Multiculturalism
ADL's Abraham Foxman
Saturday, February 23, 2002 (SF Chronicle) Jewish defense group settles S.F. spying suit
Abe Foxman: Disgrace to my Religion
The ADL Pushes "Tolerance"? Why I'm Leaving after 25 Years By Carl Pearlston
Rabbi calls ADL leader Foxman the Jews' 'worst enemy'
The Anti-Defamation League: Censors of the Universe
"WHEN ISRAEL'S MOSSAD SET OUT TO BREAK ME, IT FOUND ITS HELPERS HERE AT HOME," by Victor Ostrovsky
JEWISH GROUP TOOK RICH'S 100G BEFORE PUSHING PARDON
Jewish Group Wants Files Withheld
A quotation that defines the "Anti-Defamation League"
From the Irv Rubin Bust to the Stern Gang: The Rich History of Jewish Terrorism
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/02/23/MN169812.DTL
Saturday, February 23, 2002 (SF Chronicle)
Jewish defense group settles S.F. spying suit
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco -- A lawsuit accusing the Anti-Defamation League of spying on local activists -- the last court action stemming from San Francisco police raids on the Jewish organization's office 10 years ago -- has been settled for $178,000, lawyers said yesterday.
The money will be divided among the remaining three plaintiffs in a suit that was filed in 1993 by 19 people, all involved in pro-Palestinian or anti-apartheid activity. At the time, Israel was an ally of South Africa's white- supremacist government, and the ADL's chief intelligence-gatherer in the Bay Area, Roy Bullock, later admitted he was also being paid by South Africa.
The suit claimed the ADL, founded almost 90 years ago to combat anti-Semitism, was working to suppress domestic criticism of Israel by compiling dossiers that it shared with police, the Israeli government and its own supporters. The ADL denied providing information to Israel and said it was legally monitoring hate groups and political extremists.
After Bullock and a San Francisco police inspector were seen talking to South African agents in 1992, police seized more than 10,000 files from the two men and ADL offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The files contained information on organizations and individuals at both ends of the political spectrum.
The inspector, Tom Gerard, later pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of illegally accessing government information that he allegedly supplied to Bullock.
The ADL settled a suit by the city of San Francisco and another filed by political activists in Los Angeles, but the suit by Bay Area activists -- Arab Americans, Jewish dissidents and anti-apartheid organizers -- was delayed by years of wrangling over access to ADL files, which had been quickly sealed.
Along the way, a state appellate court endorsed the organization's argument that, as the publisher of reports on extremist groups, it acts as a journalist, with the right to protect its sources. But the court kept the case alive by saying activists had the right to learn the sources of government documents that may have been used illegally.
"The league feels vindicated in the positions it took," said David Goldstein, a lawyer for the ADL.
Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle http://www.sfgate.com
Abe Foxman: Disgrace to my Religion
By Monty Warner <montywarner@yahoo.com> August 21, 2001
AS AN EARLY TEEN, I was playing in a YMCA basketball league in Sumter, South Carolina, a leafy, sleepy southern town of about 35,000 where I was born and raised. Being of Jewish descent, I had to play for a Methodist team because the Jewish population in the county - indeed, in the state, at that time - was limited enough to preclude its own league. The YMCA was agreeable to this, and a few other Jewish kids from surrounding areas played as well.
After one of the games, I remember standing by the scoreboard. Ahead of me was one of the Jewish parents, shouting at one of the coaches. The woman wasn't demanding more playing time for her son, nor was she a diehard seeking an explanation for why we were so bad that year. The woman, in full view of and to the distraction and discomfort of many, was demanding an apology from the coach for hurting her son's feelings. The coach's sin? Taking her boy out of the game for poor play and making him cry. I thought the whole episode somewhat amusing until two well-respected men in the community passed by, and I overheard one of them say to the other: "That is exactly why our kind has trouble with their kind." Upon hearing this, I didn't find myself offended; at thirteen years old, I found myself agreeing with them.
Today we have our very own national Jewish basketball mom. Just as shrill, just as petulant, just as obnoxious, and useless to boot. Our advocate, armed with a $50 million annual budget to ensure the meanies never get us, is Abraham Foxman. Foxman heads the Anti-Defamation Leage (ADL), a once proud, worthy and worthwhile protector of Jews and their faith. Under Foxman's brand of leadership, the ADL has devolved into an opportunistic, intolerant, grief-grubbing stench - a "rights" group for any and all who wish to feel offended - one which, in bottomless efforts to remain PC-safe, unconditionally aligns itself with groups like the Black Caucus and NAACP, both of which strongly support the pending anti-Semitic U.N. Conference on Racism. Think about that. You hate me, so by all means I support you. Why? Because I'm pathetic. Anti-Defamation League
This past June, Carl Pearlston, a Board Member of the ADL and longtime loyalist to its early causes, resigned from the organization after 25 years of service. Pearlston began to receive increasingly hostile responses from other Board Members for his more conservative views, and was informed by Foxman that "he would have to realize that over 95% of those involved in the ADL were liberal and would be unsympathetic to his views." Notwithstanding the adage that for every five Jews in the room there are 10 opinions on everything, the notion that 95 percent (or even 55 percent) of all Jews support bilingual education, gun control, feminism, affirmative action, abortion and the homosexual agenda across the board is not only unfathomable, but further evidence that Foxman has absolutely no legitimate claim to representing the interests of the Jewish masses.
For years now, despite numerous unflattering (and under-the-radar) news stories about his complicity in various scandals too numerous and squalid to confine to this space, Abraham Foxman has held himself and been held forth by others as one of the chief national political voices of Jewish people. His misuse of and/or recklessness with ADL funds (see Henry Lyons), his whorish behavior in the Marc Rich pardon, and his general odor in defending such cosmopolitan thuggery; to say nothing of self-righteous condemnations of what he arbitrarily decides to be someone else's "intolerance," is brought to the public's attention almost weekly. Last year, during the presidential election, Foxman, using extreme examples, pulled incendiary comments off the Web to imply that anyone that didn't want Joe Lieberman on the national ticket was probably anti-Semitic. Well, in some cases that's entirely possible. It's also possible that they simply thought Joe Lieberman was a putz. Or more significantly, they just might not have agreed with him on the issues. But the substance of disagreement is not important to Mr. Foxman. Regrettably, whatever legitimacy may have accompanied such charges has been diluted by the frequency with which Foxman lodges them, largely in an effort to secure more media attention to raise more money to continue the never-ending battle to tell everyone else how not to offend Abraham Foxman. To his credit, it's a pretty good gig.
In April, Foxman was quoted in the New York Times assaulting David Horowitz's campus ad campaign as "just another means of fomenting racism and hate." The quip was so lacking in resonance it was almost as if he was walking out to lunch and asked what to do about the Horowitz situation, and in reply he said "put something together, use some of the old text, and throw in uh....racism and hate." Instead of joining Horowitz in showing the guts to condemn the racist, anti-American black Left, Foxman threw his own to the wolves for a short-term political pop. Foxman: the man, the myth - the self-loathing maggot.
And so it is that, as an observer of all these "anti-hate, don't hurt my feelings" campaigns, a logical, rational Jew can't help but logically ask himself: "Exactly what is it that this man has ever actually accomplished?" Surely he can take credit for the fact that there might be one less KKK group in the world (which would bring the grand total to four), or the fact that more Jews are now allowed in certain country clubs (lawsuits have a way of greasing such processes)... but concretely, what is it that Abraham Foxman has done besides bend the ADL over for the Leftist agenda of the Democratic Party, and give much of America an image of most Jews as whiny, petulant, hate-thought shylocks? Sure, he sticks his nose in just about everything that gets him headlines (i.e. the future and futile U.N. Conference on Racism), but the real answer is pretty simple: not much.
To be sure, I am very proud of my heritage. I believe Jewish people are some of the most brilliant and determined people on the planet. From Walter Annenberg to Max Fisher to much of the work of Steven Spielberg, Jews have consistently risen from humble, even punishing beginnings to not only enjoy great power and success, but pave the way for others of all stripes to enjoy the same. And yet somewhere along the way - in oft-embarrassing displays of uninformed hyperemotion a la Foxman - many children and grandchildren of those who suffered so horribly in the Holocaust have awarded themselves the right to gripe about this country as if it were not the one that gave their ancestors their liberty. As if they themselves were in the Holocaust. As if we are all just one conservative Attorney General or High Court appointment away from being stripped of our "rights," which have basically expanded to include what any sniveling Manhattan/LA liberal feels like doing at any given moment. The ignorance of how embarrassing, foolish and distasteful this is to the rest of the country is glaringly front and center, and a textbook example of how some Jews contribute heartily to their own alienation. This in turn allows hucksters such as Abraham Foxman to emerge - the kid nobody liked but who is determined to make others like you - and raise millions to salve the wounds of the very people he helps afflict with a crippling sense of victimhood.
