Jonathan Greenblatt on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism and Free Speech

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From the New York Times, this is the interview.

I'm Ludu Garcia Navarro.

Hamas's attack in Israel on October 7th and Israel's nearly two-year war in Gaza have convulsed not only the region, but America itself.

Here in the U.S., a rise in anti-Semitism and questions around how criticism of Israel relates to anti-Semitism have become central to debates around free speech, immigration, national security, and fundamentally, what it means to feel safe and welcome in this country.

Navigating all those debates is Jonathan Greenblatt.

He's the head of the Anti-Defamation League, or ADL.

Founded more than 100 years ago, the ADL's stated mission is to, quote, stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.

Under Greenblatt's decade-long tenure, the ADL has tracked a precipitous rise in anti-Semitic incidents across the country.

At the same time, pro-Palestinian advocates and others within and outside the Jewish community say the organization has entered the political fray in ways that put it in tension with its founding civil rights mission.

I also wanted to ask Greenblatt about the war and how critics of the Israeli government, including some Jews, talk about it.

Here's my conversation with the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt.

Thank you so much for joining the interview.

I'm so glad you're here today.

Thank you so much for having me, Lulu.

I want to start with a big question that I know you think about a lot, which is, what is the situation, in your estimation, for Jews in America right now?

I think this is a time of great concern for Jews all over the United States.

You know, at ADL, we track anti-Semitism, we measure attitudes, and we also track incidents.

And we've never really seen a time like this, at least not in recent memory.

So, on the one hand, elevated or intense anti-Semitic attitudes as a percent of the population have more than doubled in the last five years.

And we also track incidents.

What I can tell you is last year, 2024, was the worst year we had ever recorded in terms of acts of harassment, vandalism, and violence directed at Jewish people or Jewish institutions.

That was the fifth time in the last six years that we've broken a new record.

And if I look back over the 10 years since I became ADL CEO, the number's up 10x where it was when I started on the job.

That's why I wanted to have you here today, because you have been in charge of the ADL since 2015.

And this is a moment in America where anti-Semitism is up.

It's an increasing problem.

It's at the center of our politics.

It's at the center of debates about hate, hate, free speech, and of course, Israel and the war in Gaza.

I'd like to understand, though, first a little bit about you and how you came to this work.

Sure.

You grew up in Connecticut.

It's true.

Little town in Connecticut.

Can you just tell me a little bit about your experience as a young Jewish person there?

Yeah, I was born in New Haven and raised in Trumbull, Connecticut, which is a nice but somewhat nondescript place.

There was a Jewish population, not too big.

And, you know, anti-Semitism,

I mean, I experienced some of it, right?

I had pennies thrown at me in middle school.

I had comments made to me in high school by people who I didn't like.

And sometimes even friends might say something like, oh, you really jewed me down.

So I had comments like that and moments like that, but it was not the foremost thing in my life.

However, I'm the grandson of a Holocaust survivor from Germany.

And all my grandparents were from Europe.

All came to the United States fleeing persecution, seeking opportunity, you know, wanting refuge.

So for me, anti-Semitism wasn't in the foreground, but was always in the background, I would say.

Did you grow up with a strong sense of your Jewish identity?

Oh, yes.

I grew up in a home that wasn't overly religious, but we were very sort of Jewishly identified.

I went to synagogue.

I was bar mitzvah.

Grew up in a very Zionist home.

right very supportive of the state of israel but for me being jewish was always something i did sort of behind the scenes at home.

It was never part of my public life until I took this job.

Yeah, to do a little bit of your bio.

After college, you worked in both the public and private sectors.

You started a bottled water company.

Yep.

You worked in tech, and then you went to the Obama administration.

And in 2015, as we mentioned, you were hired to lead the ADL and you took over from Abe Foxman, who had led that organization for a long time.

He was there for 50 years.

For listeners who don't know what the ADL is, how would you describe it?

So the ADL is the oldest anti-hate organization in America.

It was founded in 1913 in the wake of the Leo Frank trial.

And at the time in the United States, Jews suffered from what we might characterize today in our vernacular as systemic discrimination.

Couldn't work in many professions.

Couldn't go to university.

Couldn't go to many universities, or their numbers were artificially kept down, couldn't get medical treatment at many institutions, couldn't buy homes in many places, went on and on.

And in that moment, this man, Leo Frank, who came from New York, went down to Atlanta to manage a family business, was falsely accused of a crime, the death of a girl who was found strangled to death in the building that he managed.

Falsely accused, wrongly convicted, and then ultimately lynched.

He was hung from a tree by a mob.

And so in that moment, ADL was founded.

And what's interesting about the organization is when we were created, again, 100 100 some odd years ago, they wrote a mission statement that we still use today, that ADL was created to, quote, stop the defamation of the Jewish people and secure justice and fair treatment to all.

So long before theories of intersectionality or notions of social justice were prevalent, the founders of ADL, at a time when Jews in this country were a small minority, still are, but were, you know, didn't have much cultural influence, didn't have much sort of political standing, these people thought, we will fight for ourselves and we will fight for others.

Jews can only be safe if everyone is safe.

Before we get to this moment, I do want to understand how the organization has changed over time or not during your tenure.

I looked at the ADL's annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents for 2016, which, as you mentioned, is one of the core functions.

You track what anti-Semitic incidents are happening and how many.

And topping the list at that time was the rise of the alt-right.

Looking from that period onwards, you start to see the focus of the audits shift.

And one of the things that becomes part of

what you start highlighting in these audits is anti-Israel sentiment on the left.

Can you explain why that was?

Sure.

