Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith - excerpt from Lee O'Brien, American Jewish Organizations and Israel, 1986

This page is an extract, reproduced with permission, from Lee O'Brien, American Jewish Organizations and Israel, Washington DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1986. 
This page is reproduced by permission of the Institute of Palestine Studies, granted on 25 February 2014. The Institute retains copyright of all material.
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Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith
*Year established: 1913 
*National Chairman: Kenneth J. Bialkin 
*National Executive Committee Chairman: Burton Levinson 
*National Director: Nathan Perlmutter 
*Address: 823 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017 
*Publications: ADL Bulletin; Face to Face: An Interreligious Bulletin; Fact Finding Report; Israel Backgrounder; Law Notes, Rights, Law; Research and 
Evaluation Report; Discriminations Report 
==General Background== 
The development of the ADL has to be placed in the context of the B'nai B'rith International, ADL's parent organization. B'nai B'rith (Sons of the Covenant) was established in 1843 as a fraternal Jewish order; at present, it has affiliates in forty-two countries, and it places a major emphasis on ‘preserving Judaism through projects in and for Israel and for Soviet Jewry.’ Its American membership has increased from 23,000 Jewish males in 1910 to over 200,000 in 1965. A female counterpart, B'nai B'rith Women, was established in 1897; it ‘supports a variety of services to Israel.’ Edward E. Grusd, B'nai B'rith: The Story of a Covenant. New York: Appleton-Century, 1966 
In 1913, Sigmund Livingston, an attorney from Bloomington, Illinois, persuaded B'nai B'rith to establish the ADL to target overt anti-Semitism. The new organization was headquartered in Chicago, with Livingston as its first national chair, a position he held until his death in 1945. To form its first executive committee, 150 leaders ‘representing a cross-section of Jewish communal life and interests’ were invited to join; among them was Adolph Ochs, publisher of the New York Times. In 1947, ADL headquarters were moved to New York City, and the regional office structure was expanded. 
According to ADL's 1913 charter
: The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience, and if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish People. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike, and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against, and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens. ADL, Not the Work of a Day: The Story of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith, 1965 
In its first few decades, the ADL's major arena of work was clearly the United States, where it struggled to protect Jews and other minority groups from discrimination and civil rights abuse. It helped focus attention on the various racist and fascist movements in the country, such as the Ku Klux Klan; Henry Ford's newspaper, The Dearborn Independent; the American Nazi Party; and the John Birch Society. In the 1950s, important action issues included quotas in education, restricted housing and resorts, Jim Crow laws, and employment discrimination. The ADL was continuously concerned with Christian-Jewish relations and, in the 1960s, Black-Jewish relations; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a major focus of activity. The ADL also responded strongly to individual events, such as outbreaks of anti-Semitic vandalism, or specific instances of discrimination in hiring, housing, and so forth. On the international level, from the 1930s on, the major issue was the Holocaust and then the rebuilding of Germany, where the ADL was concerned over the failure to punish Nazi war criminals and the persistence of former Nazis in government positions. The ADL also produced reports on the situation of Jews throughout the world. 
It is on the basis of this domestic-based, prejudice-targeting agenda that the ADL has acquired its moral legitimacy and prestige. Harry Truman described ADL efforts as
: ‘A rose in the hearts and minds of the American people’, ‘By educating our citizens to overcome the evils of prejudice.’ 
Dwight Eisenhower told the ADL
: ‘you have helped to make our land a better place to live in.’
John F. Kennedy characterized the ADL's
: ‘tireless pursuit of equality of treatment for all Americans,’ as having made ‘a lasting and substantial contribution to our democracy.’
Lyndon Johnson expressed his support with more poetic enthusiasm
: ‘Wherever your torches burn, tolerance, decency and charity have been illuminated. Bigots and bias hide wherever you come into view.’