Self-aggrandizing hustles such as this have in recent years become an indisputable national pastime. Angst-ridden souls with massive inferiority complexes now frequently cloak themselves in the mantras of groups such as "The National Organization for Women," and then use the broad title to imply that they in fact represent everyone who might fall into such categories. This is a cynical, manipulative, outright lie, and in this regard there are few bigger demagogues than Abraham Foxman. Under his leadership, the mission statement of the ADL, the organization created solely to safeguard Jewish interests, now reads: "dedicated to translating democratic ideals into a way of life for all Americans in our time." One translation would be aligning itself with Americans like the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, which in its school workshops has taken the liberty of edifying our teens on the finer points of "fisting." Another translation is more simple: Whatever raises us money to continue projecting our misery onto you.
It is an old axiom in politics that the longer an assertion goes unchallenged, the quicker it becomes an article of faith. This axiom has lent significant legitimacy to people like Jesse Jackson and Abraham Foxman. No one questions them. No one looks at the sinister, highly unproductive leadership they have attempted to peddle to millions and stops for a moment to say: "Who anointed this person?
What makes Abraham Foxman the ultimate arbiter of who is anti-Semitic and who isn't? Is there a school for this? Why do I have to listen to him or Jesse Jackson as an authority on anything?" Of course, anyone who tenders such a challenge would immediately be branded a racist (or, in my case, a self-hating Jew) for not lining up to pull the collective pimp wagon, but at this point even that seems worthwhile. It is worthwhile because these men are not leaders. These men are liars - the corrupt, failed and demagogic sort - who have proven repeatedly that they will, to the clear detriment of their own people, pursue or create any cause that generates them media or money.
To wit, one of Abe Foxman's recent public forays on behalf of Jews was to loudly condemn the naming of the Hurricane Israel as discriminatory against Jews. If this is what has the Jewish community atwitter, then surely a lot of people have missed something. Moreover, that Mr. Foxman could even consider this to be a matter worth ten seconds of his life indicates that perhaps it's time for him to begin to come to terms with the fact that he hasn't accomplished much in it. In a Washington Post op-ed recently, Mr. Foxman almost gleefully talked up the pending U.N. Conference on Racism (which President Bush has wisely pulled the U.S. out of) as an excellent antidote to combat racism around the world. What he failed to foresee (or acknowledge in his zeal to support the Mutual Admiration Society event) was the potential for the U.S. to withdraw from the event, a move largely predicated on the insistence of Palestinians that language condemning Jews in very harsh tones be adopted for the Conference. Again, this is the leader of my people? I don't think so. This is a snot-nosed man-child who represents everything neither I nor many other Jews want anything to do with. Leaders provide leadership, not handkerchiefs and crutches.
Monty Warner is Senior Director for the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. Readers may e-mail him at montywarner@yahoo.com.
Reproduced From: International Campaign For Real History David Irving's web site.
Jewish World Review
Monday, June 4, 2001
The ADL Pushes "Tolerance"? Why I'm Leaving after 25 Years
By Carl Pearlston
MY love affair with the ADL began almost 25 years ago. It has just ended with a curt note from the Board President advising me that I haven't shown a sufficient "demonstration of commitment to the ADL" to warrant retention on the Executive Committee or the Regional Board." How did it come to this?
I had been nominated to the Board by a judge with whom I had worked during the heady civil rights years, and then to the Executive Committee by the head of the Speakers Bureau, for which I was very active. Not that the romance had not been rocky. I had always known that my conservative Republican political views were barely tolerated by my overwhelmingly liberal colleagues, and I was tempted to keep them to myself. We were nominally a non-partisan organization, but our meetings frequently felt uncomfortably like those of a Democratic Party club in which it was assumed that all shared a common liberal or "progressive" political worldview and none could, or wanted to, hear a differing viewpoint.
Just after the recent presidential election, our Director accosted me at a meeting with a vehement "You stole the election!" Our positions were usually those of the liberal wing of the Democratic party on issues like abortion, school choice, teacher pay, bilingual education, affirmative action, the homosexual agenda, gun control.
I once cited the comprehensive study by Yale University Law School's Dr. John Lott on gun laws to the effect that in those states where people could legally carry concealed weapons, crimes against people actually declined, since criminals do not want to take a chance that their victim may be armed. I was met with the sarcastic and dismissive response that "Only John Lott, [talk show host and JWR columnist] Larry Elder and you believe in that study."
There was not a great tolerance for diversity of viewpoint nor introduction of new information. I was barred from distributing written material which was germane and relevant to issues under discussion; only material from staff could be disseminated. To be fair, a member did once tell me that at least I kept them honest -- i.e. they were forced to at least be exposed to -- even if not to consider, a different view.
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ADL's Abraham
Foxman
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When I once confessed to our National Director, Abe Foxman, my feelings of just spinning my wheels, he candidly told me that I would have to realize that over 95 percent of those involved in the ADL were liberal and would be unsympathetic to my conservative views.
Lack of sympathy frequently translated into lack of civility. For example, at several meetings, there were objections that Dr. Laura Schlesinger's radio program and planned TV program was offensive and insensitive to homosexuals. I pointed out that her views enunciate traditional Jewish values which deserve the support of a Jewish defense organization, and was greeted with derision and intemperate, hostile responses. When it came to the issue of homosexuals versus the Boy Scouts, ADL chose the homosexuals, all the way to the Supreme Court.
Then, in its otherwise commendable nationwide partnership with Barnes & Noble in the program Hate Hurts, which sponsors books and educates teachers and young children to fight hate, the ADL endorsed the books Heather Has Two Mommies and Steve Has Two Daddies as suitable tools for teaching tolerance to young children. Teachers' workshops and children's reading groups were organized, using these and other books in conjunction with the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which had earlier achieved a certain notoriety for its own school workshops wherein teenagers were taught the fine points of "fisting" and other homosexual practices.
In this manner, fighting "hate" became a euphemism for an attack on sexual morality, the traditional family, and the Jewish view that children deserve a loving father and mother, not two fathers or two mothers. It is only through a perverse notion of "tolerance" that support for traditional teaching about the family is intimidated, and condemned.
When Dennis Prager participated by invitation in a panel discussion on church-state issues, some members actually hissed and booed his remarks in a hostile display of intolerance. A respected board member persistently repeated to all who would hear that Prager was insane.
When the organization published its harsh attack on the Religious Right in 1994, I was distressed as were many politically conservative Jews who do not share the ADL view that politically-active conservative Christians are our enemy. As (Jewish) syndicated columnist and JWR contributor Mona Charen wrote, "The ADL has committed defamation. [duh] There is no other conclusion to be reached after reading its new report, The Religious Right: the Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism in America. It is sad that an organization with a proud history of fairness should have descended to this kind of character assassination and name calling."
A Board member of another affiliate was forced to resign because he publicly expressed disagreement with that report. It seems that the term "religious right" is a talisman used to invoke a reflexive response of hostility without thought. So deep was the antagonism that when Ralph Reed, then head of the Christian Coalition, appeared at an ADL leadership conference and gave a heartfelt apology for past insensitivity, prejudice, and discrimination by Christians toward Jews, the private response by most members to his apology was hostility and distrust.
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Well, why shouldn't they? It is implicit in the meaning of freedom of religious expression and religious diversity, a freedom we have so long struggled to attain for ourselves. It is not in our country's interest for us to demand a naked public square, devoid of any reference to G-d. Our cramped view of religious expression led us to oppose even the observance of a moment of silence in schools as being likely to encourage prayer.
The issue of parental choice in education, either by tax credits or vouchers, met with unwavering opposition based on what I believe is an erroneously perceived constitutional doctrine of "separation of church and state," along with a strong commitment to the teacher's unions. At one meeting, I questioned Abe Foxman as to what the ADL would do in the likely event that the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of school vouchers. He said the ADL would never agree and would continue to press the court until the decision was reversed and the ADL viewpoint was adopted.
Then, as he passed the table where my wife and I were sitting, he said to me, "You shouldn't have asked that question." I then realized that the bloom was really off the romance.
I had always strongly believed in the ADL's mission, as defined on a banner frequently displayed at the front of our meetings: ". . . to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike." Our efforts against anti-Semitism were without peer. We were a Jewish organization primarily concerned with issues affecting the Jewish community, and secondarily with equality and fair enforcement of laws for everyone. I recall that many times in days past we deferred action on an item on the grounds that it was not related to Jewish community, and was thus beyond our purview.
As years passed, the purview kept increasing along with the budget. While overt, and even latent, anti-Semitism was decreasing, our traditional mission as defender of the Jewish community was expanded to defender of all. We have become just another of many leftist "rights" organizations. This realization was confirmed when I saw a new banner, displaying an unfamiliar mission statement: "...dedicated to translating democratic ideals into a way of life for all Americans in our time."
This grandiose expansion of mission has had other consequences. The curbing of defamation -- an action that has expanded to curbing of hate -- a feeling, or emotion, or state of mind. If we can change people's minds and the way they think, we will not have to control their actions. The program for changing hearts and minds, A World of Difference, was created in 1985 to change prejudiced feelings through "sensitivity training". It is reportedly very successful, highly commended, and widely used by governmental agencies and many companies.
