Remarks by ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt to the 2023 ADL National Leadership Summit
As prepared for delivery
Washington, D.C. ... Good morning, and thank you for that introduction.
Just last week, we celebrated Israel’s 75th Independence Day. I know there are challenges in Israel right now. For many there -- and here -- this historic Yom Ha'atzmaut is filled with pride but also with complexity…worry…anxiety…and concern about the future of the Jewish state.
And I know that for bigots -- especially those who self-style as “anti-Zionists” -- Israel’s Independence Day is a day to redouble their efforts to make sure it is Israel’s last Independence Day.
So let me be 100 percent clear as I open this conversation today: There are challenges in Israel right now – and there will be challenges and difficult conversations to come, but ADL will never waver in its support of a democratic, Jewish state.
Israel is a miracle, and I will never apologize for being a proud Zionist.
When thinking about Yom Ha’atzmaut, I can’t help but think about that first Independence Day when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the first sovereign Jewish nation in nearly two millennia.
Many of us have heard that scratchy recording -- many of us have traveled to that little building in Tel Aviv to see where it all happened. And over the past few months, we have heard a lot about Israel’s Declaration of Independence as Israelis have argued about the future of their own democracy.
What is little appreciated is what went into getting to a final draft.
Should God be mentioned or intentionally left out?
Should it reference the United Nations? The Shoah? The American Declaration of Independence?
What should the document say about the borders of the new state? Or about the non-Jews living there?
Now, there were four drafts written by four different people, and ultimately, it was Ben Gurion himself – who had to take a few hours out from planning a new government and fighting an imminent war…the day before Independence Day…to edit and finesse a draft that all parties could sign.
That a group of Jews got together to argue about a text may be the most Jewish thing in the world!
For the “people of the Book,” words clearly matter.
Yet as important as these words are -- and they are -- what made the State of Israel was not the words in that document…it wasn’t the choreography of the ceremony…it was the hard work that came after.
The work to defeat invading armies and to build a mighty military.
The work to welcome and shelter hundreds of thousands of Jews desperate to leave the DP camps of Europe…or those driven out of Arab lands they called home for centuries.
The work of making the desert bloom -- and then creating its own Silicon Valley.
Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, famously said -- “it you will it, it is no dream”…and it was that will to make something from almost nothing…to seize the moment and do the hard work… that gave us this 75th Yom Ha’atzamaut.
This is an important for us all. It is a model for us all. And it is why you are here today.
When it comes to building our own future, it means we must not just talk about antisemitism…we must not just hashtag antisemitism…we must fight antisemitism.
We must do the hard work of battling it everywhere -- across the political spectrum and around the world.
That is what ADL is doing every single day here at home and across the planet. It’s the hard work you do in your communities with us and for us all. And the challenge we face is bigger than ever -- and growing.
ADL’s landmark poll of Americans’ attitudes toward Jews found that one-in-five Americans -- 20 percent -- believes six or more classic, antisemitic tropes about Jews -- making them, in the words of our researchers, people who have “extensive antisemitic attitudes.”
This is the highest level in more than 30 years.
On top of that, 3 percent of Americans believed all eleven tropes we presented them with. That number might seem small, but that’s eight million people. Eight million people who believe every vile thing they hear about Jews. To put that in perspective, that’s more than the number of Jews in America.
It should come as no surprise that these hateful beliefs fuel hateful acts.
In 2022, there were 3,697 antisemitic incidents.
Not only is that the highest number of anti-Jewish acts ADL has ever seen since we started doing this reporting more than four decades ago… that number is 36 percent higher than in 2021, which was also historically high. It is the third time in 5 years we’ve reached a new high water mark. It is more than 500 percent greater than the total a decade ago.
Breaking down these numbers really exposes how dramatically the threat of antisemitism has grown:
Antisemitic vandalism has increased 51 percent.
Violent antisemitic assaults increased 26 percent …and of those acts more than half of them targeted visibly Orthodox Jews.
This year, we find that the dramatic increase in antisemitic incidents is not due to any single ideology fueling violence, or one group becoming more accepting of antisemitism than another… It's due to every ideology becoming more comfortable with anti-Jewish hate.
