Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has made the admission that the left has a rising “anti-Semitism problem” in a July 9 op-ed.
Writing in Newsweek, Greenblatt noted that “while extremism on the right has dominated the public conversation for much of the past five years… right now the challenge is also rising among certain elements of the far left.”
“Over the past several months, we’ve witnessed a series of incidents in which progressive activism, often displayed as pro-Palestinian advocacy, has morphed into single-minded anti-Israel aggression—and sometimes outright antisemitism,” he said. “We all watched in horror as Jewish diners at a restaurant in Los Angeles were attacked and a Jewish man was beaten in broad daylight near Times Square – both by participants in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.”
He placed much of the blame on “some members of Congress who have made spurious claims about Israel’s actions and pushed a narrative that falsely accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing, systematically murdering Palestinian children, or of somehow being an apartheid state.”
He gave the examples of Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) introducing a bill calling on the Biden White House to stop aid to Israel for “bombing Gaza into oblivion” and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) who recently compared the United States and Israel to the Taliban and Hamas.
Greenblatt wrote, “This kind of anti-Israel sentiment is not limited to the halls of Congress. It is spreading. And it is dangerous.”
He added, “Delegitimizing the Jewish state with exaggerated claims and unhinged charges, then dismissing the connection between that level of inflammatory rhetoric and the violence perpetrated against Jewish people, is willfully ignorant at best, intentionally malign at worst. Excluding Jews from political coalitions or public activities is discrimination, plain and simple.”
Greenblatt said that while some on the left have spoken out against anti-Semitism, “we need all our allies to listen and others to engage authentically.”
He wrote that “some serious self-reflection” is needed by many partisan elements on the left in order to “admit their biases and acknowledge their insensitivity.”
“But it’s imperative that leaders from all corners of society clearly, forcefully, unequivocally condemn anti-Semitism full stop,” he said.