So first of all, I don't think the audit has sort of altogether changed by any stretch of the imagination.

Like, I don't agree with that characterization.

The audit may evolve relative to the times and circumstances dictate that we respond to them, but we have a very rigorous methodological process.

I mean, we are very exacting in what we count.

So, someone says something happened.

We don't report that.

An anti-Israel rally on its own, we don't count that.

We only count where we can determine with sufficient conviction that there was actual anti-Semitism.

So this is very important.

I mean, I think last year we tracked over 5,000 anti-Israel rallies, the majority of which are not in the audit because we didn't see evidence of anti-Semitism at them.

So marching down the street and saying free Palestine is not anti-Semitic.

There is this fiction that ADL or other groups

look at every instance where Israel is criticized and call that anti-Semitism.

That is not the case.

I want to absolutely dig into how you determine this.

I guess I just meant what was happening in the culture at that moment that brought these incidents to the forefront.

Well, I think one thing that we started to...

There's a difference from what we saw earlier.

And I think there's a difference in the intensity and the pervasiveness.

of this sort of hate where people feel and again it's sort of a trend of the last decade last 10 years i think anti-semitism has been normalized in the culture and i think people are now saying things and doing things in public spaces that just weren't the case so i would look back at a pivotal point is 2021

so there was an israeli action in gaza and suddenly here you had jewish people being attacked in broad daylight in response to that.

So I'm not talking about somebody vandalizing a synagogue in the middle of the night, although that's also reprehensible.

I'm not talking about breaking the window of a kosher restaurant against reprehensible.

But like right up the road from where we are in Times Square, a Jewish man was savagely beaten in broad daylight, in public.

The only thing he was doing was walking.

And so that got our attention.

It seemed like something had changed.

Now, to be clear, like war is bad.

You've covered it.

You know it better than I do.

All war is bad.

But it triggered something here, a kind of open season on Jews that we hadn't seen before.

What do you think the reason for that was?

So I think number one, polarization and sort of cynicism create an environment where scapegoating happens.

And Jews play this perennial role as the scapegoat.

It's lasted throughout the ages.

I think secondly, Lulu, extremists feel emboldened.

Extremists have increasingly feel feel emboldened, like they can move into the culture and they don't get called out.

And we see it particularly on the right, where we've seen people with extreme right-wing views, literally in positions of authority.

We've seen it on the left, where people with radical left-wing views are sort of moving into, again, the sort of commentariat as well.

And I think it's very problematic.

And I think number three, social media has sort of whipped all of this up into a frenzy.

So those things together created very combustible conditions.

And I think that continues to create a very fragile, dangerous environment today.

Aaron Powell, Trevor Bowie, I mean, what you're describing, of course, only got more intense after the events of October 7th, the atrocities committed in Israel,

Israel's response in Gaza, what we've seen there.

It's turbocharged the debate.

about what anti-Semitism is and has turbocharged anti-Semitism itself.

When that happened on October 7th, understanding all this lead up that you had seen and been a part of,

did you think that at that point that what the ADL was going to be called on to do would be different or change in some way?

Well, let me explain.

I'll tell you what happened.

October the 7th, of course, was a Saturday, and they're six, seven hours ahead in the Middle East.

So it's the middle of the night, and my phone rings.

Very unusual.

And I answer the phone, and it's the woman who heads up my office in Jerusalem.

And she says, Jonathan, I'm in our bomb shelter in Modin.

There's thousands of missiles being fired at the country.

I said, there are missiles.

And we put on CNN.

And it wasn't even being reported on CNN yet.

So we were confused.

What's really going on?

But it became very clear because my phone was then buzzing and buzzing and buzzing that something really big was going on.

So I ended up going into the office.

We all did.

And

we were fairly sort of overwhelmed and stunned.

I mean, it was terrifying.

But then what happened, Lulu, is then in the afternoon, we started getting different kinds of reports.

I remember getting a call or a text.

It was somewhere here in the city by NYU of like a rally, like a pro-Hamas rally that was taking place where people were cheering what had happened.

And then we started getting reports of similar things.

And then we started seeing all the tweets, all the posts, the hang glider emojis, the people celebrating.

And this was really astonishing.

Meaning, what I had not seen up until that time was

this like public outpouring of hate.

And that was really,

I think a lot of us in the Jewish community ask like, what's going on?

You know, what's the mood?

I think people are still reeling from that today.

I know I am.

Did you feel like

because

of the severity of the reaction that you had to focus more on Israel?

And did it change your perception of how you had to look at what was happening here in America?

I wouldn't say that, no.

So I wouldn't say that because what was happening there meant we had to change our approach here.

No.

But what we did have to start to think about, we hadn't seen things before like people graffitiing

synagogues with free Gaza.

We hadn't seen things before, like people painting red triangles on people's homes for the audience.

The red triangle is the symbol that Hamas uses to target their victims.

We hadn't seen that before.

So, to answer your question, it wasn't like, oh, there's a war over there, therefore we must change.

But what it was was,

something is now happening over here.

And we've got to be paying attention to this and trying to understand how did we get to the place

where college students think it's normal to surround someone who is wearing a kipah and call them a baby killer.

Like someone who is simply identifiably Jewish, suddenly being targeted and victimized by people claiming you're committing genocide.

I mean, obviously holding Jewish people or any group of people collectively responsible is anti-Semitic or again, racist or xenophobic.

The prevalence prevalence with which that is happening here totally astonished me.

I wouldn't have guessed it.

I mean, we've seen indisputable acts of anti-Semitic violence.

I mean, we have the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy employees in D.C.,

the firebombing in Colorado in June against peaceful protesters calling for the release of the hostages, arson at Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's home.

