ADL CEO Calls NYT Piece on Israel ‘Off Base and Offensive’

Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called a recent New York Times article about Israel and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) “off base and offensive” in an April 2 tweet.

The tweet, in full, states, “.@NathanThrall’s piece is off base & offensive. It entirely blames Israel for a complex conflict b/w two parties. It ignores inconvenient truths & bars engagement. We need a constructive strategy to reach a two-state solution w/ security & dignity for all.”

.@NathanThrall’s piece is off base & offensive. It entirely blames Israel for a complex conflict b/w two parties. It ignores inconvenient truths & bars engagement. We need a constructive strategy to reach a two-state solution w/ security & dignity for all. https://t.co/UhFDkinHwI

— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) April 2, 2019

The March 28 piece, written by Nathan Thrall and titled “How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics,” details the rising support for the BDS movement inside the Democratic Party. The piece describes the BDS movement as believing that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is a Palestinian “struggle against apartheid” and “racism.” The article also states that part of the reason why Democrats are largely unwilling to argue against “changing longstanding policy toward Israel” is due to “megadonors.”

“Of the dozens of personal checks greater than $500,000 made out to the largest PAC for Democrats in 2018, the Senate Majority PAC, around three-fourths were written by Jewish donors,” the article states. “This provides fodder for anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and for some, it is the elephant in the room.”

The piece quotes former White House deputy foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes, who served in the Obama administration, as saying, “The Washington view of Israel-Palestine is still shaped by the donor class. The donor class is profoundly to the right of where the activists are, and frankly, where the majority of the Jewish community is.”

Greenblatt is not the only Jewish leader to criticize Thrall’s article.

“There’s another code word for BDS, that is rarely used and that is DOI, Destruction of Israel,” Simon Wiesenthal Center Dean and Founder Rabbi Marvin Hier told the Journal in a statement. “Despite its lack of use, the latter is the real objective of the leaders of the BDS movement.”

Hier added, “It was not a right-wing Israeli government official, but Abba Eban, the labor party foreign minister, who correctly said, an Israeli withdrawal to the June 1967 borders would be a withdrawal to the ‘Auschwitz lines.’ Israel, surrounded by fanatical regimes, including Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, could not possibly survive with such indefensible borders.”

“Any fair person looking at a map would see why,” Hier continued. “They would see the 11,200 square miles that make up the current State of Israel, including the West Bank compared to the more than 5 million square miles that makeup Israel’s Arab neighbors. That’s why every Jew when you hear the word BDS understand that the real code is DOI.”

David Brog, executive director of the Maccabee Task Force, told the Washington Free Beacon, “To Thrall, Israel can do no right and the Palestinians can do no wrong. He condemns Israel’s ‘occupation’ while barely mentioning Israel’s repeated offers to exit the territory — and the serial Palestinian rejections of these offers. He criticizes Israel’s security measures without ever acknowledging the Palestinian terror that necessities them. He can’t even bring himself to admit that the Palestinian Arabs launched the 1948 War in an effort to destroy Israel — he writes that the war ‘erupted.’ The list goes on. I’d expect more balanced and thorough reporting from a high school newspaper.”

The Free Beacon also notes that Thrall is the director of the International Crisis Group’s Arab-Israeli Project; according to the International Crisis Group’s financial records, the organization received $4 million from Qatar’s Foreign Affairs Ministry.