THE POWER OF THE ADL

The ADL, Jesus, and Anti-Semitism Opinion; Posted on: 2005-02-20 18:06:55 An article appearing in the Jewish Journal and Jerusalem Post, written by one David Klinghoffer, offers insight into the Jewish mentality. It’s Time to Return to Our Mission by David Klinghoffer 2005-02-18 Excerpt: This time a year ago, more than a month before its release, “The Passion” was drawing tremendous hostility from Jewish leaders. The ADL harped on supposed parallels between Gibson’s movie and medieval Passion plays. The latter led to mass violence against Jews, so the obvious implication was that the former could also. In an article in The New Republic — Jewish-owned and edited — a Jewish professor of religious studies, Paula Fredriksen, in all earnestness stated not as speculation but as a certainty that when the film appeared in countries like Poland, Spain, France and Russia, savagery would erupt: “When violence breaks out, Mel Gibson will have a much higher authority than professors and bishops to answer to.”Of course none of this happened — despite the fact that, thanks to the widely publicized attacks spearheaded by the ADL, many more people saw Gibson’s “Passion” than would otherwise have done so. As the Christian Bible tells the story and as Gibson does, the Jewish leadership of Jesus’ time handed him over to the Romans for crucifixion. This happens to be approximately the version of history given in the Talmud and by the past millennium’s greatest Jewish sage, Maimonides. I say “approximately” because, in truth, Jewish tradition ascribes full responsibility for Jesus’ death to certain Jews of the time. If Gibson is an anti-Semite, so is Maimonides. If you doubt the prestige and authority we assign to groups like the Anti-Defamation League and its West Coast equivalent, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, just ask yourself who, on moral questions, is the American Jewish voice that gets more attention, that is treated with more grave, earnest seriousness than any other? It belongs not to a rabbi or any other spiritual exemplar but to the ADL’s Foxman. [He] is just doing his job, which is to raise the approximately $40 million budget that Jews yearly pour into the ADL. Anti-defamation groups stay in business by motivating us to donate. That requires continually proving the urgent relevance of what they do. There is an automatic, built-in institutional motivation to sound the alarm at the slightest hint of anti-Semitism, and to keep the alarm screaming in newspapers and TV as long and as loud as possible. By elevating anti-Semitism over virtually any other community concern... we do ourselves more harm than good. The author’s new book, “Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History,” will be published in March. Complete article
Source: Tim Donahue • Printed from National Vanguard( http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=4643 ) National Vanguard • Box 5145 • Charlottesville • VA 22905 • USANationalVanguard.org