May 23, 2014 On May 25-26, Pope Francis made his first papal visit to Israel, having previously visited in 1973 as a young Jorge Mario Bergoglio. The Pope's itinerary included visits to the Western Wall, Yad Vashem, Mount Herzl, a meeting with the Chief Rabbis, and receptions with senior Israeli officials including Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Peres. The following was written a few days prior to the Pope's visit by National Director Abraham H. Foxman and originally appeared in…

May 23, 2014 1947 – The Vatican supports the proposal to internationalize Jerusalem because of its desire to reestablish its influence in the Holy Land and over the Holy Places. 1964 – Pope Paul VI becomes the first pope in the history of the Roman Catholic Church to set foot in Jerusalem. However the Vatican does not recognize the Jewish State, and the pope never mentions the word Israel during the trip. 1980 – Pope John Paul II states that "the…

by: Abraham H. Foxman | May 20, 2014 The Boston Globe This past weekend, I was honored to be the commencement speaker at the Suffolk Law School in Boston. When Suffolk’s administration first broached the possibility of that role for me at one of the largest law schools in the country, I was immensely flattered and, with little hesitation, agreed. As the day of the commencement approached, however, I had moments of ambivalence about the experience. Here’s what I saw around me:…

May 02, 2014 Because questions continue to be raised about the Anti-Defamation League’s position on the Armenian genocide, we want to make clear that as we said in August 2008, ADL recognizes the Armenian genocide. The following is the text of the original statement, issued on August 22, 2008: Through our partnership, communities have implemented thousands of No Place for Hate® activities, which have engaged tens of thousands of Massachusetts residents. Additionally, No Place…

April 15, 2014 Following deadly shootings at the Jewish Community Center and at assisted living facility Village Shalom in Overland Park, Kansas, on April 13, 2014, Overland Park police soon arrested a suspect, Frazier Glenn Cross (more commonly known as Frazier Glenn Miller or simply Glenn Miller). After officers placed the handcuffed Miller into a police cruiser, local television station KMBC’s cameras captured Miller in the back of the cruiser, excitedly bobbing his head and…

April 14, 2014 Following shooting attacks at two Jewish institutions in Overland Park, Kansas, on April 13, 2014, that left three people dead, police arrested a suspect in the shootings, Frazier Glenn Miller (often known simply as Glenn Miller). Miller is a virulent white supremacist whose record of hate activity dates back to the mid-1970s. For a time, in the early to mid-1980s, Miller was one of the most prominent and notorious white supremacists in the United States, leading a major Ku…

April 14, 2014 Although terrorist acts are commonly thought of as being the work of terror groups or cells, the reality is that many acts of terrorism or ideologically-motivated violence are the work of lone individuals motivated by the ideology of a movement without belonging to any organized groups. What follows is a selected list of lone wolf incidents in the United States over the past twenty or so years in which one or more individuals were killed. Theodore John Kaczynski …

by: Oren Segal | April 10, 2014 The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles It’s unusual, but one of the most crucial findings in a recently released inspector general’s report about the Boston Marathon Bombing actually focused on something that did not take place. To be released on April 15, the first anniversary of the deadly events in Boston a year ago, the report stated that although one of the perpetrators, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, did travel to Dagestan, a restive region in…

March 20, 2014 On March 15, 2014, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) issued the 12th issue of its English-language terrorist propaganda magazine, Inspire. A new ADL report, Homegrown Islamic Extremism in 2013: The Perils of Online Recruitment & Self-Radicalization, highlights the increasing prevalence and threat of online English language terrorist propaganda. As in previous iterations of Inspire, the current issue contains a mixture of anti-Semitism and…

March 07, 2014 A WORKPLACE OF DIFFERENCE® program offers some suggestions for creating and maintaining a productive and positive workplace environment. Establish and/or reissue the company’s policies and practices by which harassment is handled. Enforce them consistently. State your company’s commitment to diversity as an integral part of the company’s mission, vision, strategy or other organizational planning process. Maintain a strong and visible profile…

