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By Morton A. Klein, ZOA National President
(August 29, 2022 / JNS) There were some good points in CNN’s recent special on antisemitism, such as a discussion of the importance of the Secure Community Network’s synagogue security training, a description of the harassment and death threats against a pro-Israel college student, and the general acknowledgment that antisemitism is a serious, growing problem.
Unfortunately, however, the special grossly downplayed left-wing and Islamist antisemitism, and didn’t even mention black nationalists and other major sources of Jew-hatred. This seems in large part due to CNN’s reliance on the left-wing Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and its CEO, former Obama administration official Jonathan Greenblatt, as well as U.S. State Department antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt, who has compared pro-Jewish former President Donald Trump to the Nazis, and the far-left group T’ruah’s Jill Jacobs.
The ADL, for example, recently stated that boycotts of Israel alone do not count as antisemitic; praised antisemitic congresswoman Ilhan Omar as “committed to a more just world”; defended antisemitic NGOs like Amnesty International, along with the extremist anti-Israel philanthropist George Soros; and tried to defund and remove the tax exemption from three pro-Israel groups, including Christian Zionists; among numerous other dangerous positions.
T’ruah, which is unremittingly hostile to Israel, partners with the discredited anti-Israel NGO Breaking the Silence and has repeatedly tried to defund hundreds of humanitarian Jewish pro-Israel charities. Alarmingly, the CNN program publicized far-left T’ruah head Jill Jacobs’s extremely limited definition of antisemitism without giving the Zionist Organization of America or anyone else an opportunity to provide a broader definition.
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