Nora Lester Murad - The View From My Window in Palestine

Members of Educators Union Say Its Capitulation to ADL Betrays Workers, Students

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This article was originally published in Truthout.

On July 5, the highest deliberative body of the country’s largest union, the National Education Association (NEA), voted at their 2025 Representative Assembly to call on the NEA to “not use, endorse, or publicize any materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or its statistics. NEA will not participate in ADL programs or publicize ADL professional development offerings.” Less than two weeks later, the NEA board overturned this democratic decision from the delegates — yet another capitulation to an organization that many educators and others have called a bully.

The ADL, which has long represented itself as a civil right organization, was exposed as a right-wing, Israel-aligned political advocacy organization by #DropTheADL. More recent campaigns like Drop the ADL from Schools have argued it should not be considered a social justice partner to schools. The campaign to drop the ADL from schools contends that the group:

  • is an anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic, and racist political advocacy organization that censors learning and undermines inquiry;
  • produces faulty statistics about antisemitism to create alarm;
  • misconstrues anti-Zionism and antiwar protest as antisemitic, undermining our constitutional rights to speech and assembly;
  • falsely accuses educators and educational institutions of hatred of Jews using reputational slander and lawfare;
  • distracts attention from actual antisemitism coming from the U.S. government, right-wing activists, and white Christian nationalists.

NEA member educators celebrated the July 5 vote as a coup against the stranglehold of the ADL on education. The win — a result of multi-year organizing by the Educators for Palestine and Arab American caucuses of the NEA — was visible proof that public opinion in the United States has shifted, with a large majority of voters expressing disapproval of Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Immediately after the vote, NEA leadership invoked its standing rules, claiming that the measure, known as New Business Item (NBI) #39, constituted a boycott or sanction and therefore had to be referred to the executive committee.

After those rules were invoked, hundreds of NEA member educators coalesced on Signal in an ad hoc support group to demand that NEA leadership respect the democratic will of the representative assembly. NEA members and allies sent more than 20,0000 letters to the executive committee in support of dropping the ADL, including nearly 1,200 letters from Jewish NEA members specifically.

But the ADL and its allies lobbied harder. On July 14, the ADL released what it called a “communal letter” to NEA President Becky Pringle, signed by hundreds of Jewish congregations, nonprofits, and advocacy groups framing the union’s vote as antisemitic. It also reaffirmed its disdain for pro-Palestinian actions by teachers’ unions in California and Massachusetts, citing them as evidence of “open hostility toward Jewish educators, students and families coming from national and local teachers’ unions and their members.” According to recent reporting from New York magazine, the ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt blamed the measure on a “pro-Hamas” faction in the union.

“The ADL’s lack of trust in teachers is evident in the way it leveraged power to quash NBI #39,” Danielle Bryant, a former ADL education director whose recent exposé argued that the ADL prioritizes politics over education, told Truthout. “It is a stark reminder that the ADL claims a monopoly on arbitrating what is and isn’t antisemitism, and anyone who doesn’t share their definition is labeled an antisemite,” Bryant told Truthout of the ADL’s reaction to the vote.

Pro-Israel media also played a part by misrepresenting the intent, content, and significance of NBI #39. The news outlet Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, for example, said that if upheld, the measure would prohibit the union from using ADL materials about antisemitism and the Holocaust, as if the purpose was to deny students access to resources about Jewish history. The Washington Times quoted the president of the conservative watchdog group Accuracy in Media saying it was “alarming — but not surprising — that the NEA decided to terminate its relationship with the ADL when antisemitism is at an all-time high,” cynically invoking skewed statistics from the ADL itself.

Emboldened Republicans introduced legislation to revoke the NEA’s federal charter, citing both the vote to repudiate the ADL, as well as a separate vote calling on the NEA to “defend democracy against Trump’s embrace of fascism.” The Republican attack — not the first attempt to discredit what the GOP considers the left-wing politics of the NEA — echoed the ADL’s lobbying language.

Less than two weeks after the vote, on July 18, the NEA executive committee met with almost no public notice. That was followed immediately by a meeting of the NEA board of directors, which decided to overturn the democratic vote taken in the Representative Assembly. In a statement, NEA President Pringle claimed to have determined “after consideration” that “this proposal (sic) would not further NEA’s commitment to academic freedom, our membership, or our goals.” To reach this decision, the NEA said it consulted with “NEA state affiliates and civil rights leaders, including Jewish American and Arab American community leaders, and we also met with ADL leadership.” The decision to overturn the vote did not, however, allow for rebuttal by state NEA affiliates — the procedure called for the same rules that NEA leadership used to claim jurisdiction over the final decision.

“NEA opposes efforts to shut down debate, to silence voices of disagreement, and intimidation. We recognize the underlying concerns of the authors and supporters of the proposal, and we are committed to ongoing discussion with our community,” the statement read. “Not adopting this proposal is in no way an endorsement of the ADL’s full body of work. We are calling on the ADL to support the free speech and association rights of all students and educators.”

Even though the NEA capitulated, the GOP continued its campaign against the union. House Republicans introduced the anti-union STUDENT Act (Stopping Teachers Unions from Damaging Education Needs Today Act), which threatens to modify the NEA’s charter and weaken the union. In a statement announcing the proposed legislation, GOP lawmakers quoted Aaron Withe, the CEO of the right-wing, anti-union Freedom Foundation.

While many supporters of the campaign to drop the ADL felt blindsided by the NEA’s betrayal, some experienced union members were not surprised. They say this isn’t the first time the NEA disregarded the votes of members when they don’t align with the interests of union executives. For example, when members voted to endorse progressive Bernie Sanders, NEA leadership decided instead to align with Hilary Clinton — perhaps, some argue, because NEA leadership positions are seen as a fast-track to the Democratic Party. “Last year, the NEA locked out its own staff from their own union,” said Alison, an organizer supporting Educators for Palestine who did not want her last name used for fear of repercussions. “How are we supposed to trust them to represent teachers’ interests?”

A longtime labor organizer who also didn’t wish to be named to avoid negative impact on their career said, “The majority of U.S. unions have headquarters in Washington, D.C. in order to capitalize on political relationships, which can take priority over organizing and communicating with members.”

When it comes to supporting Palestinian rights, backlash from the ADL and its allies has fallen squarely on activists, students, and educators, with individual teachers, schools, districts, and educational associations being targeted with what activists call bad faith accusations of antisemitism. These include reputational slander or lawfare attacks like Title VI civil rights complaints that mix instances of real antisemitism with support for Palestinian rights that is misrepresented as antisemitic. For workers, the cost of being targeted have included disciplinary measures, loss of livelihood, loss of professional credibility, severed relationships and mental health problems. “Since the ADL has so much influence over teachers at the national level, it’s not surprising that educators have lost jobs or contracts for teaching in a balanced way that falls short of what the Israel lobby wants,” said Angela, an NEA member and Representative Assembly delegate who teaches in Maryland, who asked for her name to be withheld to prevent further professional repercussions. The NEA, like other unions, has often been uneasy about supporting members like Angela, who was disciplined by her district for publicly opposing the genocide in Gaza. She said, “My local protected my due process, but there was no political support. I think they saw paying for arbitration for me as a waste of their political capital.”

Educators were therefore not surprised that the ADL’s bullying tactics were so effective. The NEA is only the most recent addition to the list of educational organizations that ADL has strongarmed into supporting its aims over those of their own members.