So there have been many high-profile cases of violence against Jews in this country, and that that is terrible.

There is a debate that I want to understand a little bit more your perspective on about

what constitutes anti-Semitism in this country.

Because we have pro-Palestinian speech, we have criticism of the Israeli government, we have anti-Zionism, and we have anti-Semitism.

How do you distinguish between those?

Look, criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic.

If you're looking for an organization which criticizes the Israeli government, Israeli politicians, Israeli policies, I point you to ADL.org because we do it.

There is a robust debate in the Jewish community, and I think you see heated criticism in the Jewish community of policies of the Israeli government.

When it crosses a line,

is when it's not a criticism of Israeli policy per se.

But we see things like, for example, number one, the demonization of all Israeli people.

Demonizing an entire group of people for a policy of government you don't like.

I would say that's anti-Semitism.

Say secondly, delegitimizing the state itself, its right to exist.

And then number three, double standards.

When you use double standards when you talk about Israel versus other countries.

So when I see demonization or delegitimization or double standards, that's where I think about, huh, is this really criticism of Israel or is this something else?

Now, let's talk about anti-Zionism.

And by the way, to talk about anti-Zionism, we talk about Zionism.

Please, please define it.

We'll talk about it.

So Zionism is, simply put, the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their ancient homeland.

That's what it is.

Zionism is essential to the Jewish tradition.

The idea of Jews returning to Israel, we've been talking about it since Moses, literally.

Political Zionism is newer, 125 years, but that notion of self-determination in the homeland doesn't exclude Palestinians, doesn't exclude any other group.

It's saying Jews have the right, this sort of liberation movement to go back to where they're from.

Anti-Zionism is the belief that Jews do not have that right.

It is an ideology which is committed to saying we will do what we can to prevent Jewish self-determination in their homeland.

Anti-Zionism is an ideology of nihilism, Lulu, which would literally seek to not just delegitimize, but eliminate the Jewish state.

And that's very problematic.

So you have equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

It is.

And I will say that in preparation for this conversation, I talked to a lot of different people.

And one of the things I heard is that anti-Zionism for them is a desire to have the rights of Palestinians be equal to the rights of Jews in Israel and the Palestinian territories, which would ultimately mean that the country is not majority Jewish.

The idea of sort of, I guess, the one state solution, if you will.

Is that definition of anti-Zionism to you anti-Semitic?

Well, look, if you believe that only Jewish people

don't have the right to self-determination, that's anti-Semitic because it's holding out Jews to a double standard you don't accord to other people.

So

if you believe my definition of Zionism, which is really not my definition, it's widely accepted.

It's peculiar to me how anti-Zionism isn't the opposite of that.

How people choose to interpret it, to embellish it, to sort of dress it up as something other than what it is.

But the reality is, if you believe how I laid out Zionism, then anti-Zionism is pretty simple.

I think the challenge is if someone defines their view of anti-Zionism in a way that allows for Jews to exist in a state of Israel, but that grants Palestinians rights,

but you're seeing that as anti-Semitic, you know, people don't feel like they have the space to have a different view without being tagged with something that, as we have already established, is pretty seriously.

Well, let's look, in fairness, I can appreciate that for some people, this idea is an abstraction, right?

Oh, anti-Zionism, it means such and such to me.

I get that.

But let me tell you what anti-Zionism doesn't mean to me, but what it results in.

It's a lunatic trying to burn down the governor's mansion with his family sleeping in it because of his, quote, position on Palestine.

It is, again, firebombing elderly people because you want to, quote, end all Zionists.

I think, you know, in talking to

people who are self-described anti-Zionists, starting with the idea that that is the way that they feel that everyone should have rights in Israel and Palestine and Palestinian territories, to then extrapolate that they are somehow connected to murder, arson seems

to keep all over the world.

That's kind of a sleight of hand and not.

No, but I'm really not trying to do a sleight of hand.

I'm just trying to understand.

You say that anti-Zionism leads to, that is the inevitable end to

this kind of belief.

And so I think what people would say who might hold those beliefs is that is a sort of exaggeration and sleight of hand because they don't want the annihilation of Jews.

They might not want that.

They might not understand what it means.

They might not be steeped in the context.

They might not be familiar with all of the history.

But all I know is what I see every day.

All I know is the thousands and thousands of people who contact us because they have been, as I've described already, targeted and victimized, not because of what they believe, but because of who they are.

And again, when you normalize language like from the river to the sea.

When you normalize language like globalize the Intifada, when you normalize language like Israel is a Nazi state, this create the conditions in which people feel not just compelled, but almost obligated, Lulu, to do horrible things.

So I think ideas have consequences, and it starts with words.

And what I am saying to you is, again,

Zionism is one thing.

The opposite of that is not some, well, look, let's have an ideal one state where everyone is.

I'm not talking about that.

I'm focused here in America on the felt experience of Jewish people.

I'm sure you saw my colleague Ezra Klein's recent piece on divisions within the Jewish community, because this is not just an active debate outside of the Jewish community.

These definitions and how they're interpreted are also very vigorously debated within the Jewish community.

Absolutely.

And in that piece, he argues that the war in Gaza and Israel's actions over the past year there have broken the consensus around the central place Israel has for American Jews.

And there was this one line in the piece that really struck me about how we think about the idea of self-determination.

And he writes, and I'm quoting here: the question is not whether Israel has the right to exist, it is whether Israel has the right to dominate.

Israel does exist, right?

But the question is: does Israel have the right to dominate, which is what has caused so much consternation about

how Israel exercises its right to exist.

So it's just important that I come back to my focus really every single day is the lived experience of Jewish people here.