President Reagan signed a joint Congressional resolution proclaiming 12 November 1983 as ADL Day. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 18 November, 1983 
==Structure== 
The ADL's highest decision-making body is the llO-member national commission, which is equivalent to a board of directors and meets annually. Fifty-two members are drawn from the American Jewish community at large, and fifty-eight from B'nai B'rith channels. There is also an executive committee. The most active individual leaders are the national chair, national director, chair of the executive committee, national staff, and other officers. Each of the ADL's twenty-seven regional offices is guided by its own advisory board drawn from community figures.
The ADL's work is divided into four major categories, each constituting an independent division: civil rights, communications, community service, and program. All deal with both national and international issues. 
*The regional offices include Central Pacific (San Francisco), Connecticut (New Haven), D.C.-Maryland (Washington, D.C.), Florida (Miami), Long' Island (East Meadow, N.Y.), Michigan (Detroit), Midwest (Chicago), Minnesota and the Dakotas (Minneapolis), Missouri, Southern Illinois (Clayton, Mo.), Mountain States (Denver), New England (Boston), New Jersey (Livingston), New York (N.Y.), New York State (N.Y.), North Carolina-Virginia (Richmond), Northwest Texas-Oklahoma (Dallas), Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana (Columbus), Pacific Northwest (Seattle), Pacific Southwest (Los Angeles), Palm Beach County (West Palm Beach), Pennsylvania-West Virginia-Delaware (Philadelphia), Plains States (Omaha), San Diego-Arizona (San Diego), South Central (New Orleans), Southeastern (Atlanta), Southwest (Houston), and Wisconsin-Upper Midwest (Milwaukee). There are ADL offices in Jerusalem, Paris, and Rome. 
 
Although an issue may fall into the domain of one division, it often passes through other divisions for coordinated attention. The ADL also sets up numerous departments, committees, and task forces to deal with specific issues. Perhaps the most distinctive of these are the ‘domestic factfinding’ and ‘research and evaluation’ departments, both of which are basically involved in data gathering (including surveillance) and data retrieval, activities that other Jewish organizations do not pursue to anywhere near the same degree. 
The ADL is registered as a tax-exempt religious organization. Like the AJC, it withdrew from the United Jewish Fund in 1952 out of opposition to the large allotment of aid going overseas, and the two organizations formed the Joint Defense Appeal. This effort collapsed in 1963, when the AJC reorganized to concentrate more on international work, and each organization then initiated a separate fundraising campaign, an arrangement that proved more successful. In addition to its own fundraising, the ADL receives a yearly allocation from the federations' Welfare Fund and is a member of CJF's Large City Budgeting Conference. 
In 1913, the ADL started with a budget of $200 and two desks; by 1974, the annual budget was more than $5 million Total revenue for fiscal year 1981-82 was nearly $15 million; about 95 percent was generated from direct and indirect public support, and slightly over a half million dollars came from government grants. Total expenditures were $14.7 million -69 percent for program services, 21 percent for fundraising, and the rest for management and general expenditures. ADL, IRS Form 990 for fiscal year 1 July 1981 to 30 June 1982 
Since finances generally reflect priorities, it is informative to examine the breakdown of Program Services expenditures, which constitute over two-thirds of total expenditures in the 1981-82 IRS report. The largest disbursement in this category (46 percent) was for the operations of the twenty-eight professionally staffed offices. The second highest expenditure (20 percent) was for publications and communications. About 12 percent was spent on ‘national affairs’ for maintenance of ‘all research, library files, and investigation data relating to anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic trends, bigotry, and hate movements.’ Only 6 percent is listed for ‘Mid-East,’ but this figure is misleading, because Israel support work is in fact on the agenda of virtually all departments. The remaining 12 percent of the budget was for interreligious, legal, and foreign affairs, and for leadership recruitment.
