It is an interesting subject for observation and discussion, nothing more.
Posted on 02/25/2002 12:28:23 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Just as the Catholic League promotes the interests of Catholics. Which I understand and do not condemn them for. So what's the obsession with the ADL by some?
In fact, at the moment, the Catholic League is out there very actively defending the Church, in light of the new spate of charges against priests regarding sexual misconduct.
Actually the ADL is more Left than Right. I guess you would know that if you really new anything about the ADL. In addition, the ADL fights against all hate, and no less a person than Laura Bush works with them in that agenda.
Things seem to get batty at night.
Or all that they define as hate. When was the last time they fought against hatred of gun owners?
I have no problem with ADL operating towards the interests of their constituents, or even operating as an agent of Israel trying to affect US policy.
I might have some problems with them using illegal means to accumulate dossiers on US citizens, or in using their influence to, for example, cause trouble with the employers of opposing activists in an effort to silence them.
I would definitely have a problem with them if they sold info about activists to agencies of a foreign government which had a desire to cause physical harm to said activists.
For the most part, I don't have a problem with people and organizations working towards their goals, provided they are not stomping on people in the process. This is why I tend to be rather anti-Islamic at times, as the Muslims seem to enjoy using violent means to accomplish their goals. This does not mean I'll sit still for being in the crossfire from the other side
As I said before, the ADL is neither Left nor Right. They have an agenda. That the agenda is accomplished more from the Left is incidental
AP reports ADL just agreed to pay a settlement.
I can understand that an American Jew who would not apply for Israeli citizenship would think twice about repudiating if it was already in place. Nevertheless, Pearl grew up in America, lived in America, considered himself an American.
My guess is that Israeli awareness of his citizenship was not triggered until he visited relatives in Israel when he was 13. That may account for a few reports that he "became" an Israeli citizen in his teens. I doubt his parents informed the Israeli government that they had a new citizen, little Daniel; I suspect that it was only when visa papers and so on were filled out for the teen-aged visit that the Israelis got him in a data base as a citizen.
The only importance of this, so far as I can see, is that it made Pearl a perfect symbolic victim for Islamists who see Israel and the US as one single Satanic reality. Pearl's killing with the accompanying video was a message to every American and every Jew: "We will slaughter you for what you are."
No, the document means what it says: this is how the respondents characterize the facts that have emerged from their discovery. It was not the court's summary of the facts discovered by the respondents but of the way the respondents describe what they discovered. There is no implication that the court necessarily accepts this characterization as valid. Some of what the respondents claim is clearly not accepted as established fact by the court, in the court's real summary of the facts which I quoted. It is not accepted as established fact that the improperly acquired information had in fact been sold or communicated to foreign intelligence services.
...it has not been shown that any information that may have been gathered by petitioners about real parties in interest was in fact privately disclosed to the governments of Israel or South Africa, or to any other entities or individuals.
What you quote is part of a statement of the starting position, the claims and counter-claims which the court must adjudicate. It is very irresponsible of you to cite this statement on multiple threads as though it were a statement of judicially-established facts about the ADL.
In my post, I agreed that the ADL does investigate individuals and groups which they identify as anti-Semitic or hostile to Israel. In principle the ADL has every right to do this. There are indeed also allegations that law enforcement agencies regularly pass on to the ADL information they are not allowed to keep on file, so that the ADL can share it back to them at need. If this is true, it should be stopped, as it is against the law.
However, rather than simply damning the ADL, I would want to know more about these limits on information-gathering by law enforcement and how they are likely to affect our self-defence against Islamicist terrorism. I would actually be kind of glad if the ADL was able to "profile" Islamic radicals in ways the police are not allowed to do. It would be interesting to know the names of the Arab-American parties to the lawsuit and the 77 Arab organizations in Bullock's files, and see how many of them are in fact agents and fronts for Islamist terrorist organizations.
This is not to deny that the San Francisco operation was apparently out of control, or that the ADL may have gone overboard. Irwin Suall was an old-fashioned ex-Trotskyite anti-Communist, who thought that fighting the enemies of Israel and the West was a rough business in which it was sometimes necessary to dirty one's hands. This leftist site, which once you get past the Forward obituary, is a good example of the virulent hatred of the ADL on the far left, refers to Suall as Bill Casey's "ideological soulmate." For some reason they seem to think this was an insult...
I was too tired last night to track it down, but some time ago I posted some research on Paul Findley, a former Republican congresscreature and noted wacko, who is one of the leading figures in this group. I documented that he has spoken at conferences held by terrorist front groups and shared the podium with terrorist killers and conspirators. It has a lot of links you might find interesting.