So I am not someone who is opining on the politics and the geostrategic issues.

That's important.

Ezra has the luxury of doing that as a columnist.

I don't.

The reason I delve into this is because you brought it up when we are discussing words like anti-Zionism.

At the crux of that debate, of course, is this idea that you believe anti-Zionism means the destruction of the Jewish state.

And other people interpret it as the current incarnation of how Israel expresses its right to exist over the domination of the Palestinians.

Like, again, I just disagree with this.

I disagree with characterizing something with this phenomenon as something that it isn't.

Okay.

So, again, so I come back to that, and I won't concede that point because I don't think it's correct.

And then, secondly, as it relates to Israel, look, the reality is, is the country inside the state of Israel has equal equal rights for its Arab citizens, whether they are of the Druze faith or the Christian faith or the Muslim faith, whether they self-identify as Palestinians or Bedouins or Arab Israelis.

You've spent a lot of time there.

And I would say, at a minimum, you know, there are many examples of treatment that is not equitable.

And I think that's what's so hard for many people about the clear distinction that you're sort of making.

Israel is an imper it's a democracy, unlike all the other countries in the region.

It's imperfect like all democracies on the planet, including the one we're living in today.

And we hold it to a very high standard because it's a democracy.

But we may object to certain things, practices that that state is doing, and yet somehow people use that to rationalize and justify actions against American Jews here.

I don't know that any rational person is supporting Jews being treated badly in America.

What I'm trying to understand

is this definition here, right?

About what are these different buckets?

How are they defined?

And then how does that actually play out in real life in the United States?

So, for example, I want to talk a little bit about the situation on U.S.

college campuses.

Sure.

Because shortly after October 7th, the ADL and the Brandeis Center wrote a letter to nearly 200 universities.

You said that the group group Students for Justice in Palestine, which is a group that the ADL has focused on, should be investigated for materially supporting a foreign terrorist organization, which can carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

Critics of that letter and that position have said that the ADL is trying to suppress pro-Palestinian speech because the definition of material support for terrorism is actually vague in the statutes.

Let's talk about it.

Yeah, can you explain why that letter?

And so just to sort of set the stage,

I believe in a two-state solution.

I believe that Israelis will never truly have safety and security unless Palestinians also have a degree of dignity and equality in a state of their own.

Let's just establish that.

Let's make sure that's clear.

But let's talk about SJP.

So as I mentioned earlier,

October the 7th was this extraordinary moment.

We all went to the office and we were there on the 8th and all the days since.

And on the 8th,

the person who runs our Center on Extremism, the group at ADL, which monitors and disrupts extremist threats, he reached out to me and said, hey, you need to see this.

And one of our people was in an SJP national chat on October the 8th.

And in the chat, they released or published for people to use who are in the SJP chat an organizing toolkit, discussion guides in plural, and talking points about what had happened on the 7th.

Now, mind you, we were literally still trying to figure out what was going on on the 8th.

I'm sure you remember you were covering the story.

There was still fighting going on.

We didn't know exactly what had happened, who had perpetrated it.

And yet SJP on the 8th already had their narrative very well developed.

One of the things that caught our attention on the 8th is Lulu, they went from referring to the state of Israel as Israel in their materials to only referring to it as the Zionist entity.

Now, you know this for your audience.

Zionist entity is how the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah refer to Israel.

On the 8th, they used terms like genocide to describe what was happening in Gaza.

And they also talked about they were sort of praising what had happened on the 7th, what was really still happening, the kind of direct conflict with the Zionist entity.

So when we saw this, this definitely got our attention.

This is not what you see from other groups on campus.

There was a level of language here that seemed wholesale adopted from Hamas.

And then what we proceeded to see was SJP continue to amplify and spread narratives through their social media, through their on-the-ground protests, and use used tactics that were way beyond anything we'd ever seen before from groups criticizing Israel on college campuses.

Well, let me ask you this, because the Supreme Court held in 2010 that that law that you asked them to be looked into over

only applies to actions, quote, performed in coordination with, and I'm quoting here, at the direction of a terrorist organization and not to independent advocacy.

So are you saying that you believe those materials came from Hamas?

Well, I can tell you that

directly?

I don't know where it was coming from.

We felt like this was a group with a pattern of behavior that already had our attention, that was clearly signaling, not signaling, expressing a desire to escalate right here.

And we thought it merited attention.

I absolutely stand by that.

Does that mean that they're in direct coercion?

I don't know.

What it meant was we identified, again, but 200 schools, students being looked into for material support for terrorism.

I mean, that is a very serious allegation that the Supreme Court already looked at and said, basically, you have to be in direct coordination with a terrorist entity.

I mean, again, I'm just wondering, did you believe that that's what was happening?

Aaron Powell, the language they were using, the tactics they were expressing support for, were in direct alignment with a terrorist organization.

Aaron Powell, that is a different thing, though, than actually being directed by and in communication with a terrorist organization.

You know, we track extremists and we've been doing it for decades and decades and decades.

This gives us the ability to degree of pattern recognition.

And we clearly saw extraordinarily concerning behavior that led us to think this needs to be looked at.

Guess what?

All of our concerns have borne out to be correct about what was going to happen on those campuses.

Since those days, Jewish students have been targeted, victimized, and vilified in large part by campaigns organized and executed by SJP.

Like that's literally happened on our campuses.

And I can go line by line and tell you the stories of all the individuals who've experienced this.

I don't want to belabor the point.

I just think it's slightly different.

what you're talking about, what actually happened on campuses, and the accusation of material support for terrorism.

Those are slightly two different things.

