The campaign to expel the Anti-Defamation League from progressive spaces – most recently by the National Education Association – reveals how anti-Zionism has become a litmus test
July 18, 2025 16:36
It’s time to talk about the campaign against the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The Jewish civil rights organisation alienated many right-wing Jews over the past decade by closely aligning with left-wing interest groups and political causes. However, it’s the ranks of the ADL’s opponents from the left (and some Muslim organisations) that merit attention, as they keep multiplying.
Exhibit A is the National Education Association (NEA). Last week, America’s largest teachers’ union narrowly voted to shun the ADL.
As Axios reported, NEA members voted “not [to] use, endorse, or publicise any materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or its [antisemitism] statistics” and “not [to] participate in ADL programmes or publicise ADL professional development offerings.” This move “was driven by Educators for Palestine, an NEA caucus,” Legal Insurrection reported. But the debate’s text, published on the North American Values Institute’s Substack, shows the proposal was introduced by a substitute teacher identifying herself as “a Jewish educator and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.”
National Review noted that this vote “must receive final approval from the NEA executive committee”, but such approval would notably rupture “a nearly 40-year relationship.” That’s no small matter. The Democratic Majority for Israel tweeted that this vote is part of “a troubling pattern... [of] the marginalisation of pro-Israel voices across the progressive landscape.”
As representatives of public school teachers and American Jewry, respectively, both NEA and ADL have historically been central to the Democratic coalition. Yet while NEA remains welcome, growing parts of that coalition would gladly eject the ADL.
For example, in 2020, The Forward reported that “more than 100 signatories, including the Movement for Black Lives, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Jewish Voice for Peace and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice” had joined the “Drop the ADL” campaign to persuade “progressive institutions to cut ties with” the ADL. (According to Legal Insurrection, that coalition now numbers “more than 200” organisations.) In 2021, The Jerusalem Post reported a CAIR official telling a convention: “When we talk about Islamophobia, we often think of the vehement fascists... but I also want us to pay attention to the polite Zionists, the ones that say ‘let’s just break bread together.’” The ADL was among those explicitly named “enemies.”
When anti-Zionist activists posted an online map in 2022 depicting Boston-area sites of “Zionism, Policing and Empire” – sharing addresses and naming employees – they, of course, included the ADL. In 2024, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Wikipedia’s left-wing editors “voted to declare the Anti-Defamation League ‘generally unreliable’ on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” as well as on antisemitism. Also last year, “Drop the ADL” launched a specific “Drop the ADL from Schools” initiative, which appears to include 93 organisations. And in March, JTA reported on left-wing Jews protesting the ADL’s “annual summit on antisemitism and hate.”
The ADL’s opponents offer various explanations, but two recur: the ADL embraces the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which includes anti-Zionism. And the ADL remains a Zionist organisation, even amidst an increasingly anti-Zionist left.
Like other major Jewish organisations, the ADL historically pursued what might be called an intersectional alliance strategy. Consequently, left-wing Jews stood with their political allies on a range of causes, over decades. However, when Jews needed support after October 7 – especially amidst the surge in open, domestic Jew-hatred – many of those presumed allies were nowhere to be found.
Jay Greene, Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told me: “The ‘intersectional alliance strategy’ that has been pursued by the ADL and other legacy Jewish institutions for decades has been proven to be a complete failure. The progressive organisations they’ve been courting have openly embraced anti-Israel...activism, and Jews are being purged from their ranks unless they renounce their attachment to Israel.”
Recent Jewish university graduates know this litmus test well: left-wing Jews can be Zionists, or they can remain members of “the Community of the Good.” It’s a binary that has also shaped left-wing activism from voting rights rallies to LGBTQ+ parades.
The NEA’s move to nix the ADL underscores several important lessons for American Jewry. First, anti-Zionism has been mainstreamed on the left. Second, Jewish organisations need a new strategy. Third, left-wing Jews will increasingly face litmus tests imposed on them alone. And finally: Jews who wish to remain engaged in American public life should be prepared to fight – because anti-Zionists are already pushing for their marginalisation.
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