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Revision as of 01:07, 8 February 2003 by Martha (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Anti-Defamation League (or ADL) of B'nai B'rith is an American organization founded in 1918 that fights anti-Semitism and bigotry.
With an annual budget of over $40 million, the ADL now has 29 offices domestically and 3 offices abroad. Increasingly, the ADL agenda has been turned towards pro-Israel activism. This has brought up the issue of where legitimate support for Israel ends and unacceptable suppression of pro-Palestinian viewpoints begins. In the 1980s the ADL co-operated with agents of South Africa´s then Apartheid regime to map students paricipating in pro-Palestinian or Anti-Apartheid activism. Several journalists with supposedly pro-Palstinans viewpoints have been forced to resign after the ADL put pressure on their employers. The ADL views the singling out of Israel for criticism as anti-Semitic.
Although the Anti-Defamation League has not worked together with Arab-American and Muslim-American civil rights group (owing to disagreement concerning the Israeli-Palestine conflict), the Anti-Defamation League has on numerous occasions publicly condemned slurs against Islam. Nevertheless, some have criticized the Anti-Defamation League for allegedly suppressing free speech and the right of ethnic minorities to defend themselves from bigotry (including Black Muslims and Arabs).
The ADL was founded in 1918 in response to the lynching of Leo Frank in Georgia on a trumped up murder charge of killing Mary Phagan. Ironically, the Frank case, which eventually led to the establishment of the Anti-Defamation League, also resulted in the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, then known as the Knights of Mary Phagan