A coalition of 1,500 Orthodox Jewish rabbis condemned the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) after it called for Fox News to fire Tucker Carlson, accusing him of anti-Semitism. The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) sent a letter rebuking the ADL and urging it to “discard its partisan preoccupations and undertake an urgently needed course correction.”
“There is nothing supremacist, much less antisemitic, about concerns that voting by illegal immigrants is a negation of America’s electoral system and a violation of our democracy,” Rabbi Yaakov Menken, CJV’s managing director, told PJ Media about the situation.
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The outrage traces back to Carlson’s show last Thursday. “The Left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate of voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World,” Carlson said. “I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate.”
The ADL called for Fox News to fire Carlson, saying he “embraced a foundational theory of white supremacy.” White supremacist anti-Semites claim that Jews and others are orchestrating a “great replacement,” importing racial minorities in order to replace white people.
“Mr. Carlson’s attempt to at first dismiss this theory, while in the very next breath endorsing it under cover of a ‘voting rights question,’ does not give him free license to invoke a white supremacist trope,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote.
Yet Carlson’s remarks did not focus on race.
“A full review of the guest interview indicates that Mr. Carlson decried and rejected replacement theory,” Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch wrote in a letter to Greenblatt. “As Mr. Carlson himself stated during the guest interview: ‘White replacement theory? No, no, this is a voting rights question.'”
Carlson repeated his central concern on Monday. “In order to win and maintain power, Democrats plan to change the population of the country,” he warned.
In a further comment to PJ Media, CJV Managing Director Menken said that Greenblatt’s response proved Carlson correct.
“Carlson said that ‘the Left, and the little gatekeepers on Twitter’ would become hysterical. We said that Greenberg is placing his partisan political agenda ahead of neutral judgment on anti-Semitism. With one knee-jerk reaction, Greenberg proved both Carlson and CJV correct,” Menken wrote.
The CJV letter to Greenblatt — first reported by The Jerusalem Post — condemned the ADL for “grossly misplaced charges of antisemitism.”
“The Coalition for Jewish Values, which represents over 1,500 traditional, observant rabbis in American public policy, is distressed by grossly misplaced charges of antisemitism made by your organization. Your recent attack on Tucker Carlson of Fox News, calling it ‘white supremacist’ to question whether particular policy choices enable illegal immigrants to nullify the votes of American citizens, is merely one example,” the letter opened.
CJV praised the ADL, writing that the organization was “rightly regarded as the Jewish community’s leading bulwark against the persisting hatred precisely because it was beholden to no particular persuasion, movement, or cause.”
“Alas, the ADL has become markedly partisan under your leadership,” the letter charged. “Your organization published the guide, Naming the Hate, which features obscure neo-Nazis of the ‘alt-right,’ yet says nothing regarding the far more dangerous, leftist adherents of radical Islam. Similarly, the ADL denounced Brett Kavanaugh, but not Linda Sarsour.”
“You repeatedly attempted to blame the Trump administration for a ‘surge’ in antisemitic incidents, though this was contradicted by the ADL’s own data. In a widely-circulated report, the ADL cited 163 bomb threats to Jewish organizations. Closer inspection revealed that 150 of those threats were perpetrated by a single person—who happened to be Jewish,” the letter noted.
“The ADL has tirelessly endeavored to hide the truth readily known to most Jews in America: the overwhelming majority of antisemitic acts occur in Democrat-controlled cities and on college campuses dominated by progressive currents,” CJV charged.
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“Saturday Night Live cast member Michael Che delivered an openly antisemitic slur against Israel in February. Yet, as former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind points out, the ADL made no call for Che’s ouster… only Carlson’s,” Menken told PJ Media.
Tucker Carlson did not endorse white supremacist “replacement theory,” and the ADL must know that. Yet this represented an opportunity for the ADL to smear an influential conservative voice — while ignoring the Left’s anti-Semitism. CJV is correct — this episode reveals ADL’s blatant partisanship, and Greenblatt needs to retract.
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