==Israel Support Work== 
With its priority on domestic issues and the very real problem of anti-Semitism in America, the ADL historically distanced itself from the issues of Israel and Zionism. In 1949, the ADL published this policy statement
: After several months of study, the Executive Committee of ADL's National Commission formalized organizational policy to meet issues raised by the creation of Israel and the impact of these problems on the fight against anti-Semitism. The policy is: 
1. Augmenting the currently favorable attitude of Americans to Israel. ADL will dramatize the historical and cultural background of Israel's development and 
struggle for independence as a force for developing better group relations in America.
2. Supporting B'nai B'rith's position-urging de jure recognition and Israel's admission to full V.N. membership. It will be the province of ADL's program 
division to point up how the accomplishments and philosophy of Israel parallel the growth and development of American freedom, stressing these themes: 
* Contributions of the Israeli [sic] in World War II and their subsequent heroic struggle for independence, not unlike the birth of the V.S. in 1776, and the pioneering efforts of the Israeli in reclaiming Palestine's desert much as American pioneers of the 19th century pushed back the frontiers to the Pacific. 
* ADL will cooperate with the American Jewish Committee and other members of the NJCRAC, as well as the Zionist Emergency Council in developing its Israel program. 
* The League emphasizes that it will not become involved in Israel's political problems, holding these to be strictly the concern of the new state. ADL, ADL Bulletin, January 1949 
Although this policy statement embodies Zionist assumptions about Palestine and the indigenous population, it does not assert the centrality of Israel or an organic linkage between American Jews and Israel. Indeed, the recurrent use of the word ‘Israel’ illustrates the ADL's outlook in 1949: support for Israel, but with a clear differentiation between Israelis and American Jewry. The fact that the ADL had not yet embraced the Jewish people concept that lies at the core of Zionism is further illustrated by themes covered in the ADL Bulletin up to 1966. In general, there are remarkably few articles dealing with Israel, Zionism, or the Middle East, and most of these consist of attacks on the activities of Arab or pro-Arab groups in the United States, on the grounds that they are anti-Semitic. (It should be noted, however, that these articles already exhibit the anti-Arab slant that became more virulent in the 1970s and 1980s.) There is an upsurge in articles in 1956 because of the Suez crisis, but from 1957 to 1959 there are no Israel-related articles at all.
==The ‘Israelization’ of ADL== 
The shift that occurs in the ADL, which can be described as an almost complete ‘Israelization’ of its programs, priorities, and actions, coincides with the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The ADL Bulletin hailed the 1967 war as ‘The Miracle Victory,’ and, indeed, for mainstream American Jews Israel's military success in 1967 led to a sense of identification with and support for Israel that the creation of the state had not. By the mid-1970s, this sentiment had pervaded the Jewish community, and the ADL leadership had adopted an active, aggressive pro-Israel position. Particularly relevant to the present focus of the ADL-indeed, its cornerstone-is the assumption that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism, and the corollary that criticism of Israel reflects insensitivity to American Jews and constitutes a form of anti-Semitism. Thus, the ADL's original role of combatting anti-Semitism in the United States has come to be dominated by Israel defense work. In The New Anti-Semitism, a book written in 1974 by ADL's general counsel Arnold Forster and national director Benjamin Epstein, ‘insensitivity’, undistinguished from antiSemitism, is the most evident word in the entire volume. In equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, the ADL officials write that
: Today the left and the far right are again patent fellow travelers in their hatred of Israel and its position as ally of the United States. Arnold Forster and Benjamin Epstein, The New Anti-Semitism. New York: McGraw Hill, 1974 
This assertion represents a substantial departure from the ADL's traditional emphasis on the ‘hate groups’ of the far right. But by including the left, the ADL attempts to legitimize its attacks on any expression of solidarity with the Palestinian cause-or what ADL calls ‘politically powered anti-Semitism.’ 