Unfortunately, my exposure to the program at a leadership conference indicated that teaching the values of diversity, multiculturalism, and cultural relativism resulted in denigrating the values and achievements of Western civilization and the desirability of a common American identity. There is now a nationwide industry of multicultural activists teaching various "sensitivity" programs which increase awareness of racial identity, and result in racial separation and racial hostility.
This focus on eliminating "hate" logically led to the creation of "hate crimes," in which, a two-tier system of criminality was created: 1) those who commit crimes of violence for any reason other than hate, and 2) those who do injury solely because they hate the status or class of the victim (race, sex, nationality, religion, disability, occupation, sexual orientation, etc), Criminals of the latter class are punished more severely than those of the former, even though both may commit the same violent crime.
The punishment is levied on the thought, or feeling, or state of mind of the criminal and not the action, in keeping with the emphasis on eliminating and punishing hateful thoughts and feelings. Creating preferred classes of crime victims is not a proper function of the American criminal justice system. Nor does it seem desirable to federalize and supplant state criminal law enforcement, which is what results from enacting "hate crime" legislation at the federal level.
The concept of "hate crimes" inevitably leads to that of "hate speech", in which offensive, insensitive, or hurtful speech is legally banned, as it is in Canada where the criminal law punishes offensive speech as a form of group defamation. A minister was arrested there for publicly preaching, in accordance with the tenets of his faith, that the practice of homosexuality was immoral.
The ADL has properly rejected repeated demands by some of its leaders for adoption of similar group defamation laws as violating our free speech guarantees. At the same time, the ADL has led the effort to abate hateful speech not only in the public, but even the private forum in the interest of "tolerance". There have been repeated condemnations of various incidents of speech deemed hateful, hurtful, insensitive, or embarrassing to particular groups. All too frequently, however, free speech and the expression of religious belief have been the targets of these condemnations, such as religious references by political candidates, Christian prayers at the inauguration, religious symbolism in comics, expressions of religious beliefs by sports figures, or even expressions of the politically incorrect, as was the case when conservative activist David Horowitz was condemned as racially insensitive for placing ads in college papers denying the wisdom, fairness, and practicality of the growing movement for Slavery Reparations.
The ADL has illogically compared those ads to ones denying the Holocaust, while ignoring the issue of free speech curtailment in the violent reactions by students and compliant acts by college administrators to censor the ads and prevent intelligent discussion of the significant issue involved.
The ADL has always been a firm and loyal supporter of Israel, but it was also an early and naive advocate of the now-defunct Oslo peace process, to the ultimate detriment of actual peace. I frequently complained that we concentrated more on the process than the substance of peace, and that true peace was unlikely to occur since the root problem was not how much land Israel would give up, but Arab refusal to accept a viable Jewish state. All of our "insider" briefings on the Mideast downplayed the risk to Israel posed by an armed Palestinian Authority or Palestinian state, and held out rosy and unrealistic prognostications of peace.
For example, at a leadership conference, we were treated to a talk by an Arab Ambassador urging us to take steps for peace, which translated into urging support for the election of Labor (Peres) over Likud (Netanyahu) in the coming election. It was portrayed, and accepted by many attendees, as a last chance for peace that was almost within our grasp. Most of us now see, in light of the past year's warfare, that the "peace" being urged was illusory and chimerical. So blinding was this hope for peace that, as reported, ADL had complimented the PA on their new school textbooks without even having read them, completely overlooking the virulent anti-Semitism contained therein. When I questioned our National Director about this, I became the target of attack and public humiliation for bringing up the matter. Nor did I endear myself by dwelling on our National Director's central role on behalf of the ADL in devising and wangling a pardon for criminal fugitive tax-evader Marc Rich.
When I expressed my views on some of these matters in various letters and articles, in which I was not identified as an ADL Board member, I was rebuked in a stern letter from our President advising that I had publicly taken positions contrary to ADL policy, which was not permitted. I had not realized that, as the price of Board membership, I had given up my freedom of speech on issues on which the ADL had taken a position.
This was much like the old
Leninist doctrine of "democratic centralism", in which debate is
allowed only before a policy is adopted, and no dissent is tolerated thereafter.
It seems odd that an organization which boastfully espouses and teaches
"tolerance" and "diversity", will not tolerate a bit of
dissent and diverse viewpoint in its own lay leadership.
Carl Pearlston, a national board member of Toward Tradition, writes from California. Comment by clicking here. [schmooze@jewishworldreview.com ]http://jewishworldreview.com/0601/pearlston.html
Reproduced From: International Campaign For Real History David Irving's web site.
http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=172359 March 28, 2001
Rabbi calls ADL leader Foxman the Jews' 'worst enemy'
By LOU MARANO
WASHINGTON, Mar. 28 (UPI) -- Calling secular Judaism's preoccupation with victimhood "liberalism with a circumcision," an Orthodox rabbi has given the "Our Own Worst Enemy Award" to [Abraham Foxman] the head of the Anti-Defamation League.
An ADL official has dismissed the characterization.
"The award is given to a Jewish American who exemplifies those cultural forces that most endanger Jewish continuity, substituting unhealthy values for Judaism itself," Toward Tradition said. "Children thus grow up to dismiss Jewish identity as, for example, merely with an obsession with death and persecution, or as liberalism with a circumcision."
"I think Abe Foxman means well," Lapin said. "But he's deluded by liberalism, a worldview preoccupied by victimhood."
The rabbi called attention to Foxman's letter that appeared in the March 23 editions of the New York Times. In it, the ADL leader compared the newspaper ads by conservative activist David Horowitz -- who opposes monetary reparations to American blacks for being the descendants of slaves -- with Holocaust deniers.
"Put that together with Foxman's statement last week about the 'big eruption' of anti-Semitism in New York, and so on, and you get the picture of a guy who's not in close touch with reality," Lapin said.The rabbi was referring to a March 21 New York Times story in which Foxman was quoted as saying: "Anti-Semitism is a disease, and we have seen a big eruption of that disease in New York." Foxman based his remark on an ADL survey that says anti-Semitic incidents rose by about 49 percent in New York City last year.
David Klinghofer, Toward Tradition's editorial director, questions the survey's validity. Many of the incidents recorded are not crimes, he said, but rather "anything anybody perceived as anti-Semitic." The ADL "gets paid (by contributors) according to how much anti-Semitism it finds," Klinghofer told United Press International Wednesday.
Toward Tradition said that Foxman's "tireless efforts" to convince American Jews that they are beset by "a phantom anti-Semitism," when their own experience suggests otherwise, "have helped to confirm many in the belief that being a Jew has to do mainly with being oppressed and hated."
The American Jewish Committee's annual study for 1999 reported that anti-Semitism is the main concern of 62 percent of American Jews, up 5 points from 1998. This belief pertains "notwithstanding the strength of democratic institutions and legal protections in the United States," AJC President Bruce M. Ramer said at the time.
The study, which was summarized in a June 9, 1999, story in the Washington Times, also revealed that American Jews give a low priority to religious observance and believe recalling the Holocaust is the key to being a Jew.
In its story, the Times quoted Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, humanities professor at New York University, who believes Jews are "absolutely free and equal" in America.
"I deplore the survey results," Hertzberg said. "When you say: 'Remember, we have enemies,' it simply feeds a neurosis. I maintain that Jewish life is not fear, but affirmation."
Toward Tradition's National Director Yarden Weidenfeld also said that traditional Judaism, as taught by Lapin, celebrates life. Foxman's approach constitutes the real threat to American Jewry, Weidenfeld told UPI in a Wednesday phone interview, because young American Jews who associate their religion with death and misery are more likely to marry Gentile partners. The real danger is assimilation, Weidenfeld said.
ADL Assistant National Director Ken Jacobson dismissed Toward Tradition and its positions. "At some level, I might not want to dignify the comments," he said in a phone interview on Wednesday. "I don't really think that Rabbi Lapin and his organization represent anything significant in the Jewish community."
But Jacobson quickly overcame his reluctance. He denied that Foxman's letter likened Horowitz to Holocaust-deniers because Foxman did not assert that Horowitz denied the existence of slavery.
"We were concerned about the denigration of blacks and the slave experience that was implicit in the Horowitz message" opposing reparations, Jacobson told UPI. "It's only like ... the Holocaust denial theme in the sense that, in both issues, there are things that were offensive, and a newspaper isn't obligated under the First Amendment to print every ad."
Jacobson was referring to student editors of campus newspapers. Of course, the First Amendment constrains only government, not newspapers or advertisers. In response, Weidenfeld said the students' ignorance of the Constitution "is their problem" and has nothing to do with Holocaust denial.
Toward Tradition said it picked Foxman "from among other representatives of the Anti-Semitism Industry" because of his role in former president Clinton's pardon of fugitive tax evader Marc Rich.
