Anti-Defamation League

I got a mailing from the Anti-Defamation League today asking for a donation.  It accurately warned  about the increasing danger of anti-Semitism and rightly pointed to the need  to oppose it and to the ADL’s record of success in opposing anti-Semitism in the past.  However it led me to worry how successful the league will be in the future.

 It is an obvious and well understood truism that one must identify an enemy or threat before one can defeat  or neutralize it.   The serious  anti-Semitism in the  world today comes from jihadist Muslims and from leftists in America and Europe among whom fashionable anti-Zionism and multiculturalism have  led to acceptance of or   become mixed with stealthy or overt anti-Semitism.  Jew hating Muslims are the only large group in the world who have the means and have expressed the desire to  kill large numbers of Jews.  In this country the Democrats are the only large political organization which tolerates vocal anti-Semites among its local and national leaders and spokesmen.

Yet the mailing from ADL ignores all of that and focuses on the few insignificant and powerless Klansmen, white supremacists,  and wanna be Nazis who show up in the news from time to time. There was a time when people such as these were a threat. The Klan almost took over the Democratic party in the 1920s, and the Bund was something to worry about in the 1930s.  However that is no longer  true.  As the joke goes, there are probably more Americans who think they have been abducted by aliens  than who think they are Klansmen.  The white supremacists are generally despised or ignored by people of all races, and the pretend Nazis are laughed off as sadly deranged and pathetic losers.

It is of course easier to stick with these safe targets.  Identifying and mentioning the serious  threats would require violating rules of politically correctness, and that would take nerve. But I don’t see how the ADL can be successful without doing so – any more than someone could expect to be successful  in crusading to prevent lung cancer while being afraid to mention smoking.