In 2024, at least two educational associations caved to political pressure from the ADL, calling into question the strength of the country’s K-12 educational infrastructure. An accusation of antisemitism by the ADL against a pro-Palestinian speaker at the National Association of Independent Schools’ People of Color Conference led to an immediate apology from the association, despite support for the speech from attendees. Soon after, the association announced that its flagship equity programs — which include that conference — were “paused,” which many educators fear is a euphemism for cancellation. Soon after, the ADL accused a speaker on an equity panel at the annual conference of MassCUE (the Massachusetts state affiliate of the International Society for Technology in Education) of antisemitism. This led to the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents severing ties with MassCUE, a longtime partner. Subsequently, the MassCUE executive director was dismissed and the board of directors resigned, the organization went dark, and then seemed to relaunch with new leadership and without any explanation to member educators.

The Trump administration has engaged in similar bullying tactics targeting education, threatening to cancel university funding as punishment for supposedly rampant antisemitism, which inexplicably can be washed away by the payment of large fines by Columbia, Harvard, and the University of California, among others. The ADL’s response to the Trump administration’s bullying varies, with Greenblatt calling Trump’s crackdown on Harvard “overreach” back in March, but then praising Columbia’s role in the detention of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil in the same month. Organizers note that the Trump administration’s use of accusations of antisemitism to extract political concessions mirrors the yearslong weaponization of Title VI civil rights law by the ADL and other pro-Israel advocates, including against both universities and K-12 schools.

“People are generally so afraid to get antisemitism wrong or of being called antisemitic, they act out of fear, even when it means undermining educators’ longstanding commitment to creating safe and inclusive learning environments,” said Bryant.

The NEA’s capitulation is another feather in the ADL’s cap and a win for the Trumpist interests that organize to weaken labor unions’ advocacy for their members’ democratic rights. The ADL’s willingness to undermine democracy to get what it wants reveals its true nature as a pro-Israel political advocacy organization, not a civil rights advocate. “The NEA has been attacked directly by right-wingers. You would think they would realize that aligning with them will not protect them the way backing their members would,” said Alison.

Although NBI #39 was overturned, the member educators who oppose the ADL’s anti-Palestinian interference in schools do not plan to give up. “The NEA’s turn away from its members and toward the ADL transforms it from being an ally to call in to an advocacy target that must be called out,” said Alison, who noted the danger to the labor movement as a whole when workers’ voices are ignored. Rethinking Schools magazine also released a statement with the same sentiment:

“[I]t’s not too late. The voices calling for justice — Palestinian, Jewish, Black, Indigenous, queer, Muslim, and working-class educators — aren’t going away. They are the future of this union. They are organizing in defense of academic freedom, in solidarity with Gaza, and in pursuit of a world where no child learns under occupation and scholasticide no educator is threatened for teaching about those crimes.”

Members of the NEA, who are both educators and workers, voted to oust the ADL because they are committed to teaching the truth and developing skills in critical thinking that young people need to act as socially responsible global citizens, and because they understand that the ADL’s anti-democratic efforts to undermine education also harm them as workers. This makes the NEA’s repudiation of the ADL an important inspiration for all workers, not only NEA members — because all workers are threatened by organizations like the ADL that ally with right-wing forces to undermine workers’ rights and the integrity of the labor unions mandated to protect them.

On Teach Truth Day of Action: The Movement to #TeachTruth Includes Palestine, Too

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This article was originally published in LA Progressive on June 6, 2025. See LA Progressive for a video interview with me about the topic. You can listen to the article below here.

Erasure and censorship of Palestinians and Palestinian narratives is a denial of Palestinian humanity.

There is a veritable battle in US schools over if and how to teach about the Middle East. But the disagreement isn’t between people who want to teach a pro-Palestinian view and those who want to teach a pro-Israeli view. It is between those who want to teach the truth and those who want to silence it.

“Teach Truth” is a phrase and movement that emerged in response to right-wing efforts to silence teaching about racism in the United States. The driving idea is that if students know the truth about historical structural inequality, they will understand that it doesn’t serve their interests, no matter who they are, and they will be motivated to change it. In a society that peddles falsehoods to perpetuate the status quo, the truth is disruptive, even dangerous, to those who benefit from inequality.

More than half of all K-12 students in the United States already study in schools where law restricts the teaching of the truth. In Florida, for example, there are five books that if mentioned by a teacher constitute a felony violation punishable by up to five years in prison. When Palestine comes up in the classroom, teachers may be smeared by false accusations of antisemitism, causing severe disruption to their careers and lives. And given recent abductions and deportations of students and teachers by the Trump administration, it seems sure that attacks on teaching and learning will increase.

The purpose of this censorship is to prevent students from accessing materials and inquiry that would support their critical thinking. Looked at this way, censorship of Black history clearly doesn’t harm only Black students, it harms all students, and the same dynamic can be seen in the fight over the teaching of current events in Palestine/Israel.

Erasure and censorship of Palestinians and Palestinian narratives is a denial of Palestinian humanity. Palestinian students and teachers who are dehumanized in K-12 schools are harmed, and their dehumanization leads to more harm, including the active and passive support of U.S. taxpayers in the 19-month-long slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Moreover, students who do not learn Palestinian history, who do not respect the humanity of Palestinians, and who cannot engage respectfully with Palestinian narratives cannot be effective U.S. or global citizens. But too many teachers still think that teaching about Palestinians is somehow anti-Jewish, as if legitimacy is a fixed resource and any inclusion of Palestinians comes at the expense of Jews.

How do we get the ADL out of schools? A conversation with Nora Lester Murad of #DropTheADLfromSchools.

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This interview with me was originally published by The Specter of the Bund on May 30, 2025 and republished by Portside on June 5, 2025.

Since as far back as the 1980s, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has sponsored programs aimed at fighting discrimination in K-12 education. In recent years, however, the organization has narrowed its focus almost exclusively to antisemitism at the expense of other marginalized communities. In doing so, the ADL has created a coercive environment that encourages carceral solutions and monetary donations as a fix for systemic issues. Since the start of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in 2023, the ADL’s illiberal leanings have been put on full display as it voiced support for the detainment of Mahmoud Khalil, dismissed Elon Musk’s Nazi salute, and done everything in its power to silence criticism of the state of Israel by labeling pro-Palestinian language and activism as “antisemitism” in its public advocacy and statistics, putting the self-proclaimed “anti-hate” organization in alignment with the likes of the Trump administration and Heritage Foundation.

Der Spekter editors spoke to Nora Lester Murad, a member of the core organizing team of the #DropTheADL movement, about what educators are facing in their schools and what needs to be done to replace the ADL’s programs with truly progressive, anti-racist solutions.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Mark Misoshnik, Der Spekter editor: Please tell us about yourself and then more about this movement that you’re a part of.

Nora Lester Murad: I’m originally from California. I live now in Massachusetts, and I’m Jewish. I married a Palestinian Muslim, and we raised three daughters in the West Bank. I’ve been involved with social justice work since my parents dragged me to demonstrations in a car seat, and I come from the same stock that you folks come from: both the villages around Kyiv as well as the Brooklyn left. I’m committed to social justice issues and particularly have been involved in this one even before I got married, which was 40 years ago. So it’s been a real, real long time. I think I’ve always been an anti-Zionist. My parents were anti-racist, so they were basically anti-Zionists.