Citing Friday's Newsweek report, the group said: "After the ADL received a $100,000 check from the Rich Foundation, Foxman wrote to Bill Clinton urging the pardon." In doing so, Foxman "joined other leading Jewish liberals who had benefited from the billionaire's largesse. The ensuing scandal was a comfort to true anti-Semites who say that Jews buy and sell justice," Toward Tradition said.
On Saturday, the New York Times reported that Foxman said the previous day that he was wrong to have lobbied for Rich.
Copyright 2001 by United Press International. Reproduced From: International Campaign For Real History David Irving's web site.
From San Francisco Weekly
URL: http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2000-02-02/feature.html
Spy vs Spite
The Clinton administration has praised the Anti-Defamation League for helping shield kids from Internet hate. But should a group that spied on thousands of Californians be allowed to police the Web? By Matt Isaacs
THE first snow of the season is falling on New York in big fluffy flakes, making the city look new again. The offices of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, located in U.N. Plaza, are stuffy, the windows steamed. Everyone appears a bit disheveled; rumpled clothes and flattened hat hair seem to be in vogue. Jordan Kessler, a handsome young man with a beard, sits at a computer terminal, talking about how he compiles his list.
Kessler is personally responsible for the ADL's HateFilter, a software program that blocks access to Web sites that, the ADL contends, contain bigoted or hateful speech. This 25-year-old Columbia grad has accepted the enormous task of seeking out and cataloging inflammatory language among the roughly 800 million Web pages available to the public. He has help, of course. The ADL, a group dedicated to securing "justice and fair treatment for all citizens alike," has 30 offices around the country tracking extremists of every different shade, and each office has Kessler's direct line.
Kessler assembles a list of all the groups his organization deems dangerous; it's a list that must be constantly updated because, he says, hatemongers have a tendency to mutate. To be deemed objectionable by the ADL, a site must be cleared by a committee of the organization's managers before it makes Kessler's list. He won't say how many people are on the committee, or reveal the names of the organizations he has labeled as dangerous.
Some of the groups he watches, Kessler says, also watch him. Some revel, just because their sites have been chosen by the ADL, he says. It's like making the big time. The Web designers for the white supremacist site World Church of the Creator, for example, actually promote their work with a quote taken out of context from a Kessler report in which he grudgingly complimented the graphics for that site.
"If their Web site gets blocked by the ADL, in their eyes they've made it," he says. "They think we are all-powerful, in control of the government and everything that stands in their way."
Kessler's screen displays a number of yellow file folders. One folder is titled "Gays," presumably a file on gay-bashers. Another is titled "Arabs," presumably a list of anti-Arab groups. He says he takes great care in reviewing a site before he brings it to the committee. Many sites may be offensive, he says, featuring anti-Semitic jokes or caricatures, but they won't make the list of those to be blocked by the ADL's HateFilter. On the other hand, he says, some sites might be recommended for the list based on what the ADL knows about the organization rather than the content of the site. His organization has been monitoring hate groups for more than 85 years, he says, bringing an expertise that stretches far beyond HTML or Java codes.
The ADL has been fighting anti-Semitism, in its own way, since 1913. The organization was founded by Sigmund Livingston, a Chicago attorney, hoping to fight the overt presence of anti-Semitism in American society following the turn of the century. Livingston began with two desks, $200, and the sponsorship of the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, meaning "Children of the Covenant." Since then the organization has grown into a national nonprofit organization that took in $46 million in revenues in 1998 and employs 200 people in its New York headquarters alone. In the 1960s the ADL fought stridently for the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. More recently it pioneered efforts to create a model for "hate crime" laws.It is an organization with a unique mission, given that its existence is largely based on the continuance of racism and bigotry. If anti-Semitism had disappeared from the face of the Earth during the 20th century, the ADL might have withered away, too. But even five decades beyond the fall of Nazi Germany, the world continues to be a prejudiced place, and the organization still regularly denounces anti-Semitic statements made in print, over the airwaves, and, more recently, over the Internet.
The Web is a new frontier, presenting the ADL with fresh challenges and opportunities for growth. The medium has given every electronic pamphleteer the reach of a worldwide television broadcasting network, making it easy for anyone with a computer to spread his message, racist or otherwise. Because the Web is essentially unregulated, the ADL believes cyberspace is "a dangerous place for children," according to the organization's literature. "There are no parents or teachers standing by to guide and advise a child who has come upon a site that promotes hate. Without that guidance, there is a real chance children will simply accept what they read as fact."
In response to this supposed threat to young minds, the ADL has stepped up its own efforts to combat intolerance by introducing the HateFilter, which runs on Mattel's CyberPatrol, a software package that blocks a wide gamut of material on the Internet. Consumers who purchase the HateFilter receive all of CyberPatrol's features, including categories other than hate speech, among them graphic violence and pornography. But CyberPatrol purchased on its own does not include the HateFilter, because Mattel has its own version of what it considers hate speech, and does not market the filter, nor does it necessarily approve of what the ADL's HateFilter blocks, company officials say.
So far, the ADL HateFilter has been marketed as a service to be used in the home. But that may soon change. CyberPatrol is already in 15,000 private and public libraries, schools, and universities, and the ADL has not ruled out broadening the distribution of HateFilter software to public institutions. "Right now, the HateFilter is not meant to be used by the government, but over the next few months we will be discussing whether we will advocate for its use in schools and libraries," says Sue Stengel, an ADL attorney.
More recently, Elizabeth Coleman, the ADL's director of civil rights, was asked to participate in a panel discussion concerning a "family friendly" Internet at a conference for the National Association of Attorneys General a few weeks ago -- a conference where Attorney General Janet Reno gave the keynote address. Coleman demonstrated the filter for all the law enforcement officials in attendance. She said over lunch that the organization had also shown the filter to Vice President Al Gore, who "loved it."
If made explicit, White House support for the ADL filter could have a significant impact on the policy decisions of public schools and libraries across the country. Although decisions regarding school and library Internet filters are currently made at the local level, a bill before Congress spearheaded by Sen. John McCain, called the Children's Internet Protection Act, would require all schools and libraries receiving federal funds to install Internet filters on computers accessible to children. If the bill wins approval, even a mention by the White House, combined with the ADL's strong regional lobbying, could go a long way toward encouraging local jurisdictions to choose the HateFilter from the filtering software on the market.
But if Clinton likes and Gore loves the HateFilter (at least in the ADL's eyes), many are aghast at the thought of the ADL having any say over what children may or may not see. These critics, whose political and religious affiliations vary widely, repeatedly describe the ADL as a self-appointed agent of Israel that cloaks itself in the rhetoric of fighting hate, while actively attempting to silence those who are not hatemongers, but mere opponents of Israeli government policy."The Number 1 goal of the ADL is the protection of Israel," says Pete McCloskey, a former Republican congressman from San Mateo who regularly criticized Israel's policies. "Any group whose sole purpose is to protect a foreign nation should not have anything to say about what's said or written here in America."
On a number of occasions since the 1970s, the ADL has been caught distributing lists of its enemies, replete with detailed descriptions of "black demagogues" and "pro-Arab propagandists," including poet Amiri Baraka in the list of demagogues, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky under the propagandist label. Then, in 1993, a longtime ADL investigator admitted to working with a member of the San Francisco Police Department to illegally gather information on almost 10,000 people, including members of socialist, labor, and anti-apartheid groups.
Some of the targets of that information-gathering effort have gone to court in an attempt to gain access to their dossiers, currently in possession of the ADL, but the ADL has refused to release the files, claiming that its investigator was an "investigative journalist" whose unpublished reporting materials are protected against disclosure by the California shield law, which was originally adopted to help journalists keep confidential sources who reveal important public wrongdoing confidential.
Thus the ADL finds itself in a sticky position: While it advocates for a software product that limits access to the Internet's open exchange of ideas, the Anti-Defamation League is also hiding behind a law put in place to encourage people to speak freely.
The ADL recently added one episode to a videotape it uses in workshops that are meant to promote cultural understanding in schools. The vignette shows a boy, about 15 years old, surfing the Web in his school library. He comes across a page called the Zundelsite, with the headline "Did Six Million Really Die?"
"Hey guys, come here," the kid says to his friends. "Check this out. It says here the Holocaust was a bunch of bull. Like it never really happened like the Jews say it did."
Two blond students lean over his shoulder, as a dark-haired student listens to the conversation in the background. "Wow, big surprise. I hear they always lie," one boy says.
"I guess they just want us to feel sorry for 'em," says a girl, as they look at a page titled "Holocaust Myth 101."
"Well. They can lie all they want," says the boy who found the page. "Looks like we dug up the truth."
At this point, the instructor leading the workshop is supposed to stop the video and begin a discussion, using questions from an accompanying guide. On the whole, the questions are predictable classroom fare: "What happened?," "Has anyone ever experienced a similar situation?," and so on. But one question stands out: "Should the school have some kind of policy regarding what students can access on the Internet?"