For Nathan Perlmutter, ADL national director, the fight against selling the AWACS to Saudi Arabia reveals the ‘real anti-Semitism in America.’ These ‘real’ anti-Semites are the
: ‘Semitically-neutral arms salesmen who talked of jobs, of black ink for the aerospace industry and of recycling petrodollars. These are today a thousandfold more telling adversaries [of the Jews] than juveniles painting swastikas on Jewish owned buildings.’ ADL, ADL Bulletin, September 1982 (He develops this theme further in The Real AntiSemitism in America, co-authored with Ruth Perlmutter in 1982.) 
The ADL now maintains a staunch anti-Soviet position. In a 1984 letter to the editor in the New York Times, Abraham Foxman, ADL associate national director, wrote
: ‘The Soviets feed on endemic Middle East radicalism, which exists independent of Israeli policies or of alleged American assertiveness. Basic hostility to the West, social and economic dissatisfaction, opposition to Arab moderates and rejection of Israel's right to exist are all sources of this regional radicalism and nicely dovetail with Soviet radicalism.’ New York Times, 1 January 1984 
The extent to which the ADL has become ‘Israelized’ can be demonstrated clearly by juxtaposing its positions in 1966 with those from the beginning of the 1980s. The book contains such inconsistencies that critic Walter Goodman, in his review of it in The New Leader, concluded that
: ‘A good deal of what is presented here as the new anti-Semitism is not anti-Semitism at all. Every criticism is not a defamation, and unless the ADL is careful, it's going to give anti-Semitism a good name.’ The New Leader; 27 May 1974 
==ADL: Purpose & Program (1966) ADL: Campaign '80’(1980)== 
*1. Uncover anti-Semitism : 1. Combat anti-Semitism 
*2. Strengthen interreligious : 2. Tell Israel's story understanding 
*3. Rescue Soviet Jewry : 3. Expose the radical right 
*4. Protect world Jewry : 4. Secure equal rights for all 
*5. Expose extremism 
*5. End discrimination 
*6. Strengthen interfaith 
*6. Insure the safety of Jews understanding abroad 
*7. End discrimination 
*7. Inform opinion molders 
*8. Improve school curricula 
*9. Instruct teachers 
*10. Strengthen the local community 
In the goals put forward in 1966, the only mention of Israel is confined to one sentence on the Arab boycott and the Arab League, under the category of "Insure the safety of Jews abroad. ADL, ADL: Purpose and Program: 8-9 
The ADL's ‘Israelized’ position is also reflected in the set of resolutions adopted by the national commission during its sixty-ninth meeting, on 3 June 1982, just before the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Six of the nine resolutions adopted dealt directly with Israel and the Middle East: 
Criticizing the National Council of Churches' statement on the Middle East as ‘biased, misinformed and insensitive,’ the ADL urged ‘all religiously motivated persons to assert their religious traditions of social justice and reconciliation by speaking out and rejecting those who support terrorists and their methods." 
The ADL called on the American government to launch a diplomatic offensive against the PLO and pledged to ‘devote maximum efforts to educate the public, the media, and American officials as to the need for such an active and new policy by the U.S.’
The ADL expressed opposition to the sale of jet fighters and missiles to Jordan. The ADL called on the United States to withdraw its support from the United Nations if that organization acts to expel Israel. The ADL commended the governments of Zaire and Costa Rica for taking diplomatic steps favorable to Israel: Zaire for re-establishing its diplomatic relations with Israel, and Costa Rica for moving its embassy to Jerusalem. 
In the last resolution, the ADL ‘called on Congress to enact legislation to remove the secrecy surrounding Arab petrodollar investments in the United States that threaten American 'independence' in the formulation of domestic and foreign policy.’ ADL, ADL Bulletin, September 1982 
The ADL's actions have become so predicated on the primacy of Israel that some liberal-minded American Jewish leaders have offered public criticism. Rabbi Alexander Schindler, the president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations
American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) and former president of the Presidents Conference, for example, deplored this trend in a 1980 sermon delivered before trustees of the UAHC
: ‘When the Jabotinsky foundation presents its award to Jerry Falwell ... for his support of Israel and the Anti-Defamation League offers its platform to Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network to speak about Jerusalem, it is madness-and suicide.’ Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 24 November 1980 
==Operations== 
In its early decades, the ADL would approach persons or institutions considered to be anti-Semitic and privately attempt to persuade or reason them into retracting abusive statements and correcting offensive behaviour. In later years, ADL has turned to more public and aggressive measures, which it classifies as ‘Educational’, ‘Vigilance Work’, and ‘Legislation’.