Obviously the last 18–19 months have been particularly difficult for anyone who is either Jewish or Palestinian for different reasons. And it was during the genocide that the “Drop the ADL From Schools” campaign was birthed and then launched. Around 2020 there was [also] an effort to drop the ADL, which still exists at droptheadl.org, and it focused on helping progressive organizations understand that the ADL is not an ally to progressive groups. There’s also a long history of surveilling and attacking social movements of communities of color, even while they allied with some more conservative and integrationist civil rights organizations when necessary, contributing to the ADL’s undeserved reputation as a civil rights organization over the last several decades.

The 2020 effort to drop the ADL has resulted in over 300 organizations signing on to an open letter saying the ADL is not an ally. Those organizers were being contacted by educators asking for more education-specific materials, talking points, strategies, etc., and so they reached out to several of us who’d also been asking, saying, “Yeah, why don’t you pull some materials together and we’ll throw them up on our site?” But when this group of educators across the country began to meet around a year ago, they didn’t just want materials that focused on schools. They wanted a proper campaign. They wanted the ADL out of schools. And the reasons are not exactly the same as the reasons that progressives would want the ADL out. And that’s important. For example, the Drop the ADL folks say the ADL works with police. And progressives go, “Oh, my God, that’s horrible.” But schools don’t. They go, “Yeah, we work with the police too. That’s one reason why we like the ADL.” So if you’re going to talk to schools, whether it’s educators, parents, students, principals, superintendents, [or] school boards, you have to have an argument that is not just about progressive values. You have to have a pedagogical and education-specific argument. And so we developed that argument, the messaging, advocacy materials, and our own open letter, which is an open letter to educators [saying] the ADL is not a social justice partner. That is the language that schools use: they frequently refer to the ADL as a social justice partner. And we’re saying, “No, they’re not.”

Alex Lantsberg, Der Spekter editor: Have you ever described the ADL as a supremacist organization?

Nora: No, though I do think of farther-right organizations, like CAMERA (The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis) and ICAN (Israeli American Civic Action Network) as supremacist organizations. There are some others, but I don’t quite put the ADL in that category, not because they’re not horrible, but because they’re maybe smarter. I always talk about an ecosystem of organizations, and the ADL is the famous one: the AIPAC of the educational ecosystem. The whole ecosystem is problematic, but it doesn’t mean that they’re all exactly the same. They play slightly different roles. One will step forward when others step back; another steps forward, and another steps back. So they’re all part of the same dance. 

I think they do actually end up supporting the same agenda, but there are important reasons why I would not put them in the same bucket. One is because CAMERA’s tactics are very predatory and aggressive. CAMERA will come up to you at a demonstration…and scream, “Rapist, rapist, rapist!” for 10 minutes. The ADL doesn’t do that. Why it’s important to distinguish is that it’s easy for people to either say, “Oh, the ADL are the good guys. So we don’t want CAMERA; we want the ADL because they’re the good guys,” or just to completely overlook [the ADL] and excuse them because they’re not the worst of the worst. So when we talk about it, we talk about the ecosystem. And I think labeling them a supremacist organization doesn’t add any value because it’s very easy for them to defend against it. 

Charles Jacobs, the founder of the Boston chapter of CAMERA, continuously yells “Rapist!” and other insults at a Newton library. Video courtesy of Nora Lester Murad.

As we were pulling all these materials together and the messaging and thinking it through — and it’s not a completely finished project; it’s like a strategy that’s emerging in response to information we get about what’s working and what’s not — the magazine Rethinking Schools heard about us and asked for an exposé of the ADL. Rethinking Schools is the preeminent social justice magazine for K-12 teachers, and it was a huge honor to be asked to do that work. They published it in their Fall issue, around October 1, 2024, and that was our launch. 

We launched the article, we launched our open letter, and now we’ve launched all of our advocacy materials. And we have over 90 organizational signatories and 500 or 1,000 individual signatories. We have a core group that’s kind of a leadership team. Most of the educators in that group cannot be publicly identified as working with us because they are working educators, and their jobs would be at risk, or because they’ve already been attacked by the ADL. And then we have an accountability group, which could be a bit more active, if you ask me. But there are about 20-25 people who were involved with the development of materials and are in an ongoing way informed about what we’re doing and asked to be critical and hold us accountable to our principles and to our mission. 

And then we have an educators’ chat for educators around the country who are working on these issues. There are some parents in that group who are also working on the ADL, and another piece I think that is important is that we’re really trying hard to get mainstream media coverage of not only the ADL but also the issues that concern us, like attacks and smears against teachers, lawfare, etc., [as well as] the conflation of support for Palestinians with antisemitism. When an activist goes to a principal and says, “We want to get rid of the ADL,” and the principal Googles it, they are going to get 50 pages of the ADL talking about themselves. But we also want there to be some critical materials in credible, reputable, mainstream places so that the principal feels [that] maybe there are some legitimate questions about the ADL.

Mark: What can you tell us about the people that are supporting this movement? For example, teachers, union members? Are there multiple chapters? Are there locals, or is it just a national thing?

Nora: It’s just a national thing, and it’s really an umbrella. We don’t instigate anything on the ground. The ADL turns up in different schools and different districts in really different ways, so each person who comes forward needs to figure out what the ADL is doing that concerns them and also what they can do about it given their own positionality. If they’re high school students, they have different constraints and different opportunities than if they are educators; parents also have different constraints and opportunities. So we’re interested in organizing all those groups. We don’t organize them, but they organize themselves and tend to reach out and connect with us, either for materials or advice or to tell us what they’re doing. And we have heard some great success stories just with people coming forward and saying, “Hey, we got the ADL out of our school.” And we’re like, “That’s amazing. How did you do that?”

[We work with] educators, parents, students, and then the last group are educators who are wearing their union hats. That’s important for three reasons. One is [that] attacks and smears on teachers can happen for their protest activities as individuals, and they need support from their unions. It can also happen for the protest activities of the unions themselves, and we’re finding that unions are getting attacked as unions. Particularly right now, [the] Massachusetts Teachers Association and United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) are targets of right-wing groups — both Zionist groups and union-bashing groups — whose messaging and efforts are converging in at least those two places and some others. And thirdly, and this is something I want to really emphasize: teachers and educators are getting in trouble, not only for protesting the genocide. They’re getting in trouble for teaching [about the genocide], literally doing their job.

The convos jumbled in my heart and head

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There were too many feelings and ideas, too big to name or hold. They were jumbled in my heart and head and still are. I had to shake them off me, expel them, or at least release some of the pressure, so I could reclaim my body. I needed to look at my guilt, despair and fury outside my body, so I could understand how they collide inside me as I witness the slaughter of Palestinians. Month after month, ten feelings pop up in a conversation, and before I process or respond, ten different feelings take over preventing all connection. I can’t catch up with myself. Or breathe.

Watching a genocide in real time through WhatsApp messages from friends is heavy and isolating. I feel crazy most of the time. Am experiencing generational Holocaust trauma for real now, understanding how so many people let it happen to us, to others, because I see so many people let it happen again. I confessed my anxiety to a friend in exercise class and she said, “You can only do what you can do.” She let herself off the hook for doing more before she had done anything. Nobody gets it. I moved away.

