by: Jonathan A. Greenblatt | October 27, 2015 PBS - Religion & Ethics Newsweekly The promulgation, on October 28, 1965, of Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Church’s Relations with Non-Christian Religions, may be the most important moment is post-Holocaust Jewish-Christian relations and interfaith relations writ large. In its fourth chapter, Nostra Aetate effectively overturned centuries of what the noted French Jewish historian…

by: Jonathan Greenblatt | October 08, 2015 The Washington Post From Charleston to Baltimore and Ferguson, it’s undeniable that our country continues to wrestle with racism and inequality. But recently there have been some notable and hopeful developments — including bipartisan prison reform and the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse. This weekend in Washington, a major demonstration will take place that is billed as a call…

September 25, 2015 When political pundit Ann Coulter made disparaging comments on Twitter claiming that presidential candidates were pandering to the Jewish community and questioned some candidates’ focus on Israel during the CNN Republican debate on September 16, white supremacists and anti-Semites were gleeful that she took on what they call “the Jewish question.” Extremists believe that Coulter was exposing alleged “Jewish power” in this country. This is not…

September 08, 2015 Read the full comprehensive report, Anti-Semitism: A Pillar of Islamic Extremist Ideology (PDF). In a video message in August 2015, Osama bin Laden’s son, Hamza bin Laden, utilized a range of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel narratives in his effort to rally Al Qaeda supporters and incite violence against Americans and Jews. Bin Laden described Jews and Israel as having a disproportionate role in world events and the oppression of Muslims. He compared the…

by: Ken Jacobson | September 03, 2015 The Jerusalem Post The surge of global anti-Semitism is one of the more disturbing phenomena in recent years. When asked, however, by a member of a congressional committee before whom I was appearing whether it was happening all over again in Europe, I answered that such an analogy was neither accurate nor helpful. Nazi Germany was a regime committed to the destruction of the Jewish people. Today, I noted, whatever the challenge of anti-Semitic violence…

August 17, 2015 Remarks as Delivered The Georgian Club, Atlanta, Georgia The circumstances of our gathering today are somber, they are serious, but I am really filled with hope. I must tell you, it has been such an extraordinary visit. We had a nice time at Or Hadash Synagogue on Saturday morning. We had a wonderful visit yesterday at Ebenezer Baptist Church which is a remarkable, redemptive and reinvigorating place. We spent the afternoon at the Civil Rights Museum where we had the…

August 06, 2015 This post was originally published as part of a larger ADL Retrospective on ADL’s archived website. This was the cry of the furious mob outside the Atlanta courthouse where Leo Frank, a Northern Jew, stood trial after his arrest in 1913 for a murder he did not commit. Anti-Semitism hung heavy in the courtroom as Frank was found guilty and sentenced to death. Though a courageous governor later commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment, Frank never did serve…

December 31, 2015 Argentina October 18, 2015 - Concepción del Uruguay, Entre Ríos – A Jewish cemetery was desecrated with a swastika.  August 25, 2015 - Buenos Aires – “Jew and mobster” were spray painted on a subway station in reference to Mauricio Macri, head of the government of the City of Buenos Aires and a presidential candidate.  August 1, 2015 – Sauce Viejo, Santa Fe – Graffiti reading &ldquo…

June 25, 2015 In the aftermath of the horrific June 17, 2015, church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, which left nine African-American parishioners dead, questions emerged about the alleged gunman’s links to the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC). In an on-line manifesto believed to have been written by 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof, who has allegedly confessed to the shootings, the author explains how the Council played an influential role in his…

June 21, 2013 David Duke, perhaps America's most well-known racist and anti-Semite, promotes anti-Semitic and white supremacist views as the leader of the white supremacist European American Unity and Rights Organization, as a writer of anti-Semitic tracts, and, in recent years, as an international figure who has promoted his anti-Jewish ideology in Europe and the Middle East, devoting particular attention to Russia and the Ukraine. Duke has been active in the white supremacy movement for…

by: Abraham H. Foxman | May 04, 2015 The Jewish Week Following the devastating earthquake in Nepal, stories began to appear about the State of Israel sending a large medical team to the area. This is not an unusual story. Whenever natural disasters occur, Israeli experts are among the first and among the most competent on the scene. This is a product of several factors. First, a national Israeli ethic that does not draw enough attention of being a "light unto nations" — being a force…

by: Abraham H. Foxman | April 21, 2015 MSNBC.com FBI Director James Comey opened an old historical wound last week when he delivered a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum referring to the “murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places” during World War II. The president of Poland, Bronislaw Komorowski, called Mr. Comey’s remarks “an insult to thousands of Poles who helped Jews.” The people of Poland, which…

April 06, 2015 On April 2, 2015, the P5+1 (the US, UK, China, Russia, France and Germany – with EU facilitation) announced a framework agreement, setting the parameters for a final Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. The parameters, which emerged after an intense eight-day period of negotiations in Lausanne, Switzerland, and followed two years of talks between the world powers and Iran, create a basis for negotiations over a final…

March 27, 2015 Twenty years ago, on April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a massive truck bomb in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.  This attack, which killed 168 men, women and children and injured hundreds more, remains the worst act of domestic (as opposed to international) terrorism in United States history.  The immediate impact of the bombing was obvious.  The attack not only caused death and destruction but created a storm of media coverage…

March 25, 2015 Read ADL's full report, Vigilante Justice: Militias and “Common Law Courts” Wage War Against the Government. (PDF) In recognition of the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the ADL is making available select reports from 1994-1997, the era when the Oklahoma City bombing occurred. This report describes circumstances in the mid-1990s, not the present day. In the 1997 report Vigilante Justice, ADL surveyed anti-government extremists in…

March 25, 2015 For the whole report:  April 19, 1995:  The History of the Oklahoma City Bombing (PDF). When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt declared it “a date that will live in infamy.”  Roosevelt was right; some dates do live on in infamy.  No one who has lived through the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001—attacks actually designated by their date—can deny that. April 19, 1995, was also such a…

by: Bloeme Evers-Emden, Ph.D. | January 02, 2013 Among the many terrible measures the Nazis took against the Jews, the worst consequence was the disintegration of the family, especially the separation of children from their parents. When the deportations of the Dutch Jews began in July 1942, most people went, trusting that they could survive. But when the Germans' methods became more and more brutal, it was understood that something terrible was going on. Starting in the autumn of 1942…

February 17, 2015 Read what ADL has discovered about homegrown Islamic extremism and the influence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL). This new report from ADL's Center on Extremism provides information on: Americans implicated in terror-related activity How terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda leverage social media to recruit Americans The role of anti-Semitism in terrorist narratives Americans Implicated in Terror-Related Activity At least 17…

February 02, 2015 2015 began with heinous attacks in Paris by Islamic extremists directly targeting Jews and those perceived to be treating Islam inappropriately.  Two gunmen, brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, attacked the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on January 9, killing 11 members of the staff and a policeman.  Two days later, on January 11, a friend of the Kouachis,   Amedy Coulibaly, went into a HyperCacher supermarket – at the…

by: Kenneth Jacobson | January 31, 2015 Santa Cruz Sentinel The latest strategy being used by those who make a career of assaulting the good name of the state of Israel is to link the issue of full equality for African-Americans, as symbolized by the word “Ferguson,” with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The most recent egregious example of this took place in Santa Cruz at an event on Jan. 28 commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. sponsored by UC Santa Cruz. The announced speaker…