Palestinian school system.

The ADL Israel office this year have reported on other concerns with similar myopic policy concerns.

In October, 1998, the ADL has issued a briefing paper to the media which describe the settlers beyond Israel’s green line as a great security threat facing Israel. The staffer who wrote the report did not even bother to visit the settlements or meet with the settlers.

In November, 1998, the ADL issued a widely circulated condemnation of Zev Hartman, a minor political candidate in the Nazareth Elite elections who had made racist comments about Arabs during the campaign.

Yet when ADL was asked to comment on Arab candidate MK Azmi Bishara’s praise of the Hezbullah’s call for the extermination of the Zionist entity, ADL wrote me that they would not issue any statement in this regard, since Bishara’a statement was only “political”. Later, the ADL informed me that they had sent a strong letter of protest to Bishara. I asked ADL if it would circulate the letter against Bishara, as they had with Hartman. The answer: This was “private” correspondence.

In sum, The March, 1999 ADL ISRAEL quarterly report reported that on six occasions during 1998, the ADL office in Israel had intervened to challenge racial prejudice in Israel. Each instance involved inappropriate acts of Orthodox Jews. From the ADL report, it would seem that no other sector of Israeli society needed to come under the scrutiny of the ADL office in Israel during 1998.

ADL in Israel would not respond to certain 1996 Israeli political commercials that compared Orthodox Judaism to a spreading AIDS disease.

ADL in Israel would not respond to the 1998 Beersheva judge who compared the Orthodox to lice.

ADL in Israel would not respond to demonstrators who used attack dogs to stop little children from going to a Talmud Torah in a secular Israeli neighborhood. egged on by two Israeli political organizations.

ADL in Israel, once a bastion for promulgating balance of media coverage for Israel, now tips the scales of balance….