So, to be able to climb out of my overwhelm and refocus on the political challenge, I sat down to write. I wrote a letter to a girl in Gaza, the daughter of a friend. I wrote a letter to a Jewish influencer I know who 18-months in still posts photos enjoying meals at cafes with smiling friends. And I wrote a letter to Anne Frank who, unlike me, had the maturity and wisdom to see the beauty amidst the ugly.

I printed each letter out on different colored paper and cut each letter into bites. I interspersed them on my dining table, letting them crash and converge, and while the whole thing makes no sense–not the conversations nor the genocide–I feel calmer having expelled these toxins from my body, slightly stronger to face more. There is so much more to face.

ADL’s Stats Twist Israel’s Critics Into Antisemites

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This article was originally published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Media outlets continue to print headlines about antisemitism based on Anti-Defamation League statistics known to be faulty and politicized. In doing so, they grant undeserved credibility to the ADL as a source.

Producing statistics helps the ADL to claim objectivity when they assert that antisemitism is increasing dramatically, prevalent in all fields of society, and emanating from the left as well as the right. Those “facts” are then used to justify policy recommendations that fail to respond to actual antisemitism, but succeed in undermining the free speech rights of Palestinians and their supporters, including those of us who are Jews.

Smearing Israel critics as antisemites

Nation: The Anti-Defamation League: Israel’s Attack Dog in the US

James Bamford (The Nation, 1/31/24) : “The New York Times, PBS and other mainstream outlets that reach millions are constantly and uncritically promoting the ADL and amplifying the group’s questionable charges.”

While it frames itself as a civil rights organization, the ADL has a long history of actively spying on critics of Israel and collaborating with the Israeli government (Nation, 1/31/24). (FAIR itself was targeted as a “Pinko” group in ADL’s sprawling spying operation in the ’90s.)

Though it professes to document and challenge antisemitism, it openly admits to counting pro-Palestinian activism as antisemitic: In 2023, the ADL changed its methodology for reporting antisemitic incidents to include rallies that feature “anti-Zionist chants and slogans,” even counting anti-war protests led by Jews—including Jewish organizations the ADL designated as “hate groups.”

The ADL’s political motivations are clear in its advocacy for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which alleges that criticizing Israel based on its policies (e.g., “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” or “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis“) is antisemitic. The ADL and their allies also deem speech supporting Palestinian human rights to be coded antisemitism.

Criticism of the ADL is increasing. In 2020, activists launched #DropTheADL to raise awareness among progressives that the ADL is not a civil rights or anti-bias group, but rather an Israel advocacy organization that attacks Palestinians and supporters of Palestinian rights in order to protect Israel from criticism. Last year, a campaign to Drop the ADL From Schools launched with an exposé in Rethinking Schools magazine, and an open letter to educators, titled “Educators Beware: The Anti-Defamation League Is Not the Social Justice Partner It Claims to Be,” that garnered more than 90 organizational signatories. These efforts build off research that exposes the ADL’s work to normalize Zionism and censor inclusion of Palestinian topics in the media, policy circles, schools and in society at large.

In 2023, some of its own high-profile staff resigned, citing the group’s “dishonest” campaign against Israel’s critics. In June 2024, Wikipedia editors found the ADL regularly labels legitimate political criticism of Israel as antisemitic, leading the popular online encyclopedia to designate the group an unreliable source on Israel/Palestine.

Critiquing the ADL’s statistics does not serve to argue that antisemitism is acceptable or less deserving of attention than other forms of discrimination. Rather, it demonstrates that we can’t rely on the ADL for information about the extent or nature of antisemitism—and neither should media.

A dubious source

NYT: Antisemitic Incidents Reach New High in the U.S., Report Finds

This New York Times report (10/6/24) obscured the fact that many of the “antisemitic incidents” counted by the ADL were chants critical of Israel.

And yet corporate media use the ADL uncritically as a source for reports on antisemitism. For instance, the New York Times (10/6/24) not only headlined the ADL’s assertion that “Antisemitic Incidents Reach New High in the US,” it chose to contextualize the ADL’s findings “in the wake of the Hamas attack,” and called the ADL a “civil rights organization.”

Important media outlets like The Hill (4/16/24), with outsized influence on national policy discussions, ran similar headlines, failing to note the ADL’s highly controversial methodology.

At least the Wall Street Journal (1/14/25) acknowledged that the ADL has been challenged for counting criticism of Israel as antisemitism. But it immediately dismissed the applicability of those challenges to the ADL’s Global 100 survey, which found that 46% of adults worldwide hold antisemitic views. (The ADL’s Global 100 survey was criticized for its flawed methodology as far back as 2014, when researchers found it “odd and potentially misleading.”)

The media’s willingness to accept ADL claims without scrutiny is evident in CNN’s choice (12/16/24) not to investigate the ADL’s accusations of antisemitism against speakers at a recent conference of the National Association of Independent Schools, but rather to simply repeat and amplify the ADL’s dishonest and slanderous narrative.

Methodological faults

Jewish Currents: Examining the ADL’s Antisemitism Audit

A Jewish Currents report (6/17/24) concluded that “the ADL’s data is much more poised to capture random swastika graffiti and stray anti-Zionist comments than dangerous Christian nationalist movements.”

Even setting aside the ADL’s prioritization of Israel’s interests over Jewish well-being, the ADL’s statistics should be thrown out due to methodological faults and lack of transparency.

Even FBI statistics, frequently cited by the ADL, don’t tell a clear story. Their claim that 60% of religious hate crimes (not mere bias incidents) target Jews is misleading, given the systemic undercounting of bias against other religious groups. Because of the history of anti-Muslim policing, Muslims are less likely to report than people of other religions.

In fact, a national survey of Muslims found that over two-thirds of respondents had personally encountered Islamophobia, while only 12.5% had reported an incident. Almost two-thirds of respondents who encountered an Islamophobic incident did not know where or how to report it. When Muslims experience hate, it is less likely to be pursued as a hate crime.

On the other hand, the ADL has an unparalleled infrastructure for collecting incident reports. It actively solicits these reports from its own network, and through close relations with police and a growing network of partners like Hillel International and Jewish Federations.

Perpetrators’ motivations are also relevant and should not be inferred. In 2017, Jews were frightened by over 2,000 threats aimed at Jewish institutions in the United States. It turned out that nearly all came from one Jewish Israeli with mental health problems. Without this level of investigation, policymakers could enact misguided policy based on the ADL’s sensationalism, like CEO Jonathan Greenblatt’s claim that “antisemitism is nothing short of a national emergency, a five-alarm fire that is still raging across the country and in our local communities and campuses.”

Bad-faith accusations

Zeteo: What Antisemitism? The ADL Prostrated to Musk and Trump

David Klion (Zeteo, 2/4/25): “How did the ADL, which for generations has presented itself as America’s leading antisemitism watchdog, find itself prostrated before the most powerful enabler of white supremacy in recent American history?”

Although critics have long argued that the ADL’s politicized definition of antisemitism and flawed statistics cannot be the basis of effective policy, policymakers continue to rely on media’s deceptive journalism.

Massachusetts State Sen. John Velis cited ADL statistics to claim the state has “earned the ignominious reputation as a hub of antisemitic activity,” and therefore needs a special antisemitism commission. In Michigan, ADL reports of escalating antisemitism led to a resolution that will affect policy in schools across the state. In Connecticut, the ADL referenced its statistics in a government announcement about changes to the state’s hate crimes laws. The ADL’s statistics undergirded the logic of President Joe Biden’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.

But how can politically distorted research be the foundation for effective policy?

