ADL on the Frontline

Chair's Corner

For the first time, we see prominent scholars in this country falsely blame Israel and American Jewish institutions for the Iraq war and a former president describe Israel with incendiary and erroneous rhetoric. Are these the insidious forerunners of questions of Jewish loyalty to the United States? History tells us that these kinds of defamatory and dangerous conspiracy theories can have grave consequences for Jews all over the world. It is our mandate to be a clear voice so that this evil c...

News Bytes

Ku Klux Klan Rebounds A troubling and surprising jump in Ku Klux Klan activity across the U.S. is revealed in this new report by ADL. The Klan's recruiting tactic: exploiting immigration fears. "The debate over immigration has helped to fuel an increase in Klan activity, with new groups sprouting in parts of the country that have not seen much activity," said Deborah M. Lauter, ADL Civil Rights Director. ADL's report is receiving widespread national and international media coverage, including...

Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories: New Life for Old Lies

So it was not surprising when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seized on the "Jewish control" canard in a "letter to the American people" excerpted in the November 30, 2006 issue of The New York Times, in which he asked why the U.S. supports Israel, whom he described as "infamous aggressors." His answer: "Is it not because they have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors?" In the U.S., the new anti-Semitism is emerging in a perio...

Answering Jimmy Carter - Point by Point

Israel offered the Palestinians a state at Camp David in 2000 and withdrew from Gaza in 2005, among other actions. Rather than responding positively, the Palestinians continued or increased terrorist attacks, elected Hamas - committed to Israel's destruction - and launched rockets into southern Israel.

Glen S. Lewy: 'Adl Stands Up for the Best'

"The Anti-Defamation League, more than any other organization I know, operates at the intersection of American values and Jewish values," says Glen S. Lewy, ADL's new National Chair. "ADL stands up for the best in those values and I'm proud to be a part of that." As a child of parents who emigrated from Germany in the 1930s, he has seen firsthand how "this is the only country in the world where within less than a generation, you can go from being a new immigrant to a successful part of the cu...

Yale Gives High Marks to Adl Peer Training

The Yale evaluators said that ADL's program, which uses a combination of instructional and peer-influence strategies to combat name-calling, bullying and harassment, had a positive impact on students' knowledge and awareness about issues of prejudice and discrimination in their environments, as well as their response to incidents of bias they witness.

Abercrombie &Amp; Fitch Invests in Anti-Bias Programming

"The Grady trainings were wonderful," said Southeast Region Education Coordinator HoIIi Levinson. "The second training session was particularly meaningful. The kids initiated this intense discussion about homophobia - you could see the gears clicking as these students' lives were changed from that day on." Abercrombie & Fitch Vice President for Diversity Todd Corley said his company was partnering with ADL "to offer provocative learning modules for students, student leaders and those who ...

Lesson From March of the Living

Non-Jewish alumni of the City College of New York who as Jewish Studies majors participated in ADL's 2005 March of the Living delegation in Poland - marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz - shared their experiences with Catholic educators from the Diocese of Brooklyn at a festive Sukkot meal with the Jewish community at Park Slope Jewish Center.

The Goal: To Meet Officials of 70 Nations

ADL leaders have set an impressive goal - to visit all 70 consulates in the San Francisco area - as part of international outreach efforts by the Central Pacific Regional Office.

People

Gary Bretton-Granatoor, ADL's Director of lnterfaith Affairs since 2004, is ADL's new Director of Education. Previously, Gary was Senior Rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City, and held several high-level positions with the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC). He has also been a lecturer at the New York University School of Continuing Education and a faculty member at the Hebrew Union CollegeJewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) School of Education. Gary received his...

Focus

New Leadership at National Meeting

Hiram Bingham IV, who as a U.S. diplomat in Marseilles, France, defied orders and granted more than 2,500 American visas to Jews and other refugees from the Nazis, was honored posthumously with ADL's Courage to Care Award. The award, which recognizes rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, was presented by Mr. [Abraham H. Foxman], a Holocaust survivor, to Hiram Bingham's son, Robert Kim Bingham. Among those rescued by Hiram Bingham, who served in Marseilles from 1939 to 1941, were noted artist...

Civil Rights

'A Setback' in Reporting Hate Crime in the U.S.

The report addresses the questions most often raised regarding hate crime, including, "How does the federal government record hate crimes?", "How do state hate crime statutes work?", "Are hate crimes charges more difficult to prove than other crimes?" and "Do hate crime laws violate the First Amendment or punish thought?" The report is also available online at www.adl.org/combating_hate/.