February 24, 2015 Read the full comprehensive report, Al Shabaab's American Recruits (PDF). A wave of Americans traveling to Somalia to fight with Al Shabaab, an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group, has been described by the FBI as one of the "highest priorities in anti-terrorism." Americans began traveling to Somalia to join Al Shabaab in 2007, around the time the group stepped up its insurgency against Somalia's transitional government and its Ethiopian supporters, who have since withdrawn…

by: Abraham H. Foxman | February 26, 2014 The Huffington Post   Ten years ago, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" film was released amid a swirl of controversy and after a relentless public relations campaign playing up the director's celebrity status and his adamant refusal to change the film amid concerns of insensitivity and anti-Semitism. Gibson's "Passion" was a passion of hate. His film bought into all of the troubling representations of the Passion that fortified church-based…

February 13, 2014 Jared Taylor is the founder of The New Century Foundation, a self-styled think tank that publishes an online white supremacist journal American Renaissance (AR) and holds regular conferences that bring together academic racists from the U.S and abroad.  The themes of both his conferences and journal include alleged racial differences in intelligence, the promotion of “white identity,” and attacks against multiculturalism and diversity. Taylor travels abroad…

by: John L. Allen Jr. | February 08, 2014 Abraham Foxman entró a formar parte de la Liga Antidifamación —una de las más visibles organizaciones de apoyo a los judíos en Estados Unidos—en 1965, el año en que terminó el Segundo Concilio Vaticano. Entre sus objetivos, esa reunión de obispos católicos del mundo entero intentó dar un nuevo rumbo a las relaciones entre católicos y judíos a través de un…

January 27, 2014 The major anti-immigrant groups in the United States receive the bulk of their donations from foundations with close ties to the movement itself as well as foundations with a history of funding right-wing organizations. The extreme anti-immigrant group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA benefit the most from these donations.  They boast annual budgets in the millions of dollars, which are used to…

January 27, 2014 Read the full report here: Lyndon LaRouche, Holocaust Imagery & the Health Care Debate (PDF). Conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche, leader of a fringe political cult that defies categorization, and his supporters have contributed to the divisiveness surrounding the public debate on health care reform by producing and disseminating materials comparing President Barack Obama and other government officials to Hitler, Nazis and fascists, and by attending Congressional "town…

by: Abraham H. Foxman | January 27, 2014 South Florida Sun-Sentinel On this day 69 years ago, soldiers of the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front pried open the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau and were greeted as liberators by the 7,000 or so emaciated prisoners who were among the walking dead remaining within the camp at war's end. The liberation of Auschwitz — that chamber of horrors where more than a million Jews from across Europe were consigned to death in the gas chambers —…

by: Abraham H. Foxman | January 27, 2014 New York Daily News Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the Jan. 27 anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, where more than 1 million Jews were killed in the Nazi gas chambers. The deaths at Auschwitz and dozens of other death camps across Europe were the tragic culmination of the theories of racial superiority and anti-Semitism Adolf Hitler set forth as early as his notorious 1925 autobiographical manifesto…

January 24, 2014 In recent years, some in the anti-Israel movement have engaged in the hateful and offensive practice of comparing Israeli policy to Nazism and using Holocaust-related language to condemn Israel more broadly, an effort to cast Israel as a demonic state that is bent on exterminating the Palestinian people. This trend picked up significant steam in the spring of 2008, when anti-Israel activists held events across the United States to commemorate what they referred to as the…

January 20, 2014 Conservative businessman Ron Unz has stirred controversy over the last year by publicizing ideas that appeal to anti-Semites; offering a forum for writers who demonize Israel and funding several anti-Israel activists, some of whom promote anti-Semitic canards. Though Unz does not appear to be an anti-Semite, he provides support to extreme anti-Israel ideologues and his writings resonate with and are regularly cited by anti-Semites. Unz’s newest venture, which began…