Antisemitism is surely increasing. Hate crimes have increased in general—most targeting Black people—especially since the first Trump presidency, and hate incidents generally rise during violent outbreaks like the war on Gaza, and during election periods. But since most antisemitism originates in the white nationalist right wing, why focus primarily on people—including Jews—who are legitimately protesting their own government’s support for Israeli actions against Palestinians? Or on Palestinians themselves, who have every right to promote the humanity and rights of their people?

The ADL’s bad-faith accusations weaponize antisemitism to protect Israel at the expense of democratic and anti-racist principles. Anyone who doubted the ADL’s politics should be convinced by its abhorrent defense of Elon Musk’s Nazi salute (FAIR.org, 1/23/25) and its support for Donald Trump.

To pursue effective public policy, policymakers and the public should refuse to cite the ADL’s flawed statistics, and instead develop thoughtful and nuanced ways to understand and address antisemitism and other forms of bigotry and discrimination. Media can play a key role by exposing the politicization of antisemitism by the ADL, including its prioritization of protection for Israel from criticism over the free speech that is fundamental to democratic discourse.

Is Fire Enough to Get Americans to Empathize with Palestinians?

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I am heartbroken by the devastation from fires in Hollywood where I was born, Pasadena where I grew up, and Altadena where I attended high school. As I sit fearing the status of people I love, TV coverage gives me the emotional validation I seek. Newscasters seem to understand that a house is more than a structure. It is a home where people loved, cooked, grew, fought, studied, and sang in the shower. Some newscasters tear up as they scan the burning embers, perhaps imagining how they would feel if they fell victim to such a tragedy.

I have never heard that kind of empathy for my other loved ones, families who live in Gaza. Every day for over 15 months, and still, they live with the constant roar of drones and planes that can kill or maim without warning. Like the California fire victims, they will forever live with the sense of vulnerability that comes from learning that the world is not safe. Like the California fire victims, they will never be able to replace the family photos, legal papers, art, books, and valuables they worked for generations to accumulate. 

Still, the situations are different. 

My friends in Gaza can’t go find water, food, medical care or shelter with neighbors. They don’t have insurance policies or a government to provide help. They don’t even have their reality affirmed on mainstream TV because Israel has banned all foreign journalists and killed over 250. Only those Americans who intentionally look for the truth see the pictures: a father who frantically digs around a child’s finger sticking up from packed rubble after a bombing, little boys harvesting blades of grass so their families can eat, and the myriad of skin diseases that proliferate when people sleep on wet ground night after night, never getting dry or warm.

And the situation in Gaza is not a natural disaster but rather the result of an intentional policy by Israel to destroy Palestinian society using weapons paid for with over $20 billion in U.S. tax dollars since October 7, 2023 alone. I thought about this when an LA fire victim said on TV that  their street looked like it was hit by a bomb. Israel has dropped an estimated 85,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza, according to the United Nations.

People use words like “unfathomable” and “historic” to describe the scale of the destruction in Los Angeles County. With a population of 9.7 million residents, 12,000 unfortunate families have lost homes. But if the rate of loss was the same as in Gaza (1 housing unit lost per 15 residents according to the United Nations), Los Angeles County would have lost an unimaginable 640,000+ housing units .

This doesn’t even account for the 83,000 additional housing units in Gaza that are severely damaged but not totally destroyed. And it doesn’t account for damage to non-residential structures like hospitals, universities and  schools, and so much other destruction. Significantly,  150,000 people have been displaced in Los Angeles county. But if 90% of the population of LA County were displaced as they are in Gaza, that would affect a staggering 8,730,000 people. 

The shocking human suffering in both places where I have loved ones raises questions for me: might the compassion for suffering evoked by the LA fires somehow translate to compassion for Palestinians in Gaza? If so, might more Americans realize that while they can’t stop the fires in California, they actually can save lives in Gaza – by speaking out against U.S. military and diplomatic support for Israel’s slaughter? Or is the dehumanization of Palestinians so profound  that no loss of life, no destruction of property, and no amount of suffering can inspire more Americans to act?

CNN essentially publishes ADL PR, fails to investigate recent educational conference accusations

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CNN (December 16, 2024) chose not to investigate the ADL’s accusations of antisemitism against speakers at a recent conference of the National Association of Independent Schools, but rather to simply repeat and amplify the ADL’s dishonest and slanderous narrative.

Serving over 2,000 private schools in the United States and internationally, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) claims to help their members to 

deliver exceptional learning experiences through research and trend analysis, leadership and governance guidance, and professional development opportunities for school and board leaders. 

The People of Color Conference (PoCC), an annual event that has taken place for decades, is the flagship of NAIS’ “commitment to equity and justice in teaching, learning, and sustainability for independent schools.” According to their website, the theme of the 2024 conference was “a call to action for the unique time we’re experiencing.” 

The 2024 PoCC in Denver, attended by over 8000 educators and students, featured a talk by a physician, Dr. Suzanne Barakat. The former executive director of the Health and Human Rights Initiative at UC San Francisco, Barakat is renowned for her expertise in mental health of Arabic-speaking communities worldwide and as an advocate against Islamophobia, she recorded a TED talk after her brother Deah, his wife Yusor and her sister Razan were murdered in an anti-Muslim hate crime in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 2015.

CNN’s headline, “US Private Schools Group Apologizes After Criticism of Antisemitic Remarks During Conference,” makes the NAIS apology the story rather than the ADL’s false accusation of antisemitism against Barakat and Ruha Benjamin, a widely acclaimed professor of African-American history at Princeton University who also spoke at the NAIS event.

In its coverage, CNN reported the ADL’s claims that the remarks were antisemitic, even as the network noted that it had “not seen a transcript or recording of the remarks.” Genuine reporting on NAIS, the PoCC, and the ADL’s and other pro-Israel groups’ insistence on blasting any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, would have included — at a minimum — the content of the speakers’ remarks and reactions from conference attendees (including those for whom the mere acknowledgement of Palestinians’ existence marked a watershed compared to previous PoCCs). And more serious reporting would have noted the extent to which NAIS already promotes the work of the ADL and similar pro-Israel organizations, as well as taken note of the cases of teachers at NAIS member schools who have been fired or forced to resign because they spoke up for Palestinian rights. 

Instead, CNN failed to note the remarks about genocide and Israeli racism did not mention Jews at all, nor did they note that the remarks reflected well-researched conclusions of experts at the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’tselem and hundreds of legal and human rights experts across the world. 

Labeling criticism of Israel as antisemitic is a tactic of Zionist advocates to normalize Zionism, including in educational spaces, a practice that incorrectly claims this political criticism is in fact  religious hate speech. This distorted definition of antisemitism is being promoted in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, the codification of which is considered a “best practice” for K-12 education by the ADL and their allies.

CNN relied extensively on the complaint letter to NAIS sent by the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, Jewish Federations of North America and PRIZMAH: Center for Jewish Day Schools, without noting the political motivations of the accusers. It does not even appear that CNN verified the complaints of the Jewish students whose stories form the basis of the complaint.

CNN quotes the complaint saying that “Jewish students and faculty were forced to hear” their colleagues applauding what they characterized as antisemitic rhetoric, presenting audience support for the speakers as further proof of antisemitism rather than as broad commitment to truth, equity and justice that fully includes Palestinians.