In fact, many public secondary schools have Internet policies for minors, as do almost all public libraries. And both types of institutions are leaning toward the use of filtering software to limit what children can access on the Web. The San Francisco Unified School District, for example, employs a systemwide filter to block access to a variety of material, including "intolerance." School officials would not identify the name of the filter.
The policy discussions regarding the protection of minors on the Internet thus far have dealt almost exclusively with pornography. In the heated debate over First Amendment freedoms on the Web, smut has taken center stage because it has already been addressed and narrowly defined. The Supreme Court has ruled that "obscene" speech, meaning material appealing to a prurient or unhealthy interest in sex and lacking serious artistic, scientific, literary, or political value, can be regulated by the government.
The Supreme Court has also ruled that the definition of "obscene" can take the age of the audience into account. Thus, for adults, pornographic films are, by and large, protected by the First Amendment. But the government may prohibit the sale of these films to minors by labeling the material "indecent," a much broader, generally ill-defined category.
In 1996, Congress tried to apply the court's broad definition of "indecent" in its passage of the Communications Decency Act, a law prohibiting the transmission of "indecent" material over the Internet. But in 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the law in Reno vs. ACLU, declaring that communications on the Internet cannot be limited to what is suitable for children. The landmark ruling prevents a library from installing porn filters on terminals intended for adult use. But it still allows schools or libraries to restrict a minor's access to smut.
A school or library may also limit children's access to hate speech, but for a different reason. Ordinarily, in a public forum, anything outside the narrow definition of "obscene" is protected by the First Amendment. But schools and libraries are not the same as the town square (or the Internet), where people can spout hateful rhetoric to their heart's desire. A library has only so much shelf space; thus a professional librarian has the right to choose which materials to include in a collection, and which to leave out. The same goes for schools, which have the right to set their own curriculums and base the selection of library books on those curriculums.
"That's why if you were to go to your local library in search of books on the Holocaust, you would probably find many," says Frederick Schauer, a First Amendment professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. "But it's not likely you'll find any books that say the Holocaust didn't happen. And I think most people would agree that's appropriate."
Schauer says he believes the debate over allowing speech filters for minors into the public forum is only just beginning. Would it be possible for the ADL HateFilter to find a place in public libraries and schools? Yes, he says, although it would be challenged in court, and would probably be more likely to be allowed in secondary schools than in public libraries that serve all ages.
Some First Amendment lawyers find it curious that the ADL would even be getting into the business of speech filters. The Anti-Defamation League, after all, considers itself a civil rights organization. Judging from literature promoting the HateFilter software, it's clear the ADL is thinking about the apparent conflict between the civil right of free speech, and the limitation of speech inherent to Internet filtering software. Almost every page of HateFilter literature mentions the First Amendment, and explains that the ADL does not seek to censor or limit speech on the Internet. The HateFilter does not remove sites or censor their content, says ADL Director Elizabeth Coleman; it only blocks these sites from coming into the home at the parents' discretion.
Parents have good reason for wanting to keep these sites off their computers, Coleman says. Many extremist sites cater to children, she says. For example, the World Church of the Creator site has a special link for kids. Other sites, she says, are highly polished, presenting themselves as mainstream academic thought. This misinformation, she says, can lead to the kind of violence that has made headlines in recent years. Last August, for example, three teenagers firebombed a judge's house in San Jose, believing he was Jewish. (He was actually Catholic.) Investigators say two of the kids had used computers at school to access white supremacist Web sites. Also, Matthew and James Williams, brothers suspected of murdering a gay couple in Redding and setting fire to three synagogues in Sacramento, were reported to have been led astray by radical right philosophies ferried on the Internet. (Although at 31 and 29 years of age, the brothers would not have been constrained by an Internet filter aimed at minors.)
Coleman says the best part of the HateFilter is that it doesn't just block sites, it also routes Internet surfers back to links on the ADL Web page that provide information about extremists such as white supremacists or Holocaust deniers. "Nobody else has the same educational component," she says.But critics of Internet filters wonder if they actually do more harm than good. A highly regarded study by Chris Hunter, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, for instance, found that the devices block an average of 21 percent of Web sites containing useful, legal information, while failing to block an average of 25 percent of sites containing "objectionable" content. (The ADL's HateFilter was not included in the study.)
Even organizations that have historically spoken out against racism and gay-bashing, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, object to Internet speech filters. Ann Brick, an attorney with the civil rights organization, says that one of the inherent risks of filters is that consumers never know the political or commercial biases of the filter's manufacturer. "The ADL is a partial organization, in that they have a point of view," she says. "And what they consider hate speech might be a complex exposition of the Israeli-Arab conflict."
The Southern Poverty Law Center, another civil rights organization that publishes its own annual list of extremists on the Web, is also unconvinced of the efficacy of filters. Joe Roy, director of the center's intelligence project, says his organization supports any effort to fight hatred, but would not endorse a speech filter because, in the organization's opinion, filters simply don't work.
The ADL's software manufacturer, CyberPatrol, has taken an especially hard beating from critics who say the filtering software has mistakenly blocked sites such as Creatures Comfort Pet Care Service and the MIT Project on Mathematics and Computations, for their explicit sexual content.
Because the HateFilter has a narrower scope, ADL officials say, it is more sophisticated than other filters on the market. "You're getting 85 years of knowledge and experience monitoring these groups," says Coleman. "Yet we want to be subtle. You can't use a sledgehammer in this endeavor."
And in a limited test run of the software, the HateFilter does appear to be more refined than its competitors. It doesn't block the Pat Buchanan Web site, though Buchanan has been critical of Israel and made controversial statements about Jews in the past. It does block a site called Radio Islam, which blatantly flaunts its hatred of Jews. It also blocks what appears to be a very thoughtful -- and hardly controversial -- site called Interracial Voice, containing a long list of essays describing the challenges of growing up with parents from different cultures.
Elizabeth Coleman says the ADL's block on the Interracial Voice page was an oversight.
The ADL will not provide a list of blocked sites, officials say, because in the wrong hands, it could be used as a kind of address book for extremists, allowing them easier communication with one another. Without a list of blocked sites, however, it's hard to get a picture of what the ADL deems inappropriate for children. And an understanding of this bigger picture is important, critics say, because contrary to Coleman's claims, the ADL has a history of making blacklists that do, in fact, attack legitimate schools of thought with a sledgehammer.In the early 1980s, for example, records show the organization circulated through college campuses a confidential list of pro-Arab sympathizers "who use their anti-Zionism as a guise for their deeply felt anti-Semitism." The report contained the names of respected professors from Georgetown University, Columbia University, and the University of California at Berkeley, among others, who had criticized Israel for its invasion of Lebanon. When the Middle East Studies Association discovered the document, and called for the ADL to disown it, a high-ranking ADL official was quoted in the New York Times blaming it on an "overly zealous student volunteer."
Francis Boyle, a professor of law at the University of Illinois, still has vivid memories of what it was like to be the recipient of the ADL's wrath. He says when he and a colleague began giving lectures critical of Israel's attack on the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon, the ADL and a local Jewish organization went far out of their way to silence them. Boyle says ADL members would sit in the front row during his lectures, simply to shout him down. The organizations also filed a complaint against him with the dean of the law school, he says. "I was really surprised. Here I thought the ADL was this great civil rights organization, and they're doing these things that are totally antithetical to what academic freedom is supposed to be about."
But Boyle says things were much worse for his Jewish colleague. When the colleague began speaking about the atrocities he had seen when he visited Lebanon in 1982, Boyle says the ADL organized for students to boycott the professor's classes and requested that the administration deny the professor tenure. "The ADL was far worse on Jews who criticized Israel than they were on Arabs. They treated them like traitors," Boyle says. "The ADL has turned itself into a dirty tricks organization for Israel."
Steve Zeltzer and Jeff Blankfort had already been active in Middle Eastern politics for many years when, in 1987, they founded an organization called the Labor Committee on the Middle East, a group that, by their description, was devoted to alerting American workers to the plight of laborers in all the Middle Eastern countries. It could hardly be called an organization, they say. It was really just a handful of like-minded people. Or so they thought.
The first meetings were held at Zeltzer's house in San Francisco. Those who attended were familiar with one another, except for a man named Roy Bullock. Blankfort says he had seen Bullock around the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "I recognized him and was a bit surprised to see him at our meeting. I wondered if he was really interested," Blankfort says.
But, Blankfort recounts, Bullock said he liked what they were doing and wanted to be a part of the gang, and, evidently, that was good enough for the other members. As is often the case with those who fashion themselves to be part of the radical left, the members chose as one of their first projects an event that had little to do with the group's core interest. They decided to organize a picket line at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, protesting a luncheon being held by an Israeli organization called Histadrut, which reportedly had financial interests in South Africa, then still in the grip of apartheid policies.
The guests of honor at the event were former California Assemblyman Richard Katz from Sylmar, and then-Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown.