Adl Report Exposes Florida's 'Dark Side'

Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, radical lslamists - all are dangerously active in the state of Florida, according to The Dark Side of the Sunshine State, the new second Edition of an ADL report on extremist activity in Florida.

Education

The New York Times Features Adl Program

The article, highlighting the A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE® Institute's Names Can Really Hurt Us anti-bullying assembly program, where teens speak to their peers about bullying and harassment in school, quoted Connecticut Region Education Director Marji Lipshez-Shapiro, who created Names Can Really Hurt Us, and Connecticut parents and educators in praising the program - which has reached more than 65,000...

For Holocaust Scholars, a Deeper Understanding

At the Institute, the teachers heard Holocaust-related lectures, includina testimony from three Holocaust survivors including Roman Kent, pictured - two of whom are featured in Echoes and Reflections: A Multimedia Curriculum on the Holocaust, which was created by ADL in...

Combating Bias Lessons in Cyberspace

In addition, The Initiative is reaching out to the Spanish-speaking community with a translation of its existing Family Workshop materials into Spanish. This will enable ADL to offer The Initiative Family Workshops to Spanish-speaking parents and guardians of preschool age children and better meet the needs of Hispanic-American families. "Challenging Anti-Semitism: Debunking the Myths and Responding with Facts" is a new installment of Curriculum Connections, ADLs series of free online teachin...

Across The Country

Adl, Sun-Times Partner to Teach the First Amendment

To explain to students the critical importance of the First Amendment and its protection of the freedoms of speech, religion and press - in light of polls showing that students lack knowledge about this topic - ADL and the Chicago Sun-Times co-sponsored a First Amendment student essay contest in which nearly 200 Chicago-area middle and high school students took part. Excerpts from the winning essays were published in the Sun-Times' special Newspapers in Education supplement, which was include...

Making Pennsylvania No Place for Hate®

"It is estimated that one in every three middle and high school students across the country have been involved in a bullying incident," said Governor [Edward Rendell] in a letter to all Pennsylvania public school superintendents. "It's important that we do all we can to ensure our schools are free of bias, bullying, and name-calling - serious detractors that often interfere with a student's...

'The Journalist and the Jihadi: The Murder of Daniel Pearl'

The Florida premiere of "The Journalist and the Jihadi: The Murder of Daniel Pearl," a Home Box Office (HBO) documentary, in Palm Beach was cosponsored by ADL's Florida Regional Office, the Palm Beach Fellowship of Christians...

Extremism: Common Concern for Adl and Latino Leaders

ADL International Affairs Director Michael A. Salberg, second from left, and Pacific Southwest Regional Director Amanda Susskind, second from right, were among the Jewish and Latino community leaders who attended the national conference of National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the nation's leading Latino civil rights organization, in Los Angeles. Ms. Susskind also joined ADL Investigative Researcher Joanna Mendelson and Lt.

International

Abraham Foxman Receives France's Highest Honor; Adl Mission Meets with Pope

President [Jacques Chirac] said that throughout his life, Mr. [Abraham H. Foxman] had championed three "inseparable causes": the duty to remember the Holocaust, the battle against anti-Semitism, and promoting dialogue for peace among nations and people. "You draw the strength of this commitment," he continued, "from your personal life experience, marked by the tragedy of the Holocaust." At the Vatican, the ADL delegation had a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI, who issued his strongest ...

Adl Foundation

'A Great Success' for Legacy Campaign

This is "a great success that will contribute immeasurably to the fiscal viability of ADL, now and in the future," said National Chair Glen S. Lewy, who had served as LEC's first Chair. The spot emphasizes to potential donors "that their generation had lived through some terrible events in the second half of the 20th Century," said current LEC Chair Helen Warren Spector, "and want to ensure that their children and grandchildren don't have the same experiences."

Adl Mourns Elliot Welles, Dedicated Nazi Hunter

"No matter how many obstacles were put in his way, [Elliot Welles] would just keep pressing ahead, fighting for justice and for historical truth, shining the bright light of public exposure on those who resisted his entreaties," said EIi Rosenbaum, director of the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI), which was established in 1979 to find and prosecute fugitive Nazis. "He was a standard-bearer for the post-Holocaust imperatives 'Never Forget' and 'Never Again.'"