Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt on Tuesday responded to Twitter/X owner Elon Musk’s criticism of their aggressive pro-censorship ad boycott campaigns by accusing him of “engaging with a highly toxic antisemitic campaign” which will incite violence against Jewish people.
From Haaretz, “ADL Hits Back at Elon Musk for Engaging With ‘Highly Toxic Antisemitic Campaign’ “:
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt on Tuesday issued his first public comments after an antisemitic social media campaign spearheaded by X chairman Elon Musk targeted his organization.
“It is profoundly disturbing that Elon Musk spent the weekend engaging with a highly toxic antisemitic campaign on his platform — a campaign started by an unrepentant bigot that then was heavily promoted by individuals such as white supremacist Nick Fuentes, Christian nationalist Andrew Torba, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and others,” Greenblatt said.
Musk had defended himself against allegations of antisemitism, all while he and several of his prominent far-right supporters accused the ADL of fomenting antisemitism in an act of explicit victim-blaming. Musk further threatened to take legal action against the Jewish anti-discrimination organization, accusing it of being behind the company’s $22 billion drop in value after advertisers fled en masse over the proliferation of hate speech on the platform following his takeover.
Greenblatt noted that the campaign “manifested in the real world when masked men marched in Florida on Saturday brazenly waving flags adorned with swastikas and chanting ‘Ban the ADL.’ “
“But to be clear, the real issue is neither ADL nor the threat of a frivolous lawsuit. This urgent matter is the safety of the Jewish people in the face of increasing, intensifying antisemitism,” he continued.
The ADL CEO charged Musk with engaging with and elevating these antisemites at a time of unprecedented spikes in antisemitism targeting Jewish institutions and private residential communities.
“And so, this behavior is not just alarming nor reckless. It is flat out dangerous and deeply irresponsible. We need responsible leaders to lead, to stop inflaming hatred and to step back from the brink before it’s too late,” Greenblatt added.
Musk can probably add this inflammatory rhetoric to his lawsuit against the ADL.
Without a doubt, the time when the most “unprecedented spikes in antisemitism targeting Jewish institutions” occurred was in 2017 after Trump’s election when over 245 bomb threats were called into Jewish community centers throughout America.
The ADL used the threats to harangue President Trump for “emboldening anti-Semites” and legislation was passed as a result of lobbying from the ADL to increase funding and security grants to Jewish groups.
It turned out nearly all of the JCC bomb threats were carried out by “18 year old” Israeli-American Michael Ron David Kadar, who was found to have a bitcoin wallet worth millions of shekels (a few copycat threats were called in by African-American Juan Thompson).
Kadar was found guilty in Israel in June 2018 for the bomb threats and sentenced to ten years in prison.
In 2019, evidence was dug up by geneticist Franklin Stahl, Ph.D., a member of the National Academy of Science, suggesting that Kadar’s Israeli mother, Dr. Tamar Kadar, who is a chemical weapons researcher at the Mossad-operated Israeli Institute for Biological Research, may have been the real culprit behind the calls.
Stahl reported that Kadar, who evidence indicates was actually 27 years old and not 18 years old at the time of his arrest, was nothing more than a fall guy. Additionally, Kadar appears to have been freed from prison by Israel and allowed to travel back to America only to be arrested and jailed on a weapons charge in Illinois.
Kadar’s story completely fell off the map shortly after it was uncritically reported in 2017 and the ADL refused to remove his hoax calls from their list of “anti-Semitic incidents” for 2017.
The ADL never apologized to Trump or his supporters for smearing them for supposedly inciting these (hoax) bomb threats and never offered to give back the money they got from Congress due to hyping the threats.
“The new information does not change our view that the bomb threats against Jewish institutions were anti-Semitic and harmful to the communities targeted,” the ADL said in a press release after Kadar’s arrest. “No matter who placed the calls or why the calls were placed, the outcome was the same: they instilled fear and disrupted communities across the country.”
This post was originally published at Information Liberation