So, look, on March 5th, at the takeover of the Barnard Library right here in New York City, Quad, which is the SJP, they banned the SJP chapter at Columbia for its behavior, and the students immediately reconstituted it as Quad.

That's what they call it.

And those students literally handed out Hamas literature.

How do I know that?

Because I went to the campus the following morning, and the students who were there in the library as it was taken over by the Quad students said, Here, Jonathan, look at what they were handing out.

Pamphlets that said Hamas Media Office on it.

I'll bring one to the next time we meet so you can see it for yourself.

So, look, did Hamas send that to them?

Did they download it?

I don't really know what the process was of coordinating, but you can't hand out ISIS literature in front of Lowell Library at Columbia.

I guess you could, and you may be detained for doing that.

Is that speech or is that conduct?

In the same vein, I'd like to understand your position on Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate who was initially detained under a different law that says his actions were a foreign policy threat and that he can be deported because of that.

He is, of course, married to an American.

He has a green card.

The ADL supported his arrest when it happened, posting on X, we appreciate the Trump administration's broad, broad, bold set of efforts to counter campus anti-Semitism.

Again, I'm quoting, and this action further illustrates that resolve by holding alleged perpetrators responsible for their actions.

Are you comfortable with the way this administration has been using the threat of deportation against protesters?

Okay.

So a few things.

First of all, like we deeply, profoundly believe as an organization that, again, we've been doing civil rights rights for over 100 years in freedom of speech, freedom of expression, the ability to protest without fear of sort of political or reprisal.

This is fundamental to our belief system.

And so for me, it's not about speech.

It's about conduct.

There's lots of ways you can protest the actions of what's happening of the Israeli government, things in the Middle East, without using violent rhetoric or justifying violence.

So again, there's lots of groups who do this, Lulu, who don't use this kind of language or these tactics.

I mean, I will say on CNN, Khalil said publicly, anti-Semitism and any form of racism has no place on campus.

And in this movement, I guess.

And when asked,

he wouldn't condemn Hamas at the same time in that same interview.

I would ask you, though,

about, again, the legal repercussions for some of these issues over speech.

That's

what I'm what I'm asking.

If you read the full sort of post, what I said when Mr.

Khalil was detained was that he needed due process.

And I continue to believe he and every other person who is detained or arrested or all of that.

Like due process is also fundamental to our legal system.

Fundamental to law, though, had been very rarely used at that point.

I mean, and this is where language becomes so so important because at a trial, which is about his deportations and others, a senior State Department official testified student visa holders are having their social media screened for criticism of Israel, including the current war in Gaza.

And the State Department official said that that is the practice at the moment.

And in his testimony, this official said, and I'm quoting, in my understanding, anti-Semites will sometimes try to hide their views and say that they're not against Jews.

They're just against Israel, which is a farcical argument.

He added, it's just a dodge.

And so I'm just wondering how you think this is all being implemented.

I mean, should students not get visas if they've criticized Israel?

Look, of course, that's absurd.

So what I'm focused on is not what people think, but what they do.

This is why these conversations about anti-Zionism as if it were some abstraction are kind of problematic for me because I deal in the reality, again, the lived experience of Jewish students.

Sure.

sure but i'm saying but this is a reality of how this is now being implemented by policy in in this government i got to be frank i don't know who that state department official was but i don't agree that you can keep people out of the united states because they are anti-semitic or racist or sexist or express any other prejudices i don't believe in this concept of thought police that's not what we do at adl and i certainly wouldn't want to see that codified into the criminal code

i mean one concern that I've heard is that, and again, referring to what the State Department official said and the actions of this administration, is that this government might be using anti-Semitism selectively to screen people with whom it might be ideologically opposed.

Well, obviously, that would be a problem.

Like, I don't think anti-Semitism should be used as a political football by elected officials from either side.

And so, to the extent that the Trump administration or any administration would use it as a pretext to go after people who they don't like or with whom they don't agree on a broader set of issues.

Clearly, I wouldn't agree with that.

All right.

We're going to leave it here because we're actually at time, although we have lots.

I know we've

been in it, but we're going to talk again and there's plenty more to talk about.

Super good.

I really appreciate your time.

Look, I appreciate your questions.

After the break, I talk to Greenblatt again, and we get into criticisms that the ADL has gotten too close to the Trump administration.

I just don't even agree with the premise that we are somehow aligning with the right or aligning with the administration.

We are an institution at ADL, and one of the features about being an institution is you work with the other institutions.

I'm Peter Baker.

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Hi, nice to see you again.

Nice to see you again.

Since we last spoke, a lot has happened in the war in Gaza.

And, you know, there is mounting outrage in Israel over terrible images of one of the hostages having to dig his own grave, looking incredibly gaunt.

Starved, I think, is the word.

I think starved is the word.

And we've seen a mounting international outcry that has also been voiced in Israel over the mass starvation in Gaza.

The beloved and prominent Israeli author David Grossman has now called what's happening to Gaza a genocide.

And he said that with immense pain and a broken heart, that the occupation has corrupted us.

That's a quote from him.

And I did wonder what you feel about that characterization, coming from someone who's often seen as a moral compass in Israel.

Well, look, I think...

David is an extraordinary author and in many ways one of the muses of the Jewish state who sacrificed so much.

I don't begrudge him at all of his heartfelt opinions.

Look, the situation in Gaza is a tragedy of immense proportions.

The suffering, the starvation,

it is

heart-wrenching.

Like it pains me every day.

I would never purport to be a moral compass like David Grossman, but I do feel feel that my job requires me to have a kind of moral clarity.

And on the use of words.

I mean, this is what we've

been discussing in different ways.

