September 11, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 Top officials with the Department of Homeland Security directed agency analysts to downplay threats from violent white supremacy, a whistle-blower complaint released on Wednesday said. Vice President Mike Pence and top officials from the Trump campaign are slated to attend a Montana fundraiser next week hosted by a couple who have expressed support for the QAnon conspiracy theory. A Palestinian woman who played a part in the hijackings of two…

August 20, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 An FBI Twitter account tweeted out a link to a PDF containing the antisemitic “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” as well as FBI documents related to it, with no other context. President Trump on Wednesday offered encouragement to proponents of QAnon, a viral and dangerous conspiracy theory. According to a new study, Facebook “actively promotes further Holocaust-denial content to that user” and “has been unwilling…

August 20, 2020 By David Andrew Weinberg Israel and the United Arab Emirates announced a historic agreement on August 13th to move toward full normalization of relations, the first such accord between the State of Israel and an Arab state since 1994.  However, peace always has its opponents, and this agreement is no exception. Whenever Israel and Arab governments take important steps to engage and reconcile with each other, extremists throughout the region routinely demonize both…

August 07, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 Twenty state attorneys general called on Facebook to better prevent messages of hate, bias and disinformation from spreading, and said the company needed to provide more help to users facing online abuse. The leader of a white supremacist group was arrested in Weatherford, Texas on Saturday after police said he and two other men placed stickers on county property. And the global Jewish community continues to face rising antisemitism due to the…

July 17, 2020 By: Andrew Srulevitch, Director of European Affairs Antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric marred this week’s presidential election in Poland. Incumbent President Andrzej Duda defeated Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, 51%-49%, for a second five-year term.  While the presidency is supposed to be non-partisan, the contest clearly pitted the nationalist populist Law and Justice party, which supported Duda, against the pro-European liberal supporters of Trzaskowski…

July 20, 2020 Incumbent President Andrzej Duda defeated Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, 51%-49%, for a second five-year term.  While the presidency is supposed to be non-partisan, the contest clearly pitted the nationalist populist Law and Justice party, which supported Duda, against the pro-European liberal supporters of Trzaskowski.  Duda was the early favorite, but the race tightened as election day neared.  In response, Duda’s campaign turned negative, including the…

July 10, 2020 Image source: https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2020/07/07/day-of-rage-demands-no-annexation-of-palestinian-land/ Anti-Israel groups have held at least thirty-five rallies in cities across the U.S. since July 1, 2020, ostensibly to express their opposition to the potential annexation by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of parts of the West Bank, which had been expected to be announced as early as July 1. Although many of the protestors limited their…

June 22, 2020 For nearly two decades, rock music icon Roger Waters has been one of the most prominent and outspoken supporters of the BDS movement. He has refused to perform in Israel and urged fellow artists to follow suit, and has often used inflammatory rhetoric against the country. ADL has repeatedly called out Waters for his hateful rhetoric, dating back to an open 2013 letter suggesting that his anti-Israel views may be colored by antisemitism.     In a recent…

June 19, 2020 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 ADL convened a coalition of civil rights groups encouraging corporate advertisers to pull spending from Facebook during the month of July to protest the company’s failure to make its platform a less-hostile place. The Supreme Court ruled that federal civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender workers from discrimination. School textbooks used in institutions controlled by the terror group Hezbollah are teaching children “egregious…

June 12, 2020 Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic) Day, held on May 15 each year, is marked by Palestinians and their supporters, including many anti-Israel activists, as a day to mourn the creation of the State of Israel and advocate for the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees. This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations and activists went virtual with events such as webinars featuring anti-Israel activists and academics, most of which ran from May 14 through May 21. In…