At the time, there was a growing anti-apartheid movement in the U.S., strongly supported by African-American organizations in the Bay Area, and if the public were to become aware of Histadrut's financial ties, Brown's participation in the event would not look good. Evidently he was aware of this, and sent a thoughtful, two-page response declining Zeltzer's request for him to pull out of the event.
The Labor Committee on the Middle East went forward with the protest, organizing about 60 people, including Roy Bullock, to picket in front of the Fairmont.
Not long after the demonstration, Blankfort received an anonymous envelope. Inside was a torn-out page from a newsletter published by the Institute of Historical Review, a Holocaust denial organization. Blankfort wondered why he would get something from a neo-Nazi group he despised. He was shocked to see it was an article accusing Roy Bullock of being a spy for the ADL.
But spies of one kind or another are not uncommon in radical circles, Blankfort says. "My father was a blacklisted writer, and the FBI was poking around for years," he says. "I'm used to it."
As it turns out, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was tracking Bullock's activities; the FBI, however, was concerned with Bullock because he was an operative for the South African government.
When Bullock was questioned in 1993, according to court records, he told FBI agents that he had been instructed by the ADL to gather information on anti-apartheid groups, a statement he would later recant. He told federal agents he had been working as a "fact finder" for the ADL since 1954, when he was asked to gather information on a Communist Party club in Indianapolis. In 1987, he said, he met Tom Gerard, an officer with the San Francisco Police Department, who began supplying Bullock with records such as motor vehicle registrations and criminal histories -- records that, by law, are to be used by police and prosecutors only in legitimate criminal investigations. Bullock also admitted to receiving approximately $16,000 from the South African government in exchange for information on anti-apartheid groups. He also admitted to turning over information to Israel. At the time, Israel and South Africa maintained loose diplomatic relationships, because both faced trade sanctions, Israel from Arab countries, and South Africa from a wide variety of nations opposed to its apartheid policies.
The ADL says Bullock was acting on his own while collecting information on anti-apartheid groups.
In an investigation by the city, San Francisco police seized 10 boxes of information from the offices of the ADL. A police officer testified that 75 percent of the material was illegally obtained from confidential government sources, according to court records. Police also examined Bullock's computer files, which contained information on 9,876 people, along with 1,394 driver's license numbers. The people were divided into four categories: "Arabs," "Pinkos," "Right," and "Skins." Zeltzer and Blankfort were listed under "Pinkos." Included in Zeltzer's dossier was a description of the protest at the Fairmont Hotel.
Although thousands of nonpublic documents were found in the possession of both Bullock and the ADL, the city offered a settlement agreement to the organization in November 1993. As a result of the deal, the ADL paid a $75,000 civil fine -- most of which went to charitable causes along the lines of the ADL's own interests, such as a Hate Crimes Reward Fund -- while denying all allegations of wrongdoing.
Gerard, whom the ADL had sent on an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel in 1991, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized use of a police computer and was sentenced to three years' probation, 45 days in jail, and a $2,500 fine. He is no longer with the Police Department.Since the city settled its civil case against the ADL, 17 people who had been subjects of the ADL's investigation have attempted to recover their files; they are represented in court by former Congressman Pete McCloskey, whose wife is one of the plaintiffs. So far, the ADL has blocked those efforts, claiming to be a news-gathering organization and invoking the need for journalists to protect their confidential sources. The California Court of Appeals has ruled that plaintiffs who were the target of illegitimate information-gathering that resulted in the transfer of information to a foreign government have a right to see what was transferred.
The lawsuit has certainly shed light on how the organization has gathered information. For example, the former director of the ADL's San Francisco office, Richard Hirschhaut, testified that he was aware that Bullock had prepared reports on hundreds of individuals and organizations. He also said that up to half of the ADL's activities in the seven years between 1986 and 1993 had been centered on discrediting political views that disagreed with the organization's support of Israel, rather than on the ADL's traditional efforts to counter bigotry and anti-Semitism.
The Internet has undoubtedly made it easier for children to access inappropriate information. Few would argue that a child has something to gain by reading the diatribes of the Farm Belt Führer, and, although hate crimes are actually on the decline in terms of numbers, the hate incidents that have occurred recently are conscience-shocking. Last year the country was introduced to Benjamin Smith, who went on a rampage in Indiana, wounding six Jews coming home from Sabbath and killing an African-American and an Asian-American before committing suicide. Buford Furrow Jr. became famous for shooting up a Jewish community center in Los Angeles. And of course there were Columbine's Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, two teenagers wreaking bloody havoc on their classmates. Teenagers are laughing while they send bullets into their peers, and the World Church of the Creator has a special section for kids.
Who wouldn't be looking for ways to stop the haters? Potential presidents certainly are.
John McCain is stumping through New Hampshire with his Children's Internet Protection Act, a bill that would require all public libraries and secondary schools receiving federal subsidies for their Internet hookups to install filtering software on computers accessible to minors. Many experts say the bill is very likely to win approval from Congress. Al Gore's campaign Web site has a link to Internet Safety for Parents and Kids, complete with follow-on links to the filter sites Cybersitter and Netnanny.
Judith Krug, a law expert with the American Library Association, says she expects to see an avalanche of Internet filtering laws passed at the state level. (Some states, including South Dakota and Virginia, have already mandated Internet filters for library computers accessible to children.) "Without a doubt, schools have to find ways to protect children from inappropriate material," says CyberPatrol Vice President of Marketing Susan Getgood. "I see schools implementing filters in record numbers."
It's quite possible that every library and school receiving federal funds across the nation will be forced to install filters on its computers, not just for pornography, but for extremist speech as well. These institutions will have a choice between a few commercial monoliths that provide filtering software -- and a civil rights organization that can accurately say it has 85 years of experience in fighting bigotry. Some public institutions will almost certainly choose the HateFilter.And without a list of sites the ADL has decided to block, parents won't ever know what their children are missing. Perhaps a lecture by Noam Chomsky on the mainstream media monopoly. Or a RealAudio spoken-word monologue by Amiri Baraka, formerly known as Leroi Jones. Or a detailed analysis of the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
So far, nobody is connecting the dots in a public way: An organization with a history of ruthlessly silencing its critics is trying to dictate the Internet content available to the country's young minds. And when asked about the HateFilter, the White House offers this vague comment of apparent support: "The president certainly supports any tool that blocks hate and other inappropriate material on the Internet."
The Labor Committee on the Middle East fizzled out a few years ago, but Steve Zeltzer is still active in radical politics. His Victorian home in Bernal Heights is cluttered with tall stacks of videocassettes, material for the documentary television show he produces, Labor on the Job.
Zeltzer says he's still haunted by the paranoid feelings that began when he realized he was being watched. For the first couple of weeks after his confrontation with ADL "fact-finder" Roy Bullock, Zeltzer says, his phone rang repeatedly; when the answering machine came on, the caller began dialing random numbers, an apparent attempt to retrieve messages left for Zeltzer. Now, if he answers the phone and nobody's there, he can't help but wonder if he's still being targeted.
Zeltzer says he's not surprised that the ADL is creating an Internet filter. To him, it's an extension of what the organization has been doing for decades. "They have always had enemies lists, and they have always wanted to control the flow of information," he says. "The HateFilter is just an extension of that
Reproduced From: International Campaign For Real History David Irving's web site.
[Compiled 1997-2000]
The Anti-Defamation League: Censors of the Universe
by INAYET NAHVI (a Muslim)
THE ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE (ADL) has spearheaded efforts at censorship against all people who wish to express themselves in a way that by the ADL is seen as anti-Zionist or "anti-Semitic". The Director of the ADL Richard Gutstadt wrote to all periodicals he could find to censor the book, "The Conquest of A Continent". Mr Gutstadt brazenly writes, "We are interested in stifling the sale of this book".
The ADL was also instrumental in terrorizing St. Martin's Press into canceling their contract last year [1996] with David Irving. The ADL recently "hailed" the arrest and imprisonment of a German man who questioned the Holocaust.
ADL's Criminal and Spying Operations In 1993 the San Francisco and Los Angeles offices of the ADL were raided for evidence of criminal wrongdoing in many spheres. The raids turned up evidence of the ADL's compliance in the theft of confidential police files stolen from California police departments. The ADL had been paying Roy Bullock a salary for decades to spy on people and steal police files. He stole files from SFPD through corrupt cop Tom Gerard. His illicit contact in San Diego was white racist sheriff Tim Carroll.
The ADL has been linked closely to organized crime, especially Las Vegas Mafia boss Meyer Lansky. Theodore Silbert worked simultaneously for the ADL and the Sterling National Bank (a Mafia operation controlled by the Lansky syndicate). As a matter of fact the granddaughter of the Mafia boss Lansky, Mira Lansky Boland herself is the ADL's liaison to law enforcement. (What a convenient arrangement! She used ADL money to treat Tim Carroll and Tom Gerard to an all- expense paid luxury vacation in Israel.)
