(RNS) — Emmaia Gelman’s new book about the Anti-Defamation League opens with an almost forgotten incident. In 1993, the FBI raided the ADL’s San Francisco offices for “spying on civil rights groups and antiracist organizers.” The New York Times, which covered the incident, noted that the raid “caused confusion for some liberals” who thought the ADL was a paragon of civil rights activism, the book recalls.
As Gelman writes in her critical account, the ADL — a national group founded in 1913 to combat antisemitism and other forms of discrimination — may have appropriated the language of civil rights, but its actions have mostly been in defense of state interests. After the FBI raid, the ADL was accused by San Francisco authorities of spying on civil rights activists and other leftist groups for at least 30 years — allegations the group denied but accepted in a court-ordered settlement.
Gelman’s book, “The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State,” published Tuesday (June 16) by the University of California Press, seeks to show that the organization was created to defend white Western authority, principally that of the U.S. and later Israel. Insisting Jews were part of that white Western heritage, it set about to promote their assimilation to American values.
In a statement, the ADL said it was proud of its work. “Written by an a …