Just one day after Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York, the Anti-Defamation League announced a new “Mamdani Monitor” to track statements and policies emerging from his administration and to investigate personnel appointments to uncover any past antisemitic statements or actions.
This announcement was met with immediate backlash from many Jewish leaders and organizations in New York and beyond. The ADL, the oldest US organization devoted to fighting antisemitism, has long called out antisemitic statements or actions by elected officials and others in positions of power.
However, establishing a special project targeting a left-wing, Muslim mayor both echoes the Islamophobic attacks against him and represents a new step in the ADL’s steady shift toward abandoning its historic commitment to civil rights in favor of a hyperfocus on shutting down left-wing, pro-Palestinian anti-Israel activity.
It wasn’t always this way. During the first Trump administration, the ADL took strong stands for the rights of immigrants and against the proposed “Muslim registry” and criticized President Trump for his alliances with white nationalists. After the Unite the Right March in Charlottesville, Virginia, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt condemned President Trump for his “pattern of equivocating on prejudice.”
The organization played a key role in multiple civil rights coalitions, led amicus briefs for LGBTQ rights, and joined efforts to fight racism, transphobia, anti-Asian bias, and more. In response, right-wing elements in the Jewish and non-Jewish communities smeared the ADL as “woke” or leftist. White nationalists resurrected and spread antisemitic conspiracy theories about Leo Frank, whose 1913 murder conviction prompted the establishment of the ADL.
ADL's swerve to the Right
Yet, over the past few years, the organization has taken a swerve to the right, including shutting down its historic work on democracy and recently even taking civil rights off of its website. Even before the brutal October 7 Hamas attacks and the rise of the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States, the ADL had shifted its focus to opposing left-wing anti-Israel activity.
This year, the organization quietly stopped using a school-based curriculum that addressed multiple forms of bias. Whereas after the 2022 Israeli elections, the ADL expressed concern over the inclusion of the extremist bloc in the coalition, over the past few years, the organization has countenanced no criticism of the Israeli government.
Unlike during President Trump’s first term, the ADL has attempted to ingratiate itself with the new administration. When Elon Musk jumped on stage at a post-inauguration rally and gave what – to most Jewish onlookers, including former ADL head Abe Foxman – looked like a “Heil Hitler” salute, the organization wrote on X/Twitter that Musk had made “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm.” For his part, Musk responded with a series of Nazi puns, which the ADL did then condemn.
More recently, the organization took its glossary of hate and extremism offline after complaints by right-wing activists about the inclusion of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA on that list and after Musk tweeted that the ADL is an anti-Christian “hate group” because an extremist Christian organization also appeared on the list. It’s hard to believe that this is the same organization that called for Trump’s resignation after January 6 in a press release now deleted from its website.
When US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Mahmoud Khalil, the first of several foreign students the US has attempted to deport based on their participation in pro-Palestinian activism and speech, the ADL initially applauded the move, saying, “We appreciate the Trump administration’s broad, bold set of efforts to counter campus antisemitism.”
Spurned by Trump admin
The Trump administration has shown little interest in the ADL’s efforts to curry favor. Just before Yom Kippur, FBI Director Kash Patel announced that the agency had cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League after decades of partnership to combat domestic and international threats from extremists.
As justification, Patel pointed to a speech by former FBI director James Comey at a 2014 ADL gathering, in which he thanked the organization for its partnership on fighting hate crimes and lauded their commitment to concerns ranging “from antisemitism to voting rights and immigration issues… from gender and LGBT equality to anti-Muslim prejudice… from the separation of church and state to cyberbullying.” Patel declared, “This FBI won’t partner with political fronts masquerading as watchdogs.”
The politicization of antisemitism only endangers Jews. The Jewish community deserves a major mainstream organization that educates Jews and non-Jews about antisemitism, partners with other civil rights organizations to address bias everywhere, and helps Jewish communities respond to antisemitic incidents.
When a synagogue is vandalized, when a family encounters antisemitism in their school, or when Jewish leaders receive antisemitic threats, they should be able to call the ADL for help. This is true whether the perpetrators ally themselves with the political Right, Left, or neither.
I have personally heard from parents, rabbis, and educators who worry that reaching out to the ADL for help with very real instances of antisemitism will result in the organization using their experiences to justify the Trump administration’s war on free speech, universities, and school districts.
Abdicating responsibility
The ADL could play a crucial role in addressing antisemitism when it shows up in progressive movements. This would include articulating when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism and allows for discrimination against Jews, the devaluing of Jewish lives, and even violence.
In wrongly painting nearly every pro-Palestinian action as antisemitic, the ADL simultaneously justifies the Trump administration’s muzzling of speech and incursions into universities and also diminishes its own ability to be heard in actual instances of antisemitism, whether emanating from the Left, Right, or neither.
Jews are right to be concerned about rising antisemitism in New York, including within progressive movements. The dismissal of these concerns by parts of the Left can feel like gaslighting to Jews who have experienced verbal harassment, who have been pushed out of social and communal spaces, and who have even encountered physical violence. Still, the response must be relationship-building and education that lowers the heat, rather than raises it.
The mayor-elect, like any other elected leader, can and should be called to account for antisemitic language that he or members of his staff use. He has already demonstrated a willingness to meet with and listen to Jewish communal leaders and to reconsider previous statements in light of their impact on Jewish communities.
When asked about the phrase “Globalize the Intifada” in an interview this July, Mamdani shared his changed perspective, which included the stories he had heard from Jewish leaders about the terror of living in Israel during the suicide bombings of the Second Intifada. This shift is a testament to the power of building relationships.
In a moment of rising antisemitism in the United States and across the world, the Jewish community needs leaders who will partner across lines of difference, call out antisemitism no matter what political corner it emanates from, and commit to education over punitive measures. Today’s ADL has abdicated this responsibility, and the Jewish community will suffer the consequences.
The writer, a rabbi, is CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.