Another Las Vegas gangster, Moe Dalitz was honored by the ADL in 1985. Another among the shady contributors to the ADL's supremacist activities is the Milken Family Fund, of "junk bond" fame. The ADL uses its well-oiled propaganda machine to protect their "friends" in the Mafia and pornography industry by shrieking "Anti-Semitism!" at the slightest movement of the law against these perverse interests.
ADL's Ethnic Intimidation The ADL has mastered the art of intimidation and blackmailing unlike any of the powerful Mafiosi they are associated with. The ADL has influential contacts in media and politics that can ruin a person or business if they don't follow ADL's agenda.
Already mentioned are instances of bad cops falling under the allure of the ADL, ones such as Tom Gerard and Tim Carroll. Yet now good cops and even freshmen cops are being "conditioned" for the type of anti-free speech, anti-cultural diversity, police state that the ADL would like for our country. Throughout the nation the ADL is threatening police departments with all kinds of retribution if they don't initiate state-funded lectures and seminars for law enforcement given by ADL spokesmen. The ADL rakes in large sums of money for these sessions, boosting their already overflowing coffers. Already ADL men have been seen at the scene of crimes ordering cops on how investigations are to be conducted.
Perhaps at no time in history has any other criminal organization, such as the ADL, been able to infiltrate and influence law enforcement to such an extent, and its tentacles are growing.
Freshmen sheriffs in San Diego are now being personally "trained" to respond to "crimes" by the Southwestern Director of the ADL, Morris Casuto.
The most alarming part The ADL is a very powerful, secretive racial/religious supremacist organization, with substantial ties to the underworld of crime and pornography. To burrow their way into the minds of children the ADL has created the "World of Difference" program designed to influence them at an early stage.
In a report to its few, but wealthy supporters in 1995, ADL boasts that it has reached more than ten million students and more are ready to be indoctrinated. The ADL hopes to make children susceptible to the world of crime and vice they and their criminal associates have in store for the USA.
Gallery of The Criminal ADL:
- Roy Bullock The ADL's paid informant who rummaged through trash for decades for the ADL, until he was given the sensitive position of being the conduit for stolen police files coming from the San Francisco Police Department by way of Tom Gerard. He was paid $550 per week for his services. Also an associate of racist sheriff Tim Carroll. His existence was discovered after the FBI raids on ADL offices in 1993 and resulted in the publicizing of 750 pages of information on the spying operations of the ADL.
- Tom Gerard San Francisco Police Officer who stole sensitive, confidential files from his agency and gave them to Roy Bullock to assist ADL's spying operations on Americans. Among files stolen were ones on the Black Muslims, Arabs and right-wing organizations that were in any way critical of ADL. Received an all-expense paid luxury vacation in Israel, courtesy of the ADL.
- Tim Carroll Racist ex-detective in San Diego's Sheriff Department. Remarked in 1993 that he would like to see "all illegal aliens shot" and "all the niggers sent back to Africa on a banana boat". An associate of both Roy Bullock and Tom Gerard. He mysteriously retired from the Sheriff's Department after the raids on the ADL offices at the early age of 54. Also received an all-expense paid luxury vacation in Israel, courtesy of the ADL. Despite his overtly racist nature, he was put in charge of security at the ADL's National Convention in September, 1997 using strong-arm tactics against participants and visitors. This is interesting considering it was his bumbling confessions to an investigator that led to the raids on the ADL.
- Mira Lansky Boland The "law-enforcement liaison" for the ADL. She arranged luxurious trips to Israel for certain key police officers who could have something to offer the ADL in return. Among these were file thief Tom Gerard and racist Tim Carroll. She is uniquely positioned in that she is the granddaughter of Meyer Lansky, one of the most powerful Mafia figures in US history.
- Hugh Hefner Famous pornographer who was honored by the ADL with its ridiculous "Torch of Freedom" award. From him proceeds protection for all pornography in the US, which is and has always been associated with vice elements like the mob and ADL.
- Larry Flynt This pornographer is a major contributor to the ADL of 100,000's of dollars. He has been jailed often for "obscene pornography" and the general hideous defiling of women in his Hustler magazine (whose description is beyond the limits allowed on a decent web page).
- Theodore Silbert Mob associate of Meyer Lansky, employee of the ADL and Mafia front "Sterling Bank." Was simultaneously the CEO of "Sterling Bank" and National Commissioner of the ADL.
- Moe Dalitz Las Vegas mob figure and close associate of Meyer Lansky who was honored by the ADL in 1985.
- Michael Milken Family Fund Billion dollar fund that has given extensively to the ADL, the money of which was made in the "junk bond" scandals.
- Morris Casuto Jewish Southwestern Director of the ADL who personally trains freshmen law enforcement to do the bidding of him and his criminally indicted organization. Morris Casuto is also close friends with white racist Tim Carroll. Boasted in March 1999 that Alex Curtis' "luck will run out. And he will be sent to prison for a very long time." Is this a threat from a man whose group has already been criminally indicted for nefarious connections to rogue police agents?
- Rick Barton National Commissioner of ADL . Another racial integrationist who lives on an expensive cul-de-sac in pure white Olivenhain.
- Teresa Santana Deputy DA of San Diego who works with the criminal ADL and prosecutes non-Jews for imaginary "hate crimes" against Jews.
- Bill Kolender Jewish Head of San Diego Sheriff's Office who is a member of B'nai B'rith, the racist secret society that oversees the criminal ADL. The anti-Zionist organisation The Nationalist Observer was raided by the SDSO in April 1999 for political reasons.
- Jessica Lerner Jewish Assistant Director of the San Diego hate office. Morris' back- up spokeswoman when he is out of town or on his annual pleasure trip to Amsterdam, The Netherlands - sin capital of the world.
- Dan Willis La Mesa Police Department detective who is in close contact with Morris Casuto and has personally raided the home of Alex Curtis and the offices of The Nationalist Observer three times in the last year and a half.
THIS website prints the above article without change other than spelling improvements, and without vouching for the accuracy of any of the statements contained therein, as part of our policy of exposing the activities of the ADL.Reproduced From: International Campaign For Real History
"WHEN ISRAEL'S MOSSAD SET OUT TO BREAK ME, IT FOUND ITS HELPERS HERE AT HOME,"
by Victor Ostrovsky
Victor Ostrovsky published two books on his experiences as a former Intelligence agent working for the State of Israel: By Way of Deception and The Other side of Deception.
In these he recorded his personal observations made within Israel's external security service, The Mossad. He wrote an article on what subsequently happened to him for the authoritative journal, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (October/November 1997).
Here we reproduce extracts from the lengthy article:
David
"WE WILL get to him by other means, we will break him economically," stated the chief of the Mossad, Israel's CIA, to a Knesset committee after the failure of the government of Israel's attempt to ban publication of my first book, By Way of Deception, in the U.S. and Canada. This statement, made on camera, was purposefully leaked to an Israeli reporter and printed in the weekend addition of Ma'ariv, Israel's leading daily newspaper, with the military censor's approval. Since that day, Israel's foreign intelligence agency has waged a war of attrition against me with the enthusiastic co-operation of its cabal of North American Zionist organizations.
For years as a Canadian-born, Israeli-raised former Mossad caseworker I was unwilling to accept the possibility of a wide conspiracy against me. After all, my book had finally been published. What more harm could I do to the country I had left in disgust to return to the land of my birth. Only hitting rock bottom has finally jolted me out of this state of innocence--and optimism that a change of luck is just around the corner. I'm now convinced that I am the target of a broad collusion between elements of the Israeli government and their gofers, mostly in the American Jewish community.
...Radio and television interviews that were scheduled by my publisher were canceled almost as soon as they were booked. A speaker's bureau in Toronto, which seldom had trouble arranging speaking engagements with student and other groups eager to have me as a speaker, found that the engagements were cancelled before I could appear. In fact, the cancellations occurred each time a local B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation League (ADL) chapter got wind of them, and they always did.
But, of course, the less I spoke, the more time I had to write. In 1995, when my third book, The Other side of the Deception, another work of non-fiction, was published, the efforts against me were stepped up.
So, on Oct. 21, 1995, I was surprised to be invited by Canadian Television (CTV) producer Ron Fine to do a guest appearance on "Canada AM," the widely viewed Canadian version of "Good Morning America." Scheduled to appear on the same program, via satellite from Israel, was Israeli journalist Yosef Lapid, the former head of Israeli television.
...On cue, Lapid repeated, as I listened, his call for my assassination on the Canadian television show, but this time with a twist. He said that, since Israel's Mossad could not kill me in Canada without causing a diplomatic incident, "I hope that there would be a decent Jew in Canada who would do the job for us."
...A radio host named Tim Kern, from a station in Denver, Colorado, called me up for an interview. Several days later he sent a file on me he had received from the "Mountain state regional office of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith." The ADL communication suggested that the station drop the interview, claiming that I am an unreliable subject.* The sequence was repeated over and over at radio and television stations in the United States in the United States and Canada. Ironically, supposedly separate Jewish organizations around the United States kept coming up with the same wording in their efforts to shut me up.