Ruha Benjamin, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University and one of the speakers the ADL and their allies slandered as antisemitic, responded to NAIS’ capitulation. She pointed out  (New York Times, DATE):

The weaponization of the charge of antisemitism is a disservice to everyone. Such accusations are watering down its meaning and wielding it against anyone who dares name the reality that Palestinians are living.

Giving extensive space to allegations of harm to Jewish students, CNN reports on the apology by the National Association of Independent Schools, and doesn’t even consider the impact of NAIS’s apology on Palestinian students or on the speakers who were slandered. An action alert by Zinn Education Project aimed at NAIS notes that Dr. Barakat has received numerous death threats since NAIS issued its apology to the ADL et al.:


NAIS President Debra Wilson jeopardized the safety of the speakers and undermined the conference’s commitment to equity and justice by irresponsibly framing their remarks as “divisive” and mischaracterizing their credibly-cited critiques as antisemitic. These failures have emboldened those who weaponize intimidation and hate to silence differing views, and reduced the public reporting on the PoCC to a reflection of the very injustices it was created to confront.

The CNN article lists several other cases of accusations of antisemitism against educators – like the ADL, mixing what most would consider “real” antisemitism with weaponized false accusations). At no point does the article note that false accusations of antisemitism, whether through slander or lawfare, are a key tactic of the ADL and their allies, and these frequently target educators of color. 

CNN should have written a story about the ADL bullying NAIS, causing it to immediately (within two days) issue an apology, that not only validates the mischaracterization of the speakers’ remarks as antisemitic, but also promises to censor future speakers, a stunning confession from an educational organization. (The apology links to resources of the ADL and other complainants, further entrenching their influence on schools.)

Characteristically, the ADL found the apology lacking and sought to extract additional concessions from NAIS. They asked NAIS to become a spokesperson for the ADL’s politicized agenda, and, using a common right-wing tactic, the ADL is mobilizing tuition-paying private school parents to pressure the NAIS to concede.

Without this context, CNN’s “coverage” of the NAIS event can hardly be considered journalism. Instead it is an advertisement for the ADL that endorses  rather than challenges the conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism, a growing tendency that threatens the teaching, learning and critical thinking that are essential to democracy and one that perpetuates racism against Palestinians.

Educators Beware: The Anti-Defamation League Is Not the Social Justice Partner It Claims to Be

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By Nora Lester Murad; Illustrator: Maryam Aswad

This article was published in Rethinking Schools (September 27, 2024)

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) calls itself “the leading anti-hate organization in the world.” But it is not the social justice educational partner it claims to be. 

The ADL is a divisive political advocacy organization. It is a leader among Zionist organizations — like the Jewish Community Relations Council, the American Jewish Committee, the Institute for Curriculum Services, and the Jewish Federations of North America — that reinforce unconditional support for Israel and erasure of Palestinians in schools across the United States. The ADL harms everyone who opposes racism and supports equality — including Jews. 

The ADL’s programs are widespread in U.S. schools, with wholesome names like “No Place for Hate” and “A World of Difference.” According to their website, in 2023 alone they reached 7 million students and provided professional development to 24,000 educators. That’s partly because the ADL makes it so easy for districts and schools to partner with them: They provide free, ready-made materials, from lesson plans on antisemitism and the Holocaust, to professional development on anti-bias for educators, administrators, and even school police. For example, the ADL partners with Boston Public Schools as part of its anti-bias 24/7 Respect initiative, and the Boston Public Schools website prominently features the ADL. When the National Association for Independent Schools recently offered webinars on antisemitism and Islamophobia, they tapped the ADL to provide the antisemitism content. When school districts and educational organizations circulated recommended resources after Oct. 7, 2023, they frequently linked ADL materials — like in the often-shared “Resources for Educators, Families to Discuss the Events in Israel and Gaza with Students,” compiled by the San Diego County Office of Education. 

The ADL gives schools an easy route to show that they oppose antisemitism and bias. The ADL provides data, takes incident reports, gives input on educational policy, and offers “Jewish perspectives” without the need for schools to engage with the diverse perspectives of Jewish community members. 

But the ADL’s unfounded attacks on groups working for Palestinian rights and the ways it undermines BIPOC communities, have made it unwelcome among social justice groups. A diverse group of more than 300 organizations — from the Movement for Black Lives to the National Lawyers Guild to the Red Nation — have signed on to the #DropTheADL campaign, which reminds progressive organizations that “the ADL is not an ally.” Since #DropTheADL launched in 2020, there has been a plethora of deep analysis by Jewish and non-Jewish sources into the history of misrepresentation and harm caused by the ADL. This includes schools. 

Inciting Fear Based on Unreliable and Manipulated Data

From news outlets to school officials, many people rely on the ADL for information about antisemitism. For decades, the ADL’s statistics have been repeated by mainstream media without scrutiny. The ADL presents a terrifying picture of a crisis that escalates year over year. Speaking about the ADL’s 2023 audit of antisemitic incidents, its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, warned: “Antisemitism is nothing short of a national emergency, a five-alarm fire that is still raging across the country and in our local communities and campuses.” 

In the past few years, though, multiple analyses, often in Jewish news sources frustrated by the ADL’s sensationalizing claims, have pointed out the ADL’s reliance on vague reports, lack of verification, and the lumping together of weighty and trivial incidents. Jewish Currents points out this “makes it more difficult to measure antisemitism in American life.” The ADL also includes what they call “anti-Israel rallies” in their database of antisemitic incidents. In fact, the Jewish newspaper, The Forward, newspaper reported that of the 3,000 “antisemitic incidents” recorded by the ADL in the first three months after Oct. 7, 1,317 were rallies where activists expressed hostility toward Zionism, not Jews. These practices led to Wikipedia’s recent designation of the ADL as a generally unreliable source. Wikipedia editors took this stance, they wrote, “due to significant evidence that the ADL acts as a pro-Israeli advocacy group and has repeatedly published false and misleading statements as fact, unretracted, regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict. The general unreliability of the ADL extends to the intersection of the topics of antisemitism and the Israel/Palestine conflict.”

ADL statistics are based on conflating criticism of Israel or the political ideology of Zionism with hatred of Jews. One way that the ADL promotes this conflation is by advocating use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition has been critiqued by experts and advocates as circular, racist, and punitive toward critics of state violence. It includes 11 examples, seven of which shut down criticism of Israel and Zionism. One example says that it is antisemitic to: “[deny] the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” This enables the ADL to label as “antisemitic” any discussion of the more than 700,000 Palestinians expelled during Israel’s founding as well as discussion of findings by Israeli and international human rights organizations that Israel is an apartheid state. The IHRA definition is the basis for a spate of laws against the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement. These laws aim to control speech of public employees and contractors, including educators like Bahia Amawi, the Austin, Texas, public schools speech therapist who lost her job for refusing to sign an anti-boycott pledge and was featured in Just Vision’s award-winning documentary Boycott. It is also the basis of proposed bills that would deport immigrants without trial if arrested at Palestine-supporting events and strip funding from public schools if they fail to impose repressive measures on teachers or students who criticize Israel or uplift Palestinians.

The reality of antisemitism is more nuanced. On the one hand, antisemitism, along with other forms of racism, has clearly increased with the Trump-era emboldening of right-wing actors. Antisemitism in the United States has gained new visibility in chilling scenes like the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh that killed 11 people and wounded six, and the 2017 Charlottesville rally of white men marching through the streets chanting “Jews will not replace us!” Yet U.S. Jews no longer experience the material discrimination (in housing, jobs, etc.) they did in previous historical periods, and they enjoy a relatively high standard of living on average, having become integrated into economic and political structures. 

The conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism is racist because it implicates Palestinians as hateful for talking about their own life experiences.

Israel’s claims to act on behalf of world Jewry, even as it slaughters Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, complicate matters. Peter Beinart, a prominent commentator on Jewish politics, notes that “three academic studies — one in the U.S., one in Belgium, one in Australia — over the last 20 years all show a strong correlation between substantial Israeli military operations that kill a lot of Palestinians and a rise in reported antisemitic incidents.” So, there may be a connection between the genocide in Gaza and anger toward Jews. But how do we parse out what is and isn’t actual antisemitism when both the Israeli government and the IHRA definition consider it hateful to protest human rights violations against Palestinians?

The ADL’s framing makes it difficult to see the role antisemitism and its weaponization play in upholding white supremacy. Instead, they falsely smear social justice movements, including those standing up against genocide, Islamophobia, and police violence — and they erase the Jewish communities who support and participate in those social justice movements. And when the ADL misreports acts against Zionism as discrimination against Jews, it blurs the distinction between political disagreement and hatred against a group.

Furthermore, the ADL’s conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism is racist because it implicates Palestinians, and supporters of Palestinian human rights, as antisemites who commit “hate acts” merely for talking about their own life experiences as refugees, living under Israeli occupation, or fighting colonialism. 

Unfortunately, despite the occasional exposé of the ADL’s distorted statistics, no organization provides alternative data — partly because measuring antisemitism, like measuring racism, is a more complex project than lists of “incidents” can reflect and partly because groups concerned with racism often don’t address antisemitism separately from other forms of discrimination.

Claiming to Support Students and Educators but Actually Bullying Them 

The ADL leverages its reputation and relationships with policymakers and funders to rail against groups with whom it disagrees politically. Greenblatt characterized Black Lives Matter as “wrong on the facts and offensive in tone” when the Movement for Black Lives 2016 policy platform recognized links between U.S. policing and Israeli militarism. In 2022, the ADL declared Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations to be antisemitic. In November 2023, the Intercept reported that the ADL labeled Jewish organizations calling for a ceasefire “hate groups,” later reporting that the ADL urged schools to investigate students based on the “unsubstantiated accusation that Students for Justice in Palestine had sent money to Hamas, urging schools to investigate students without providing evidence.”

In schools, the ADL works with partners to bully educators and students directly by disparaging their reputations, calling for disciplinary action against them, and submitting formal complaints that subject schools, educators, and students to invasive and exhausting investigations. To protect Israel, the ADL deceptively mixes legitimate calls against antisemitism with politicized calls to censor Palestinians and their supporters.

For example, for years the ADL has played a leadership role in the right-wing opposition to liberated ethnic studies. In February 2024, in cooperation with the Louis D. Brandeis Center, the ADL filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against the Berkeley Unified School District alleging that administrators failed to take action to stop the “nonstop bullying and harassment of Jewish students by peers and teachers.” Civil rights organizations like Palestine Legal say the ADL and its partners are increasingly weaponizing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on race, national origin, and shared ancestry. By claiming that schools that allow criticism of Israel create a “hostile environment,” they essentially argue that students who support Zionism — a political ideology — are a protected class under the law. 

The ADL’s punitive response to what they deem as antisemitic interferes with efforts to implement restorative justice.

In response to this pressure, some school districts are clamping down on educators’ freedom to teach and students’ right to learn. After two high school students in Philadelphia made a podcast comparing the art of Palestinians with the art of enslaved people, it was selected by their teacher and vetted by their principal to be played at the school’s week of Black History Month assemblies. But another teacher at the first assembly claimed the podcast was antisemitic and forwarded it to a local Zionist organization. The organization led a campaign that successfully pressured the school district to remove the podcast from the remaining assemblies. Although the podcast did not mention Jews or Zionism, the ADL nonetheless joined a call to pressure the school district to investigate the students’ teacher, Keziah Ridgeway, an award-winning anti-racist educator.

The ADL’s punitive response to what they deem as antisemitic interferes with efforts to implement restorative justice in schools. Months after joining the call to fire Ridgeway, the ADL brought a Title VI complaint against the School District of Philadelphia. In the complaint, the ADL advocates for the “suspension and expulsion” of students and the “suspension and termination” of teachers, who under the IHRA definition — which the ADL encourages the district to adopt — have engaged in “discriminatory conduct” for being publicly critical of Zionism. With this approach, schools cannot cultivate space to untangle antisemitism from anti-Zionism and grapple with real antisemitic (and other racist) incidents in meaningful, restorative ways. 

The ADL uses right-wing tactics in its policy advocacy at the local, district, and state levels and in attacks on public schools. It uses anti-critical race theory rhetoric to derail antiracist curriculum, promoting a watered-down anti-bias pedagogy that hides rather than explores power, systemic analysis, and historic context. It denounces DEI programs in education and the private sector, including in a February 2024 appearance by Greenblatt on CNBC’s Squawk Box, where he asserted the need to “overhaul DEI,” because these programs, according to Greenblatt, “perpetuate the exclusion of Jews.” Meanwhile, anti-racist educators argue that while all forms of bigotry and discrimination have their own histories and manifestations, they must all be understood in the context of white supremacy and fought together in a framework of collective liberation. The ADL’s cynical efforts to privilege the comfort of some Jews over the human rights of Palestinians, and above the right of all students to learn in a safe and uncensored environment, should disqualify them from participating in any aspect of U.S. education.

I wrote three OpEds for The Forward. They published zero.

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On May 30, 2024, The Forward contacted me in response to a tweet of mine criticizing an article they published. They asked me to write an OpEd, and after checking with some friends in the Palestinian solidarity movement, I decided to accept the offer as long as they didn’t censor my ideas. Over the next several months, I wrote three OpEds, none of which were published. The first got stale when The Forward didn’t respond in a timely way. The second was completely rewritten and my politics misrepresented, so I refused to agree to their edits. I sent a third one with a new hook, but after agreeing to publish (and pay for it), The Forward stopped replying to my emails. They also didn’t respond to my invoice for payment. For what its worth, I’m sharing one of the OpEds here.

What are we keeping Jewish students safe from?

As the new school year approaches, I am being bombarded with emails and texts about the imperative to keep Jewish students safe in the new politicized atmosphere. But safe from what? One text message noted that the BDS movement has been training campus activists and that anti-genocide encampments will be back.

There are actual right-wing racists, including white supremacists and Christian nationalists, who are being emboldened by MAGA rhetoric, but the self-appointed antisemitism watchdogs don’t mention those real threats at all. They focus on students who believe in the humanity of Palestinans and support their right to be equal and free. 

I wonder how Jewish outlooks might change if they understood their fate not as aligned only with one another against the world, but as inextricably linked with the people of color, including Palestinians, who constitute the global majority. What if Jews believed that that Jewish wellbeing depended on Palestinians also being safe?

I sought insight from one of my cousins, a liberal Zionist with whom I’ve had many respectful exchanges: “Why can’t everyone in Israel live together in equality? Isn’t that what we strive for here in the United States?” 

