Despite the fact that Black Lives Matter formally endorsed the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, and accused Israel of genocide, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has refused to cut its ties with the organization. Similarly, when a congressman referred to Jews living in the West Bank as “termites,” the ADL mustered only a weak response. Isi Leibler takes these and other instances as evidence that Jonathan Greenblatt—a former White House staffer who assumed leadership of the ADL last year—has lost sight of its mission:

Greenblatt . . . has behaved as though he ‎remained employed by the Obama administration. He was entirely out of line in his ‎condemnation of the Republican platform as “anti-Zionist” for omitting reference to a two-‎state solution. One can disagree about a two-state policy. But for an American Jewish ‎organization, which must remain bipartisan and should be concentrating on anti-Semitism, to ‎issue such a statement breaches all conventions. It is totally beyond the ADL’s mandate to ‎involve itself in such partisan political issues.‎

Greenblatt is clearly obsessed with the subject of being “open-minded” and tolerant of anti-‎Israeli groups. He made the extraordinary statement that, while disagreeing with the boycott, ‎divestment, and sanctions groups that promote anti-Semitism, he considers that they ‎are “animated by a desire for justice” and we should “acknowledge the earnestness of their ‎motives.” One is tempted to remind him that Islamic fundamentalists are also sincere in their ‎beliefs and equally animated by their perverted concept of justice.‎ . . .

The ADL’s central mandate must be to combat anti-Semitism, which is today largely manifested ‎in the demonization and delegitimization of Israel. If it elects to abandon this objective, it ‎does not warrant Jewish communal support.‎

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.