The same people who presumably would praise someone from the CIA or the U.S armed forces who exposed serious wrong-doing in those institutions were now hard of work to smother my criticisms of an intelligence agency for a foreign country that, to put it a charitably as possible does not have America's best interest at heart.
...In an attempt to break the vicious cycle, I decided to sue in an Canadian Yosef Lapid for inciting my murder and "Canada AM" for airing his incitement to the public. I assumed that bringing this issue to public attention would expose the attempts of organizations in both the U.S. and Canada that in fact are agents of Israel to suppress the truth through intimidation and, if necessary, economic or physical terrorism.
After accepting a hefty retainer and completing the preparation for trial, my lawyer, Paul B. Kane of Perley-Robertson, Panet, Hill and McDougall in Ottawa, Canada, informed me that he could not continue with the case. His explanation was that the safety of his staff would clearly be jeopardized if he proceeded.
Then HarperCollins, my publisher, informed me it was keeping the last portion of my advance, some $46,000, against advertising. I pointed out that since this was not something that I had never agreed to, they had no right to do it. "Sue us," was their response.
In 1996, a new, New York based agent struck a light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel. Regnery Inc., a Washington based publisher, signed a contract with me for a tongue-in-cheek guide to espionage called The Spy Game. They had some suggestions, however, for making the book more serious on the grounds that reader's don't regard spying as a laughing matter.
As I was in the final stages of the first draft, however, my house burned to the ground. The fire marshal's report declared it arson.
...So I wasted no more time and re-wrote The Spy Game, having kept my notes on Regnery's suggested revisions with me.
...On July 9 of this year the Regnery publicity department faxed me a copy of their catalog page depicting my book, slated to be released in October. One day later, on July 10, 1997, I received a letter from Regnery informing me that the company had decided not to publish my book. I felt as though I had been hit by a freight train.
Reproduced From: International Campaign For Real History
New York Post
New York, Saturday, March 24, 2001
JEWISH GROUP TOOK RICH'S 100G BEFORE PUSHING PARDON
Saturday,March 24,2001
By BRIAN BLOMQUIST
Foxman, leader of one of the nation's largest Jewish groups, wrote a letter to then-President Bill Clinton on Dec. 7, urging a pardon for Rich.
But Foxman didn't reveal Rich's donation until yesterday. An ADL official said it "probably" was made in November and added that the group has no plans to give the money back.
Foxman said last Monday that he regretted writing to Clinton, saying he had a change of heart after learning the feds had offered to let Rich return to the United States on bail to face his legal troubles.He said he'd been under the impression, after talking with Rich, that the feds were bent on jailing him if he returned to the country, denying him a chance to visit his daughter's grave.
Foxman was interviewed Monday by House investigators about Rich, an ultra-wealthy commodities trader who had been on the lam since his 1983 indictment on evading $48 million in taxes and trading with the enemy.
The ADL acknowledged that Foxman and Rich's Israeli representative, former Mossad agent Avner Azulay, met in Paris last February to discuss ways to resolve Rich's legal problems.Foxman recommended to Azulay that Rich seek a pardon by using his ex-wife Denise Rich - a major contributor to the Clintons' campaigns and to Bill Clinton's library - as an intermediary.
Denise Rich ended up writing a letter to Clinton and pinning him down at a holiday party at the White House to press for the pardon.
The ADL said Azulay had "pledged" in January 2000, a month before the meeting in Paris, to make a contribution to the ADL.
But the actual transfer of that money, $100,000, "probably" occurred in November, said ADL spokeswoman Myra Shinbaum.
Shinbaum said Rich had given $150,000 to the ADL over a period of about 15 years, but, before last year, hadn't given any money in a few years.
"We see absolutely no connection" between Foxman's letter to Clinton and Rich's $100,000 payment to the ADL, Shinbaum said.Shinbaum also said the ADL, which annually budgets $50 million to fight anti-Semitism, won't return the money.
"Return the money? No. The money is used for the work of the ADL," Shinbaum said.
Reproduced From: International Campaign For Real History
Jewish Group Wants Files Withheld
By Bob Egelko
Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith claims it has the same right as a journalist to withhold records it gathered on leftist pro-Palestinian and anti-apartheid activists.
The Jewish organization argued before an appellate court Wednesday that it should not have to comply with a judge's order to produce the documents to individuals who have sued the group for invasion of privacy.
The ADL is appealing a September order allowing 17 people to see material that the ADL gathered on individuals and organizations that supported Palestinian rights and opposed South Africa's former apartheid government.
The cases arose out of a 1992 seizure by San Francisco police of more than 10,000 ADL files. The ADL later paid $75,000 to settle a civil suit filed by the city accusing it of illegally obtaining confidential government documents.
A now-retired San Francisco police inspector, Tom Girard, also pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of illegally accessing the information.
Girard's ADL contact, Roy Bullock, acknowledged selling information to the South African government, then Israel's ally. The ADL said he did it on his own, but admitted that some of its information was shared with the Israeli government.
Police, who returned the documents to the ADL after the settlement, notified the plaintiffs that their names were in the files. The 17 contend the ADL illegally obtained confidential records from the state and blacklisted them among the organization's supporters.
The ADL denies having a blacklist and says it was merely keeping tabs on hate groups and terrorists.
"Courts say a government employee may be punished for violating a duty to keep information private, but if you are a journalist, you may not be punished'" for receiving the information and sharing it with others, B'nai B'rith lawyer Stephen Bomse said Wednesday.
The plaintiffs' lawyer, former Congressman Pete McCloskey, said even if the ADL should be treated as a reporter, no journalist has the power "to invade privacy and transmit private records.''
Bomse said there was no evidence of lawbreaking that would justify invading the group's files.
"The reason there may not be a scintilla of evidence is that your client has it and won't disclose it,'' replied Presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline.
A ruling from the appeals court is expected in December.
© Copyright 1998 The Associated Press
A quotation that defines the "Anti-Defamation League":
Wednesday December 12 2:05 PM ET
JDL Chairman Arrested in Bomb Plot
By RAUL MORA, Associated Press Writer
FILE--Irv Rubin, 56, the chairman of the Jewish Defense League, shown in this April 12, 1996 file photo taken in Los Angeles, was arrested in connection with a failed bombing plot, federal authorities said. Rubin and a member of the militant group, Earl Krugel, 59, both of Los Angeles, were booked early Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2001, at the downtown federal Metropolitan Detention Center, detention center spokeswoman Donna Davis said. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The chairman of the Jewish Defense League was arrested in connection with a failed bombing plot, federal authorities said.
Irv Rubin, 56, and a member of the militant group, Earl Krugel, 59, both of Los Angeles, were booked early Wednesday at the downtown federal Metropolitan Detention Center, detention center spokeswoman Donna Davis said.
The arrests late Tuesday were in connection with a bombing plot, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office. He would not describe the alleged scheme except to say, ``The bombing was not carried out.''
Criminal charges were expected to be filed later Wednesday.
``Irv Rubin never had anything to do with explosives,'' said Rubin's attorney, Peter Morris. ``It seems to us that, given the timing ... the government's action is part of an overreaction to the Sept. 11 events.''
Law enforcement agencies raided a Reseda home Tuesday night. Footage showed officers carrying out weapons and cardboard boxes.
A neighbor, Rod Colson, said Krugel had lived there more than 20 years. He said he heard Krugel's dog barking at about 10 p.m. and went outside, where he saw people carrying out boxes.
``I saw a lot of agents in the back yard taking photos,'' he said.
The screen door of the red brick home was broken and part of the fence had been knocked down. A menorah, the Jewish candelabra used for Hanukkah, was visible through a window and there was an American flag on the mailbox.
Matthew McLaughlin, an FBI spokesman in Los Angeles, declined to discuss the alleged target but said physical evidence was found.
``The tools might have been in place to do this thing,'' he said. ``We don't put people in (custody) just for superficial impressions. We put people in place for their physical actions.''
Rubin's wife, Shelley, said in a telephone interview that her husband and Earl ``are completely innocent of anything. They are law-abiding, good people.''
Originally formed by Meir Kahane to mount armed response to anti-Semitic acts in New York City, the JDL gained notoriety when its members were linked to bombings, most of them aimed at Soviet targets in retaliation for the way that country treated its Jewish population.
Kahane left the JDL in the 1980s. A power struggle ensued, with Rubin among the contenders for its leadership.
Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990. El Sayyid Nosair, 36, an Egyptian-born Muslim, was convicted in connection with the shooting.
Rubin has made a career out of confrontation, challenging white supremacists to fistfights, or burning a Confederate flag outside a courthouse. By his own count he has been arrested more than 40 times. In 1980, he was tried and found innocent of soliciting the murders of Nazis in the United States.
A suit filed by Rubin resulted in a court decision last year banning prayer during Burbank City Council meetings.
From the Irv Rubin Bust to the Stern Gang: The Rich History of Jewish Terrorism
By Jason Vest
The Village Voice Week of December 19-25, 2001
