The ADL Is Defaming Palestinian Scholars as Terrorist Supporters

If there were any doubt that the vicious, censorious politics of the September 11 era have returned in force after Hamas’s October 7 massacre and Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza, the recent actions of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) have removed it. 

An “urgent” open letter issued last Thursday by the ADL—which, lest we forget, promotes itself as one of America’s leading defenders of civil rights—and the Louis Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law urged college and university administrators to “immediately investigate” their campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for “potential violations of the prohibition against materially supporting a foreign terrorist organization.” They claim to have sent the letter to nearly 200 schools.

The ADL provided not a shred of evidence for that incendiary, potentially life-ruining accusation. It instead cited overheated rhetoric at pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations post–October 7, including from some who defended Hamas. It interpreted references to “resistance” to the siege, bombardment, and invasion of Gaza exclusively as support for terrorism—not, say, as a rejection of the Israeli stranglehold around a densely packed area of 2.3 million people.

Even if you accepted the ADL’s interpretations of those comments, it would still not amount to evidence that anyone targeted by the group had gone beyond rhetorical support of Hamas—something that, no matter your opinion of the comments themselves, is protected speech under the First Amendment, at least as of this writing. It is with such frivolousness that the ADL made allegations that can land people in prison for up to 20 years.

When I asked the ADL about the basis for its charges, a spokesperson e-mailed SJP comments praising October 7, some from students’ Instagram stories. After I pointed out that none were examples of material support, the spokesperson, who did not provide their name, replied, “Our letter speaks for itself.”

It’s not every day that ostensible civil rights organizations call for the mass violation of Palestinian students’ civil rights. But, says Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab-American Institute, “the bottom line has been that the ADL has decided to prioritize its pro-Israel work at the expense of any contribution it’s made in the civil rights space for some time now. From redefining antisemitism as anti-Zionism in May 2022 to weaponizing the charge of material support now and the policies of the ‘War on Terror’ against students they disagree with, it’s an extraordinary leap, and one that’s harmed my community for decades, before 9/11 and after.”

As Berry suggests, the letter provides the latest example of how the September 11 era, which conflates dissent with sympathy for terrorism, is not finished with Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims in America. Since October 7, people inside and even outside those communities who have stood with the Palestinians have lost jobs, had job offers revoked, been threatened by former-and-possibly-future president Donald Trump with deportation, and been the subject of Senate condemnation. Florida Governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, suddenly fond of cancel culture, banned SJP from the state’s public university system. On Monday, the Biden administration announced a move that pushes law enforcement including the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, deeper onto college campuses in the name of combating antisemitism—a move with the potential to implement the ADL’s initiative.

And in a sickeningly extreme case, a man in Illinois murdered a 6-year-old boy and critically injured his mother for being Muslim.

Now, an institution that bills itself as the guardian of Jewish civil rights in America is reaching for a signature tool of the War on Terror—one made infamous by the 2001 Patriot Act—to suppress speech it finds objectionable. (This is not the only way the ADL is choosing to stoke division instead of acting as a voice of reason. Its national director, Jonathan Greenblatt, has outrageously compared anti-Zionists, including anti-Zionist Jews like myself, to white supremacists in the last few weeks.)

The consequences of a material-support investigation can extend far beyond the loss of job opportunities. Allegations of “standing with quote-unquote terrorist groups can cause people significant criminal repercussions and put them and their families at risk,” said Malak Afaneh, a law student at the University of California–Berkeley and a member of the local SJP chapter, known as Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine. “What we’re seeing are McCarthyesque tactics, like those used post-9/11.”