The ADL is not a credible source on antisemitism and racism. 

Under the guise of civil rights advocacy, the ADL actually uses its power to harm individuals and movements working towards justice for all people.

The ADL’s dangerous approach towards antisemitism

• Misdefining antisemitism: For years, the ADL has used its credibility as a civil rights organization to silence critics of the Israeli state, pushing the dangerous and false IHRA definition of antisemitism. This definition labels anyone opposed to the Israeli government’s oppression of Palestinians as antisemitic, making it harder to identify actual instances of antisemitism. The ADL has spent millions of dollars pushing to turn this definition into laws that would classify criticism of Israel as a hate crime against Jews.
• Repression of free speech: The ADL has consistently targeted advocates for Palestinian human rights in a concerted and coordinated campaign to repress any speech that criticizes Israel’s current war on Gaza or its policy of oppression of Palestinians.
• Losing legitimacy on antisemitism and Israel-Palestine: The ADL’s consistent bias led Wikipedia editors to vote in June 2024 that the ADL could not be trusted as a reliable source on issues of antisemitism or Israel’s war on Gaza. And earlier in June, Jewish Currents reported that the ADL is “unable to speak meaningfully to the prevalence or impact of antisemitism in the US” after the outlet conducted a detailed audit of the ADL’s data on antisemitic incidents. 

History of Islamophobic, racist, anti-Palestinian advocacy

• Suppressing anti-racist organizing: After the 2017 white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, VA, the ADL released a “primer” for law enforcement to help them target anti-racist protestors. 
• Support for racist, militarized policing: The ADL runs programs to train police in the U.S. in militarized policing techniques that target low-income, Black communities, and communities of color — strategies learned from the Israeli army’s brutalization of Palestinians.
• Spying on activists and social justice movements: In July 2024, news broke that the ADL had been surveilling a progressive anti-racist climate activist. This follows a long history of the ADL spying on individuals and movements engaged in social justice work — including the NAACP, and major organizations in the climate, labor, anti-South African apartheid, farm worker, and college student movements.
• Persistent anti-Arab, anti-Muslim racism: The ADL has consistently targeted Arab-led organizations and portrayed advocacy for Palestinian rights as hateful, and supports Islamophobic federal programs that expand surveillance of Muslim communities.
• Using its credibility to bully social justice movements: The ADL has publicly attacked, among others, the Movement for Black Lives, the Women’s March, ACT UP, Black organizing dating back to the Civil Rights era, and many grassroots social justice coalitions.

For even more information on the ADL’s abuses of its civil rights mission, please see this extensive historical primer from our partners at #DropTheADL.