Yeah.

And so I guess having heard that the word genocide is viewed when used against the Israeli state as basically an attack on Israel's existence itself, I just wonder if you view it that way or if you don't.

Well, again, like I don't begrudge David.

I do think what's happening in Gaza is a terrible, catastrophic situation.

I don't think it's a genocide because that's a legal definition, which means an intentional effort.

And I don't have the dictionary in front of me.

I have it here.

It says...

Okay, what does it say?

I mean, it's a UN, right?

We should say it's a legal definition.

And it says any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, such as killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

So in fairness, I don't have that definition in front of me, right?

And I haven't read it like you have before this.

But what I'll simply say is that

I don't believe the Israeli government is committing genocide.

I don't think they are intentionally trying to to destroy or annihilate a group of people.

I do think this is a war that was started by Hamas.

I do think Hamas has made the decision to black market and whore the aid that comes in.

The Hamas government has chosen to build tunnels below, not to create protective structures above.

So we could ask ourselves questions about who is really bringing the catastrophe to the Gazan people.

But look, at the end of the day, for me, it's not about how we define these things.

Again, we talked about this last time.

Anti-Zionism is an interpretation.

It's a fact.

And the pain and hunger and tragedy in Gaza is a fact.

And the deaths of civilians are a fact.

And the status of the hostages is a fact.

So the facts compel me to say without any hesitation, this war needs to end.

The hostages need to come home.

The aid needs to flow in.

And we need people on both sides to be able to live in some degree, some modicum of peace.

That's what I want.

The reason I bring up the use of the word genocide, and we should also say that Ehud Olmer, the former prime minister of Israel, is now calling Israel's actions war crimes, right?

So again, use of these words,

is that these questions on the words that one uses are at the heart of what I hear many people asking about this war, including Jews, which is how can they support Zionism if this is the current manifestation of Zionism?

Well, look, it's like, how can you support Islam if Ayatollah Khomeini is the progenitor of it?

How can you support Christianity if the Crusades happened?

How can you support America if you disagree with President Trump's policies?

Or even in the face of larger scale disasters like slavery?

Like, so again, Zionism is the right of a people to self-determination.

You can be upset with the policies of a government.

But again, if you didn't say in the wake of enslavement of Africans, America should be destroyed.

If you didn't say in the wake of the Crusades, Christianity has no legitimacy.

If you don't say in the wake of the oppression of women for centuries, Islam has no right, then why would you feel differently about this?

Again, when only I'm only trying to characterize, I think, what people have been struggling with.

And I'm just trying to clarify for you why I find the presentation so problematic.

I mean, what people are trying to understand

how far that right to self-determination extends.

If self-determination means having a nation that is majority Jewish, does the right to self-determination permit Israel to deny others their civil and human rights to maintain it?

Well, look, I think that's fair.

It's a reasonable question to ask.

And the reality is that people inside the state of Israel have civil and human rights.

So at the end of the day, if you're looking for a country anywhere in the world that treats everyone perfectly, I don't think you'll find one.

If you're looking for a country in the Middle East, a democracy with corrective capacity, that's the state of Israel.

And the rights that are enjoyed by minorities there, if you just compare it to other countries in the region, Muslims and Druze and religious minorities and ethnic minorities have more rights in Israel than in any other country in the region, Lulu.

I do want to bring the conversation back to the U.S.

and the work that the ADL is doing.

You know, the ADL just came out with a report rating states on how they're doing on combating anti-Semitism.

Can you talk me through briefly why you wanted to look at states?

What was the sort of purpose of breaking it down in that way?

Because I think it's the first time you've done it, right?

First time we've done it.

So we call it the Jewish Policy Index.

And indeed, it takes a state-by-state view.

about policies and practices to evaluate how they are doing in the work of fighting anti-Semitism and hate.

It's data-driven.

It's grounded in evidence.

You can see that we basically tier the states into three different categories.

Let's say, okay,

better, and best.

And we lay out why we think they are doing as such.

Again, what are their laws?

What are their practices?

What are their policies?

so that a state that is okay can see the path forward to do better.

And it's a work in progress.

My hope would be is that over the next year and the ensuing years, we'll work with all of the states, again, Republicans or Democrats, whoever might be in office, to try to demonstrate how they can pursue a path forward that will again keep their Jewish citizens as safe and secure as possible and allow them to enjoy the same rights, the same privileges as do all other people in that state.

You know, on this idea of working with both parties, The Forward, which is a progressive Jewish outlet, reported a few months ago that in a speech to Republican attorneys general this summer, you know, you said that student activists were frothing at the mouth, looking like they just came out of Mosul.

You said that there is a convergence of what I call the radical left and Islamist groups here in the U.S.

And you praised the Trump administration's punishing of universities like Harvard and others saying, God bless Secretary McMahon, referring to the Secretary of Education.

I know you made those comments in what you considered to be a closed-door meeting where there were Republican attorneys general.

But is there anything you'd like to clarify about that?

Absolutely.

So number one,

I certainly was talking about activists, but only those who are completely masked, who don't show their identity, who are dressed like other people we've seen unfortunately on the field of battle, and those student activists who are screaming and harassing and threatening.

other students.

So that's number one.

So when I say frothing at the mouth, I was referring to that very small percentage of these activists.

Number two, I also talked about, as you said, the administration's approach to dealing with the anti-Semitism on campuses and I praised Secretary McMahon.

And I should say right here up front, I have worked with the prior education secretary and I've worked with this education secretary.

And I credit the Biden administration.

for their national strategy to counter anti-Semitism, a really important document.