And too often, these elements are targeting some of our most sacred, and most vulnerable places. Antisemitic incidents in K-12 schools were up 49 percent, on college campuses, they spiked 41 percent.
The hostage situation in Colleyville, Texas last year was perhaps the most harrowing example of the threat against our holy spaces.
And it was only through the courage from Rabbi Charlie Cytron Walker – utilizing training he received from ADL and other groups, that he and those around him were able to escape unharmed. I’m deeply proud that Rabbi Charlie is now a special advisor to ADL, and we’ll hear more from him later today.
You see, everywhere we look – from some of our biggest stars in music and sports, from the halls of elementary schools to the halls of Congress, across all of our social media platforms – antisemitism is accepted in the mainstream like never before.
And so I’m here to tell you today – we are pushing back. We are doing the work.
We go where the antisemitism is.
In 2022, Brooklyn was the epicenter of antisemitic assaults, with 52 distinct attacks.
The hate crimes that we see in Brooklyn, attacking the Haredi community – are despicable. Our Orthodox brothers and sisters are constantly under threat. It is one that needs solidarity and support from everyone – Jewish and non-Jewish alike.
So to see this community singled out by elite institutions, like the New York Times, arguably the most important paper in the world, depicting them as clannish and using power to manipulate events … that represents an antisemitic attack on their community.
Let me be clear: this isn’t a question about the quality of a yeshiva education – there are real questions to be asked and answered to make sure these students get the education they deserve to be successful.
But this framing tells people “this group is different. It is okay to be afraid of them.” We’ve implored the Times behind the scenes.
We have spoken out publicly because this framing encourages more antisemitism.
And we have been building our relationships within this community. In fact, just last week, ADL opened an office in Boro Park, right in the heart of Brooklyn.
Why? It’s because we go where the antisemitism is. We do the work.
In the Middle East – we have worked in the United Arab Emirates for years to review, recommend, and root out antisemitism from their school textbooks -- improving the discourse and preventing a new generation from being exposed to age-old anti-Jewish tropes in their education.
Now – we are working to create and curate people-to-people activities that spread understanding from the Arabian peninsula across the Middle East to North Africa to Southeast Asia, Europe, and beyond.
I was in the UAE earlier this year to announce the opening of the Manara Center – a new NGO that will build our relationships and educational programming with universities across the world to promote understanding and encourage peace.
Some might not like that we are working with the UAE. Some might push back, but the idea behind this is that we are not going to progress, until again, we are going where the problem is.
We do the work.
And going to where the antisemitism is means going to not just the Middle East but to some of the most elite college campuses right here in our country.
On college campuses, Jewish students are besieged by an anti-Zionism that is just vile, confrontational antisemitism. To underscore what I said at this event last year: anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Full stop.
When many of us were applying to colleges, people of my generation, the thought never crossed our mind to ask -- is this institution safe for Jews? Now, I can tell you it’s at the top of every Jewish student’s mind…and every Jewish parent’s.
It’s at the top of ADL’s mind -- and it’s at the top of our agenda.
So, in addition to putting pressure on university officials who too often give these antisemitic activists a free pass, we are partnering with Hillel International to give Jewish students the resources and support they need to feel safe -- including working to make sure DEI trainings for college administrators and campus leaders teach about antisemitism, just as they teach about prejudices affecting other marginalized communities.
You see, we go where the antisemitism is. We do the work.
And that is also why ADL is increasingly focused on corporate America.
For years, ADL has been at the forefront of pushing Big Tech to stop aiding and abetting antisemites and extremists – which they do either by not policing their platforms adequately or by writing algorithms that actively push the most incendiary views – and sometimes both.
And as advances in artificial intelligence – such as ChatGPT – are being rolled out, we are redoubling efforts to make sure that this is an innovation that does not benefit the extremists.
But it’s not just the products and platforms that companies are launching getting our attention. It is the policies and processes they are adapting in how they run their businesses – and it is something that is happening across all sectors of the economy.
Indeed, over the past few years, the BDS movement has moved from college campuses and into corporate boardrooms — like when Ben and Jerry’s announced that they would not sell ice cream in the West Bank…or when rating agencies like Morningstar adopted policies that would make doing business with the Jewish State a black mark on their profile.
