The ADL wants to shut down our movements. JVP is fighting back.

The day after the election, we were in mourning, preparing to fight for our lives and for the lives of our loved ones. The ADL was congratulating Trump on his victory.

That’s right. The Anti-Defamation League, a self-branded anti-hate organization, ostensibly dedicated to fighting antisemitism, practically celebrated Trump’s win. It’s a repellent posture that exposes their true priority: defending Israel at all costs, despite apartheid, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. 

In the coming months and years, we can expect to see the ADL — a $93 million organization — spend their money and resources to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitic hate speech. And that will be most intense on college campuses, where resistance to Israel’s genocide has been among the strongest.

JVP has already begun preparing for the fight: Since the spring we have begun expanding our campus organizing program to meet the immense challenges the coming years will bring. We hired a Senior Manager of Campus Organizing and a Student Organizer, and put them to work launching 30 new student chapters nationally. JVP now has 50 campus chapters — and we’re just getting started. 

As a second Trump presidency looms, we know free speech will come under attack — particularly on campuses, and particularly for activists. This lines up perfectly with the ADL playbook: created a culture of fear in order to justify dismantling freedom of speech — when it comes to criticizing Israel. 

No wonder the ADL is looking forward to working with Trump. In the last year, they slandered student protesters as violent antisemites, and student chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace as “proxies” of Iran. They issue a “Campus Crisis Alert” email each day, where untold numbers of supporters are treated to creepily-detailed descriptions of campuses across the country: 

Are anti-Israel protesters getting tired? That may be the case at the University of California, Berkeley, which had been a hotbed of anti-Israel demonstrations. According to a leader of the local XXX chapter, the lack of visible impact has left some protesters “demoralized.” 

_{-From the ADL’s “Campus Crisis Alert”}

College students are on the frontlines of the fight against the ADL’s anti-Palestinian agenda, and they need our support. They are up against a $93 million machine.

Our side doesn’t have a fraction of the ADL’s budget and resources. But we have something they do not: each other. That’s hundreds of thousands of members and supporters. It is our collective strength that will see our movement survive — and thrive — in the coming years.

The ADL seems to care less about the millions whose fundamental rights and very lives are threatened by a second Trump administration — including Jews. What the ADL seems most excited by is the return to power of its biggest ally in the war on pro-Palestine organizing. 

Though it masquerades as a civil rights organization, the ADL is a pro-Israel lobby group with a long history of surveilling and targeting activists. 

They’ve been happy to join forces with the far Right, the biggest threat to Jewish safety — praising the likes of Jared Kusher and Elon Musk while weaponizing false accusations of antisemitism to shut down peaceful, anti-war student protests.

The ADL wants to criminalize criticism of the Israeli government, and it isn’t stopping at college campuses. JVP has a vision of a different future: one free of right-wing institutions that use fear to divide us — and we’re fighting to make it happen.