No one had done what the Biden administration had done before in elevating anti-Semitism to a a federal priority.

And ADL, in full disclosure, worked with them on that.

And they get a lot of credit for adopting the plan.

And then I give credit to the Trump administration for actually implementing aspects of the plan and taking a strong view.

Again, in the face of real, not imagined, real acts of hate, real acts of discrimination.

Now, that being said, I praised Secretary McMahon in that meeting.

Maybe I went a little overboard saying, God bless.

And at the same time, when I met with Secretary McMahon, McMahon, I met with her in her office and told her, yes, I appreciate what you're doing on these universities, leaning in.

And I'm worried about overreach because going too far could not only

harm the universities, it harms our whole country.

And the fact of the matter is pulling back funding for research can have lots of deleterious impacts.

So I said to her and to the anti-Semitism task force, yes, lean in, but don't go too far.

What would be a sign that this administration has overcorrected in your view?

That's a good question.

Well, I think to the extent that research stopped happening, PhDs stopped being granted, breakthrough innovation was halted, those would be things that would be evidence to me of it going too far.

On the other hand, like we've just saw the settlement with Columbia, there was another recent settlement.

Those are encouraging because it shows me that schools demonstrate they're going to take this seriously and the administration shows that they're going to work with it and reinstate the funding.

That's a good outcome for everybody, I think.

I've heard the concern and the criticism that the ADL is sort of increasingly aligning itself with the administration, with Israel, with the right, and it's sacrificing its long-standing commitment to broader civil rights.

I mean, in between our two conversations, there was a New York magazine article that came out sort of reflecting some of those criticisms, which you have roundly rejected, we should say.

But I'm wondering, do you see how the intensity of the language you used in that meeting could lead someone to that conclusion?

I mean, first of all, the piece that you're referring to relied almost entirely on vague anonymous sources.

I'm surprised that you're even asking me about it, to be honest.

That said,

Again, we helped to write the national strategy to counter anti-Semitism released by the Biden administration.

We were deeply involved in that.

We are working as well with the Trump administration.

This is what we do.

I just don't even agree with the premise that we are somehow aligning with the right or aligning with the administration.

We are an institution at ADL.

And one of the

features about being an institution is you work with the other institutions.

I get and I take the feedback and I hear the criticism and I simply would say, we've worked with presidential administrations over generations, right and left.

We don't agree with them on everything, but where we can find common ground, we try.

And where we have a point of disagreement, we make that known.

Last few questions.

I want to keep going.

Like, I appreciate it.

No, and I appreciate it.

You know, you engaging with what are thorny and challenging questions that are part of our national debate.

Yep.

So

I know you've looked at a lot of the polling, as I have, that Israel's lost a lot of support, even among Jews, especially among young Jews.

Do you ever worry that you might have positioned the ADL in such a way that the younger generation of Jews won't see you as defending them and the things that they believe in?

Well, it's interesting.

90% of Jews in the polling that I've seen, or the surveys that I've seen, believe in the right of the state of Israel to exist.

i.e., they are Zionist.

And so to young Jewish people, the vast majority of them identify with and feel positively about their Jewish identity and have a strong association with the state of Israel.

All the data shows this.

And so I think the majority of them from whom I've heard appreciate the work that ADL does for them and their communities.

So I don't really think about this question, how have you positioned ADL?

ADL has had a core position.

So you think young Jews who might

self-describe as anti-Zionist anti-Zionist or have problems with the state of Israel at the moment, you think that they should...

No, but...

Come on.

Wait a minute.

No, but I'm not.

Like, I have problems with policies of the state of Israel.

But when you talk about the young Jews that are defined as anti-Zionist Lulu, like

there are young Hispanic people who support President Trump's policies at the border, okay?

There are young Hispanic people who voted for President Trump, but the vast majority and the mainstream organizations fighting for the rights of immigrants don't agree with that.

But there are some who do.

There are some who do.

Look, there's blacks for Trump and there's a whole movement among a portion of African Americans who deeply believe in the president.

But like, would you say to the NAACP CEO, why don't you represent them?

No, it's less than, why don't you represent them?

It's more a question of...

As an organization that helps define anti-Semitism and has defined it as anti-Zionism, at a moment when these things are being debated, I mean, I hate to come back to this, but we've seen expressed that a lot of, and I've heard it from them, a lot of younger Jews, and I've heard it from members of the Jewish community that's not.

That's what I'm seeing.

Like, I understand anecdotally, you may have heard it from some people.

I believe there may be a bit of a selection bias there.

Let me ask: have you gone to any of the mainstream synagogues, like in New York City, like the ones with the largest membership?

And ask them,

like, I would encourage you, go to 92Y, go to the Westside JCC, go to Central, Park Avenue, Rhode of Sholem, go to KJ, like go to all these large Jewish synagogues and ask where their young people are.

Like, again, you can go to Brooklyn and find three synagogues.

Or by the way.

And I appreciate you answering the question.

I am simply, from the things that I've seen.

I'm giving the audience a very narrow biased view as if that's where all Jewish young people are.

I'm asking a question and you're responding and saying that's not where you think it is and you're not worried about it.

Well, I'm responding to the question and saying I don't think on a day-to-day basis how my positioning ADL, I'm focused on defending the Jewish people.

And those who want to pontificate, like it must, it must be nice.

This is not you.

This is not you.

But it must be nice for those people in the commentariat to like have these views.

And so, yeah, I do think it is fair to say many Jewish people are upset about the war, aspects of its prosecution, the human toll, et cetera.

That doesn't mean they think we should eliminate the Jewish state.

And I think

that's sort of the logic behind your question.

That's why I don't agree with the logic, Lulu.