A set of activists are trying to exploit the ESG movement as a Trojan horse for their anti-Zionist agenda.
Now, we can have an argument about whether ESG principles are important for corporate governance -- I believe they are. But what is inarguable is that no one should be using ESG to push antisemitism.
That’s why ADL joined forces with JLens last year, the leading Jewish values-based investment network in the world…the group doing the work to make sure that the Jewish community is at the table and that antisemites don’t hijack the ESG movement.
JLens has a strong track record in promoting socially responsible investing with Jewish values, and since joining ADL, they have continued to work hard behind the scenes to get ahead of the BDS movement.
As part of our efforts on campus and in corporate America, we also are taking a hard look at the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion -- or DEI -- programs at all of these institutions.
These efforts must live up to their billing of inclusion and fully include Jews -- treating antisemitism just as they do any other kind of hatred.
We believe that we all are in this together. I think -- and hope -- that these institutions committed to DEI believe the same.
You see, this idea that we are all in this together is central to the work we do…a critical part of our mission since securing equal justice goes hand in hand with stopping antisemitism.
That’s why ADL works across and within the Jewish community – and collaborates closely with organizations from every marginalized group: Mormons and Muslims, Bahai and Buddhists, AAPI and LGBTQ and anyone who is targeted or victimized because of their identity.
Look at our new Jewish Security Alliance operating in New York and New Jersey, which formalizes existing relationships, streamlines information sharing, and bolsters the safety of the entire community.
Or look at our embed program that places members from NGO’s like GLADD within ADL’s Center on Extremism to monitor threats that affect us all.
Yes, we go where the need is. We do the work.
And so do you.
It’s why you are here today -- to talk to the people who make the decisions when it comes to funding our priorities.
And we know that your voice matters – in large part, it’s because of you that Congress has stepped up in recent years to steadily fund nonprofit security grants at the level necessary to meet the threat. This money helps secure shuls and other houses of worship. The latest round of funding was at $305 million, and we will need your help to make sure that this funding remains robust for years to come.
Before I end, I want to come back to where I started -- Israel’s 75th.
Last week was a moment of celebration -- and complexity…even anguish for some.
All of us have watched the protests play out night after night on streets across the country… and that is something really special that perhaps we don’t always appreciate.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis marching every week in a non-violent manner, waving Israeli flags.
To put this in some perspective, when you compare these numbers, the total exceeds 10 percent of the non-Haredi, Jewish population. That’s the equivalent of say 40 million Americans, marching every week in a non-violent, joyful, patriotic matter. Of love for America.
This can only happen in a democracy where people can march without worry of being arrested – as we see in Turkey, or without fear of being murdered by authorities –as we see in Iran.
Simply put: these protests do not represent the failure of Zionism – this is nothing less than the triumph of Zionism. The triumph of the modern, Jewish, democratic state.
That being said, the issues are serious.
In recent months, ADL has taken a strong position about the need for compromise because there are real needs at hand to strengthen Israeli democracy. For example:
A more pluralistic Supreme Court where all ethnicities are represented;
A more equitable public service where all denominations serve on the frontline or on the homefront…
A more open society where Jews are accepted and embraced irrespective of how they worship or from where their ancestors fled…
And a civil society where non-Jews enjoy the same rights and fulfill the same responsibilities as their Jewish neighbors.
If we learned anything over the past 75 years, it’s that democracy is not a spectator sport, nor is it a foregone conclusion.
We cannot take it for granted -- and you must do the work to preserve it.
That goes for Israel – and it goes for here in the United States.
It’s why you are here this week to learn about the issues facing our community – and our society.
It’s why you are going to go up to Capitol Hill tomorrow to tell our elected representatives that the Jewish community must be seen…must be heard…and must be protected.
And it’s why in your communities…month after month…week after week…day after day…you do the work.
Yes, it may be difficult. But that’s how democracies function…it’s how we bring people together so together we can move forward.… it’s what Ben-Gurion did with the Declaration of Independence 75 years ago.
And it’s with that as an inspiration, we will do the work here this week and in the months and years to come.
Thank you.