Maybe not by you, but you're in the minority. The AP article on (ADL) Jewish Defense Group Settles S.F. Spying Suit thread (ADL settled the case under discussion last Friday), states:
San Francisco -- A lawsuit accusing the Anti-Defamation League of spying on local activists -- the last court action stemming from San Francisco police raids on the Jewish organization's office 10 years ago -- has been settled for $178,000, lawyers said yesterday.I'm coming to the realization that no level of evidence is going to be enough for you, that you would not care if there was videotape of the ADL national board of directors making a snuff film with preadolescent girls, you would still say there was no convincing evidence to indicate the ADL was doing anything other than what was extremely proper.The money will be divided among the remaining three plaintiffs in a suit that was filed in 1993 by 19 people, all involved in pro-Palestinian or anti- apartheid activity. At the time, Israel was an ally of South Africa's white- supremacist government, and the ADL's chief intelligence-gatherer in the Bay Area, Roy Bullock, later admitted he was also being paid by South Africa.
The suit claimed the ADL, founded almost 90 years ago to combat anti- Semitism, was working to suppress domestic criticism of Israel by compiling dossiers that it shared with police, the Israeli government and its own supporters. The ADL denied providing information to Israel and said it was legally monitoring hate groups and political extremists.
After Bullock and a San Francisco police inspector were seen talking to South African agents in 1992, police seized more than 10,000 files from the two men and ADL offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The files contained information on organizations and individuals at both ends of the political spectrum.
The inspector, Tom Gerard, later pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of illegally accessing government information that he allegedly supplied to Bullock.
The ADL settled a suit by the city of San Francisco and another filed by political activists in Los Angeles, but the suit by Bay Area activists -- Arab Americans, Jewish dissidents and anti-apartheid organizers -- was delayed by years of wrangling over access to ADL files, which had been quickly sealed.
Along the way, a state appellate court endorsed the organization's argument that, as the publisher of reports on extremist groups, it acts as a journalist, with the right to protect its sources. But the court kept the case alive by saying activists had the right to learn the sources of government documents that may have been used illegally.
The suit was brought by "Arab Americans, Jewish dissidents and anti-apartheid organizers", not just by Muslim groups. The appearance is that ADL personnel were renting out their services to an ally of Israel (South Africa) to assist it in suppressing dissent.
I have no problem with ADL getting info on people who are advocating violence or terrorism against Jewish interests. But I would have big problems with ADL gathering info in order to blackmail and harrass people who peacefully dissent from the positions of ADL's paymasters
On the other hand, publically available information which has been gathered legally and assembled in dossiers can, as far as I can see, be shared legally with US or Israeli intelligence and law enforcement agencies or for that matter sold to the highest bidder.
I agree that it seems that the ADL's fact-finding operation got out of control, and that there was wrong-doing. You have now offered worthwhile evidence of this, as you had not done before. The scandal, however, is that information was acquired improperly from law enforcement agencies, not that it was shared with Israel as well as sometimes with US agencies.
That seems to be the point in the article, though its strategy is apparently to suggest at every turn that the ADL is a white supremacist group. But when one sifts out the actual facts reported, it seems the case turned on illegally obtained government documents concerning the individuals in question. It is not clear from the article what the plaintiffs charged the ADL with; "spying on activists" is not a legally precise description. If the ADL had illegally acquired documents on the plaintiffs, that would undoubtedly be grounds for a civil suit and reason for the ADL to settle.
The article does not say anything about blackmail and harrassment. It does not specify the type of information the ADL was looking for and sharing with others. To assume that it was chiefly blackmail matter goes beyond any evidence presented. It may just as well have been police data on contacts between the plaintiffs and criminal or terrorist organizations.
While one naturally cringes now at the South African connection, it seems likely that a relationship that came to light in 1993 was forged much earlier, in the midst of the Cold War. As a thousand leftist websites will tell you in hysterical tones of condemnation, the US for most of that period condemned apartheid in principle while continuing in an uneasy relationship with the South African government in resisting Soviet expansionism. The fact is that South Africa was not only an ally of Israel, it was at least a working partner of the United States in the struggle with Communism.
Not all anti-apartheid activists were noble idealistic reformers; some of them were hard Leftists with agendas that were equally hostile to the United States and Israel. The very real iniquity of apartheid was often enough the screen behind which attacks were being made on the whole US commitment to containing Soviet Communism.
Before I condemn any more in the JDL's behavior than the improper acquisition and circulation of confidential information (which I do condemn) I would want to know which anti-apartheid activists as well as which Muslim groups filed this suit. As for "Jewish dissidents," what does that mean? Lunatic fringe Israel-hating Hasidim? Chomsky having the vapors because the JDL might publicize what he says in speeches to his cult followers?
It is an interesting subject for observation and discussion, nothing more.
Worse? Worse than what?
Give me a break...If Israel has valid intel on this matter, and has assets in place or at its disposal to effect a retribution...I say bring it on.
Frankly the sooner this pot boils over the sooner this will be over. We are headed to a Major Major conflict. Pull your head out of the sand.
If an ADL member is in a position to make decisions about people (such as personnel director, tenure committee member, etc), and he chooses to be influenced in such decisions by whether the person being evaluated is on a list of people the ADL doesn't like (as opposed to the criteria he's supposed to be applying), then that's an issue for the ADL member's boss.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.