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By Alan D. Jay, ZOA National Executive Director
(AUGUST 10, 2023 / JEWISH LINK) I had mixed emotions after reading Lee March Grayson’s letter to the editor in the most recently published Jewish Link entitled “Time for a Change in American Jewish Advocacy Leadership” (July 26, 2023). I agree with the premise of Mr. Grayson’s letter; leadership in most Jewish advocacy groups does need to change. In fact, there is a recently published, immensely powerful book on this very subject, “Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership,” by Dr. Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser. I agree with Mr. Grayson that most of the legacy Jewish advocacy groups don’t do enough and, as Mr. Grayson suggests, some even do harm to Israel and the Jewish people. But as Dr. Jacobs and Mr. Goldwasser point out, of the legacy Jewish establishment leaders, only the ZOA and its president, Mort Klein are NOT failing the Jewish people.
Mr. Grayson asks excellent questions “… what do any of these groups do beside elaborate fundraising …” and “… Who will raise their powerful voice to combat Jew hatred?” Here I need to paraphrase “… What did ZOA do to challenge and rewrite the current hateful narrative that Israel is racist, apartheid and Nazi-like.’”
A simple search on the ZOA website will reveal a storied history and a long list of ZOA articles, media appearances, news releases and action alerts demonstrating continuous testimony to ZOA’s powerful pro-Israel, pro-Jewish activism. Here are just a few examples of the work ZOA investors support:
ZOA President Morton A. Klein impactfully testifies in front of the U.S. Congress on the Judiciary hearing entitled “Hate Crimes and the Rise of White Nationalism.”
At the crux of the question about the false accusations that Israel is an apartheid, racist country is the tolerance for holding Israel to a different standard than any other country in the world. ZOA supports and advocates for the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of antisemitism which recognizes that applying a double standard to Israel is antisemitism, and we encouraged President Biden to accept it universally. When the administration published its “Strategy to Counter Antisemitism,” which infamously “welcomes and appreciates” the flawed Nexus definition, ZOA was the only major Jewish organization to strenuously criticized the plan.
The ZOA Center for Law and Justice (CLJ) led the successful fight to get the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to reinterpret Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment and discrimination.
ZOA’s Title VI action against Rutgers University triggered OCR’s decision to begin using the IHRA working definition of antisemitism when it assesses antisemitic bias in Title VI cases, giving OCR much-needed guidance about how antisemitism is expressed today so that OCR can more effectively address the problem.
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