In fact, ‘Vigilance Work’ has become outright surveillance of individuals and groups, the results of which are fed into both the Israeli intelligence gathering apparatus, via their consulates and embassy, and American domestic intelligence, via the FBI. Top ADL officials have admitted the use of clandestine surveillance techniques. Not the Work of A Day, the official account of the rise of the ADL, reports that in 1936, the ‘ADL managed to expose many Americans who supported Kuhn [leader of the Bund, the anti-Zionist Jewish socialists.]’ Although the Bund's membership lists were kept secret, ‘the League had its own undercover investigators, one of them being Kuhn's personal chauffeur.’ ADL, Not the Work of a Day : 32 
Today, the ADL is much more active than other community relations organizations in the use of its regional offices and constituency for information gathering, and dissemination. 
The central headquarters in New York City provides regional offices with analysis sheets, sample letters to the editor to be placed in local media, biographies of Israeli leaders and anti-Zionist speakers, and directives on how to deal with topical issues. The regional offices in turn monitor all Israel-related or Middle East-related activities in their areas, such as the media, campus speakers, and films. By bringing the local events to the attention of the central headquarters, they playa pivotal role in ADL's overall supervision of the national scene.
==Stifling Dissent== 
In an internal memorandum of 18 September 1970, from Abraham Foxman to the ADL regional offices, Jewish organizations are advised ‘not to sponsor or co-sponsor’ the appearances of Israeli journalist and Knesset member Uri Avnery and ‘not engage in public debate with him.’
Avnery's nationwide tour was sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the American Friends Service Committee. Labeling Avnery ‘an opponent of the traditional concepts of Zionism and Judaism’, Foxman warned that he ‘may say things which will trouble and even embarrass the Jewish community.’ Various Jewish student groups on campus and the Israeli Student Association had been notified of Avnery's itinerary, the memo went on, and ‘will challenge him whenever necessary.’ Attached to the memo was a ‘fact sheet’ outlining Avnery's views that was prepared by 
ADL's Research and Evaluation Department. Copies of the memo were sent also to the Community Relations Councils. 
One Jewish activist critical of Israeli policies discovered in 1983 that the ADL maintained a file on him going back to 1970; it included information on the subject gathered from local newspapers, talks on campuses, interoffice memos (from the institution where the subject teaches), business meetings, talks on radio and TV, and press and other miscellaneous materials. As the file revealed, specific individuals had been assigned to monitor this person's lectures, either by tape recordings and verbatim transcriptions, or by detailed summaries of what the subject spoke about, the context of the lecture, other participants, size of audience, questions from the floor, mood of the audience, and so forth. In some cases, these observers successfully penetrated closed meetings in which the subject participated. Subsequently, the ADL prepared and disseminated a short primer on this person, following the ‘myth’ and ‘fact’ format, and distributed it to their agents for use at future speaking engagements. 
The file reveals a fixed pattern regarding the flow of information between ADL headquarters and the regional offices. Most of the information was forwarded from the regional offices to the subject's file in New York. A local Jewish federation also cooperated by forwarding summaries of lectures by the subject to New York. At one point, ADL headquarters sent a memo to the responsible regional office with a copy of a letter, bearing the subject's signature, which invited friends to join in a new group that would look critically at the Middle East. Upon receiving this letter, the regional office sent a copy of it, with a memorandum labeled ‘confidential’, to the Israeli consul in that city, commenting that the 
consul might be interested in the document. 