There's so much you get right.

And I think on this, you're just wrong.

You know, we started this conversation talking about how this is a terrible time for American Jews, no matter how they feel about the war.

And, you know, you've spent the last 10 years of your life focused on protecting Jews in this country.

What do you want your audience to understand

about how they can help fight anti-Semitism?

Like to the ordinary person, you mean.

Yeah, to the ordinary person.

It's a good question.

I deal with so many people who are dealing with pain,

but usually it's ADL coming in to try to help them, you know.

But on that person-to-person human level,

look, I really believe in this idea of sort of radical empathy and being there for others, not because it's a quid pro quo, but because it's the right thing to do and opening your heart.

So I guess what I would say to the non-Jewish person at the individual level is to, number one,

when you see something, say something, like speak up

and try to have that radical empathy for your Jewish peer or colleague or friend or family member and go to them and try to under when something happens, like say something.

Number two, I think we can all educate ourselves and get the facts.

And I think for me, in an environment where, again, young people aren't getting their news from the Times, but from TikTok,

I think it behooves all of us to try to be, if you will, digitally literate, right?

And so to take sources, take information from a variety of sources so we better understand the issues rather than taking one source and thinking, oh, now I know it all.

And then I think number three, like,

I think showing up matters, you know,

one of the most powerful things that I did in my job, that I did in my job was when Reverend Al Sharpton and I went down to Florida for a memorial service after a young black woman was shot and killed in an act of senseless violence.

And being there in that black church kind of environment I hadn't been in before.

And just being present, just showing up really mattered.

And I got lots of positive feedback from the parishioners who probably did expect to see the head of the ADL like sitting in the the pews for this service.

Showing up.

We can all show up in lots of ways, but showing up for another community, maybe in a way that's unexpected, a small gesture can be incredibly meaningful.

So I guess those are the things I would say.

Speak up, learn the issues, and show up when you can.

Finally, Gaza has frayed a lot of relationships.

I've seen it, you've seen it, institutions, governments.

And I'm wondering how you look at that at the ADL, because

you have been in the crux of many of these debates.

Yeah.

And

they are controversial and they are difficult, as we have seen.

So how do you think an organization like yours comes out the other side of it?

Oh.

So let me break this into different parts.

So number one, we deal with anti-Semitism, and I'm afraid that the anti-Semitism we've seen to rise to such high levels, I hope and believe it will come down.

I don't know if it's going to get back to the levels we were at, say, in 2015, 2014, 2013.

I worry that increased anti-Jewish hate is now part of the norm.

I worry about that.

I just do.

And so we're going to have to cope with that reality, like it or not.

I worry about communal ties that have been frayed between the Jewish and Muslim communities.

for sure in particular.

I mean, so many Muslim people, like Jewish people, are outraged by what's happened in the war, like they were outraged by what happened on October the 7th.

And how they come together and forge bonds, I think, is really important.

And I just worry on a day-to-day basis, again, about these Jewish people having a sense of insecurity.

You know, I was just talking with a family, you know, their Jewish child is at summer camp.

They had security drills at the summer camp.

Like,

that's crazy.

At a Jewish summer camp having security drills, but they have a whole new protocol because of the fear, very real fear of threats.

And I worry that that's the new norm, Lu, that that's not going to recede, that that will become institutionalized.

So I do think on the other side, not just of the war, but of this last decade, when we've seen such a rise of hate, when we've seen hate from podcasters on the right and on the left, when we've seen explicit acts of violence, you know, from Pittsburgh to Boulder, coming from all sides, I worry that American Jews are now living with a kind of anxiety that's well-founded.

And the work to turn that around, the work to get back to a mean where Jewish people, like all people, can feel safe in the places where they worship, in the places where they work and live.

That's what I want to see us get back to.

And that's going to be really hard.

And I think it's going to take a long time.

Jonathan Greenblatt, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

I appreciate you.

And look, I know sometimes this, again, the conversation can be hard and get heated, but I don't take any of this personally.

I hope you don't.

I think this is all professional.

Of course.

And I have nothing but gratitude, honestly, nothing but gratitude for giving me the opportunity to talk with you and to share my point of view.

So thank you for that, Lulu.

Really, really thank you.

Thank you for coming on.

I deeply appreciate it.

That's Jonathan Greenblatt.

We reached out to National Students for Justice in Palestine and Columbia University apartheid divest.

Neither group responded to requests to comment on Greenblatt's claims about their organizations in this interview.

But SJP has previously denied the ADL's claims that they have provided material support for terrorism.

To watch this interview and many others, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash at SymbolThe Interview podcast.

This conversation was produced by Seth Kelly.

It was edited by Annabel Bacon.

Mixing by Sonia Herrero.

Original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano.

Video of this interview was produced by Brooke Minters and Paola Newdorf.

Cinematography by Zebediah Smith and Zach Caldwell.

Additional camera work by Andrew Smith.

It was edited by Eddie Costas.

Photography by Philip Montgomery.

Our senior booker is Priya Matthew, and Wyatt Orme is our producer.

Our executive producer is Allison Benedict.

Special thanks to Rory Walsh, Renan Barelli, Jeffrey Miranda, Nick Pittman, Maddie Masiello, Jake Silverstein, Paula Schuman, and Sam Dolnick.

Next week, David talks with former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss about applying his skills to everyday life and what he thinks of President Trump's dealmaking.

So he appears very publicly to be a blunt object.

And then in person, he seems to make deals.

So what's going on when he meets in person?

Is he charming?

So that I think there's emotional intelligence skills there that don't translate through the media.

I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro, and this is the interview from the New York Times.

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