When I pose this question to most liberal Zionists, I hear some version of “We would love to, if only they didn’t hate us.” I tell them how my own, albeit unusual, lived experience proves that Palestinians don’t hate Jews – they only hate being oppressed. But most liberal Zionists simply don’t believe me. 

A Jew who married into a Palestinian Muslim family, who is loved as a daughter- and sister-in law, who is accepted as a neighbor and friend, and has had significant roles in Palestinian civil society does not fit into the story of Palestinian antisemitism and Jewish vulnerability they tell themselves. In fact, when Palestinians learn that I’m Jewish, they frequently recall stories from their elders about the good ole days when Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Palestinians lived peacefully as members of one united community, and they long for a country where once again everyone can live together in peace.

I learned these important truths serendipitously. When I was a 19-year-old college sophomore still lacking a plan for my life, the Sabra and Shatilla massacres shocked me into understanding that as a Jew I was implicated in a conflict “over there.” I assumed that understanding Palestinians would be difficult, so I sought them out with a genuine curiosity and concern I inherited from my Jewish ancestors. I studied in Cairo, then in Jerusalem. Taxi drivers taught me Arabic, and women I met in vegetable markets taught me to cook. I made friends on travels in Sudan, Jordan, and Syria.

Unexpectedly, I fell in love, got married, and after years in the U.S., we moved to the West Bank to raise three daughters under Israeli military occupation. 

It hasn’t always been easy being part of the Palestinian community. It hurts to see how statelessness disperses families around the world. It hurts to break bread with families who live under constant threat of home demolition. It hurts to hear friends recount settler attacks on their children and not know how to help.

But being part of the Palestinian community has also been uplifting and fulfilling in countless ways. Palestinians have shown me how the world appears different depending on your relationship to power. They have inspired me to pay attention to life’s smallest gifts. They taught me that safety is found not individually, but within the collective.

Now, 11 months  into a historically brutal slaughter in Gaza by Israel, I am struck by how divergent my perspective of the power to be found in connecting with Palestinians is from the deeply held beliefs of many Jews around me, including those who self-identify as liberal.

Lawn signs reading “I Stand with Israel” confound my Jewish and humanistic sensitibilites. Do we stand with Jews even when they are wrong? Labeling ceasefire demands as antisemitic infuriates me. If it is wrong to be killed, isn’t it also wrong to kill others?

At least right-wing Jewish Zionists are consistent. They weaponize antisemitism against everyone whose politics they don’t like, shamelessly using their Jewish identity as a shield against criticism of their unadulterated violent politics. These are the same people who oppose affirmative action, blame crime on immigrants, and deny health care to trans people. Like their white Christian nationalist pro-Israel political allies, they have no incentive to change the system to include others when the current system is working for them.

I called my cousin to say that I don’t understand why liberal Zionists think they are better than right-wing Zionists. I see liberals fighting passionately against discrimination in the United States, but when it comes to Israel, they uphold a political ideology that values Jews over non-Jews. He didn’t respond with some implicitly racist message that Jews can never be safe without being dominant. 

He surprised me by saying, “Of course, every person and group should enjoy the same rights to land, safety, and dignity.”

“Then you’re like me!” I said, with great relief. “You’re not a Zionist!” 

“Yes I am a Zionist. I care about Jews and want Jews to thrive.”

“I care about Jews and want Jews to thrive, too!” I countered. “But that’s not what Zionism is.”

People like to say that Zionism can mean different things to different people, but the Zionism explicitly espoused by many of Israel’s founders, and the Zionism that Palestinians experience in their everyday lives, is an ideology and practice of Israel as a nation-state for the benefit of Jews and only Jews. Under that ideology, non-Jews will always have an inferior status, because they do not share the right to collective self-determination It is the imperative to keep Jews dominant that drives Israel’s rejection of refugees’ legally-enshrined right to return, the military occupation of over 5 million Palestinians in a brutally repressive regime that controls all aspects of life, and also the reality that 20% of Israel’s population, the indigenous Palestinians who are legally citizens of Israel, are deemed by law to have lesser rights–not only than their fellow Jewish citizens, but also fewer rights than non-citizens anywhere in the world who are Jewish.

My cousin said I gave him a lot to think about.

I keep thinking, too. What if Jews did not work only to protect Jewish students, but instead dedicated themselves to protecting all students, including those who are Palestinian? What if Jews saw their prospects for thriving as tied to a world where bombs and starvation and dehydration and disease were not tolerated – no matter who the victim is, and regardless of the identity of the perpetrator? 

I believe with all my heart that a just peace with Palestinians could not only save tens of thousands of Palestinian lives, but it would also save Jewish lives, and could spare Jews from the anxiety of living with a perpetual sense of existential threat. It could save Jews by re-focusing us on the ways that antisemitism works in concert with anti-Blackness, patriarchy, militarism, and other forms of bigotry, to uphold white supremacy. It would save Jews by reminding us that Palestinians are human beings.

But to achieve a just peace with Palestinians, it is not enough to trust in their humanity. We also need to do the sometimes painful work of living up to our own. 

How to justify the genocide of Palestinians in 14 easy steps: A graphical guide

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This comics-based opinion was co-authored with artist Maryam Aswad and published by The New Arab.

Step 1: Erase history. Bury any fair and accurate analysis of how today’s violence came to be.

Step 2: Remove all context. Always depict Palestinians as the aggressors. Blame Palestinians for their own oppression.

Step 3: Monopolise the media. Discredit Palestinians and normalise their exclusion – including by threatening, firing, or even killing them.

Step 4: Dehumanise Palestinians. Use words that play into pre-existing anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim stereotypes.

Step 5: Misinform the public with boldface lies.

Step 6: Weaponise antisemitism. Accuse any Palestinian who tries to tell their story of hating Jews.

Step 7: Co-opt liberal and antiracist language so you appear to be the good guys.

Step 8: Criminalise liberation activities. Punish all Palestinian efforts to claim their rights, including by non-violent means.

Step 9: Repeat sensational Israeli claims without investigating in order to elevate emotion over rationality.

Step 10: Market trauma. Remind Jews of horrible things that have happened in the past so they’ll be scared of peace with Palestinians.

Step 11: Make token gestures to trick people into thinking there is progress towards respect and equality while you protect the status quo.

Step 12: Throughout it all, pretend you are being balanced and fair.

Step 13: Manipulate people into choosing sides as if well-being is mutually exclusive. Hide the fact that a just, political solution will uplift everyone’s rights, security, and dignity, and it offers the only sustainable future.

Step Fourteen: Rinse and repeat

Nora Lester Murad is a writer, educator, and activist. Her young adult novel, Ida in the Middle, won the 2023 Arab American Book Award, the 2024 Middle East Book Award, a Skipping Stones Honor Award, and was a finalist for the 2024 Jane Addams Peace Association Children’s Book Award. She is a Policy Member of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network and supports many social justice issues. From a Jewish family, Nora raised three daughters in the West Bank with her Palestinian husband. She now lives in Massachusetts and can be reached through her blog at www.NoraLesterMurad.com

Follow Nora on X: @NoraInPalestine and Instagram: @nora_lester_murad

Maryam Aswad is an Iraqi-Canadian student, teacher, artist, and mathematician at the University of New Hampshire. She grew up first in a war-torn Iraq, then as part of a diverse refugee community in the UAE, and finally immigrated to Canada in high school. Maryam hopes to use her journeyed perspective to view and illustrate the world with both logic and compassion.

Follow Maryam on Instagram: @meryemaswad

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