In 1982, the ADL produced a very extensive ‘Curriculum Guide’ to help teachers expose ‘extremist groups in the United States’. In the section of the guide that deals with ‘the common elements of extremism of the left and right’, two ‘instructional objectives’ are presented: to teach the students that:
(1) Both left and right share the same beliefs in ‘hostility to democratic ideas’, ‘faith in conspiracy theories’, ‘anti-Semitism’, and ‘enmity to Israel’.
(2) That both share the same behavior in ‘violence and terrorism’, ‘slavish adherence to a party line’, and ‘actions aimed at the destabilization and destruction of our democratic system’. 
After the students are taken through a series of highly selective readings about western and eastern Europe, they are presented with reasons for the ‘anti-Israel emphasis of the Radical Left’: 
a. Both the Soviet Union and China support the Arabs. 
(1) Russia has a heavy stake in the Arab world, having invested vast sums in military and economic aid. 
(2) China, in an attempt to wean the Arab world away from the Soviet Union, outdoes the Russians in its anti-Israel rhetoric. 
(3) Thus, all shades of the radical spectrum, whether pro-Soviet or pro-Chinese can agree on an anti-Israel position. 
b. The United States supports Israel. 
(1) The Radical Left's most important objective is the destruction of the United States, the prime example of a democratic, capitalist society. 
(2) The destruction of a democratic state with close ties to the United States, and through whom America can exercise influence in the Middle East is an excellent 
way of diminishing America's power and position in the world. 
c. To strike against Israel is also a way of striking against Jews in general. 
(1) Jews viewed as part of the affluent, smug, white, capitalist class that ‘oppresses’ the racial minorities. 
(2) Jews with their liberal attitudes and voting patterns viewed as obstacles to the growth of revolutionary consciousness by their perpetuation of the ‘myth’ that 
progress can be achieved peacefully through normal democratic processes. ADL, Extremist Groups in the United States: A Curriculum Guide, 1982 
The ADL's New England Regional Office circulated a confidential letter to ‘Campus Jewish Leaders’, dated November 1983, informing Jewish campus leaders that the ADL was willing to help them to combat ‘anti-Semitism and anti-Israel propaganda and create positive images of Jews and Israel’, to which end that office had established a part-time campus coordinator for their campus ‘Hasbara [information] Network’. 
In December 1983, about twenty New Jewish Agenda members in the Boston area received hate mail after cars belonging to three of them were vandalized. New Jewish Agenda, which is largely composed of dovish Zionists, asked ADL's regional office in Boston to look into these incidents of harassment, but the ADL refused. 
Around the same time, following the release of Costa Gavras' film Hanna K., which deals with the Palestinian issue through the experiences of an American Jewish woman who migrates to Israel and becomes a lawyer there, ADL headquarters circulated a memo to its regional offices ‘to provide ... a means to respond to problems that might arise with regard to the film.’ The memo, dated 10 October 1983, included one review by Shimon Samuels, director of ADL's European office, and another by Abba Cohen, assistant director of its Middle Eastern Department, both of which accused the film of being inaccurate and distorting Israel's positions and actions. 
The ADL responded even more aggressively in the case of another film, Women Under Siege, which is a twenty-minute documentary about Palestinian women in Rashidiyeh camp in southern Lebanon. Women Under Seige is part of a three-film series on women in changing Middle Eastern societies produced by Elizabeth Fernea, a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, and the entire project received some of its funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Charging that the film is 
: ‘unabashed propaganda for the Palestine Liberation Organization.’
The ADL complained to the National Endowment and argued that ‘obviously, American taxpayers never intended their money to be used for such a purpose.’ New York Times, 25 June 1983 
The National Endowment, perhaps reflecting an alteration in its political orientation under the Reagan administration, concurred with ADL's charges and stated that the film should not have received NEH funding.
==The Lebanon War== 
The ADL circulated a number of in-house memoranda during and after the 1982 war in Lebanon. The subject of a 16 June memo to regional offices was ‘Israel's military action against the PLO.’ Included with the memo was a question and answer piece on Israel's military action prepared by Harry Wall, ADL's Israel director, and press reports favorable to Israel and anti-PLO. The memo's suggestion to the regional office was to ‘emphasize the gains to U.S. interests as a result of Israel's defeat of two Soviet allies.’
On 28 June, the same packet was sent to rabbis, under the signature of the co-chair of ADL's Interfaith Affairs Committee. The message this time was to engage your ‘colleagues in the Christian community’ in conversations on the situation. On 10 December 1982, a memo on "Israel and the Middle East after Lebanon" was sent to the regional office under the signature of ADL's associate director, Abraham Foxman. The thrust of the five-page essay is that, like other wars, the war in Lebanon has generated its own myths, which Foxman summarizes as follows:
*(1) ‘Israel is no longer the moral society it once was’
*(2) ‘The PLO has gained a political victory out of military defeat in Lebanon’ 
*(3) ‘U.S. interests have been harmed by its support of Israel in the war’ 
*(4) ‘Israel's operation in Lebanon has made peace even more remote.’
The memo urges the regional offices to use the article ‘extensively with influentials in your region, particularly in trying to place as many as possible in your area newspapers.’ 
With the debate on American policy in Lebanon heating up, another memo was sent to the regional offices on 1 September 1983. It included what was termed a ‘disturbing’ New York Times editorial that blamed Israel ‘for dragging Americans into this venture’, and the ADL response. Two weeks later, following Prime Minister Menachem Begin's declared intention to resign, a memo was sent to all regional directors, praising Begin as ‘a man of history.’ The text of the statement lauding Begin was intentionally sent on plain paper, and the regional directors were urged to ‘place it as an Op-Ed piece in the general press of your area.’
After another two weeks, the ambiguity generated by the situation in Lebanon, in terms of both U.S. and Israeli positions, prompted ADL central headquarters to offer further clarifications to its regional offices. 
Thus, a 5 October 1983 ‘not for publication’ memo from Foxman to the regional directors provided a brief analysis of American policy in Lebanon, prepared by Ken Jacobson, ADL director of Middle Eastern affairs. Implied in the analysis is a lamentation of indecisive American policy in Lebanon, which would inevitably force the Americans into ‘political negotiations with the Syrians, undoubtedly resulting in major concessions to Syria’ and potentially adverse effects on Israel. The analysis sees the Saudis and Syrians gaining with the United States at Israel's expense. It concludes that ‘everything should be done to support an equitable settlement that helps stabilize Lebanon, that helps reduce Syrian influence and that allows Israel to maintain peace and security in its northern towns.’
 
Finally, on 8 March 1984, ADL placed a paid advertisement in the New York Times, where it mourned the loss of ‘peace between Israel and Lebanon,’ as a result of ‘Syrian poison and international neglect.’ Peace died, according to the ad, after having been ‘subjected to that 36 year-old Middle Eastern disease, Arab rejectionism. Syria and Saudi Arabia, joined by the Soviet Union and Iranian terrorists, worked overtime to snuff out its life.’ Its passing should be mourned not only by ADL but by ‘those who care about the triumph of civilization over barbarism.’ New York Times, 8 March 1984 
==Publications== 
In addition to ADL Bulletin, the ADL has an extensive publishing program that includes both printed and audio-visual materials. Its audiovisual program consists of a number of short films, filmstrips, and slides designed specifically for use on TV and in classrooms and discussion groups. 
The ADL publishes dozens of books, covering the entire range of its concerns. The two books that most reflect the changing agenda of the ADL are Target USA: The Arab Propaganda Offensive (November 1975) and Pro-Arab Propaganda in America: Vehicles and Voices (January 1983), both of which purport to expose and discredit Arab propaganda in the United States. 
==Notes==
Category:American Jewish Organizations and Israel-extract