On July 26, 2021, PayPal and ADL announced a partnership to “leverage financial platforms” to purportedly “fight extremism.” The ADL-PayPal partnership is being led by ADL’s “Center on Extremism.” The problem: The ADL “Center on Extremism” report last month wrongly targets some strong pro-Israel groups. ADL is falsely calling these pro-Israel groups “hate groups” and “extremists.” ADL’s “Center on Extremism” report ignores real radical Islamist and left wing antisemitic hate groups. (See below background.) Also, a major donor to the ADL “Center on Extremism” also funds radical anti-Israel groups including: B’tselem; T’ruah; NIF; Tides; One Voice; and J Street. The ADL-PayPal partnership may lead to some strong pro-Israel groups and groups that combat radical Islamist hate and antisemitism losing their ability to accept PayPal and other financial platform donations.
Action You Can Take: Tell PayPal: End PayPal’s partnership with ADL’s Center on Extremism – because ADL’s Center on Extremism wrongly targets some pro-Israel groups, and ignores some real radical Islamist and left wing hate groups.
Contacts:
PayPal CEO and President Dan Schulman email: dan.schulman@paypal.com
PayPal CEO & Pres. Dan Schulman twitter: @Dan_Schulman
PayPal media contact: Tiffany Peng – tipeng@paypal.com
PayPal leadership info: https://www.paypal.com/ca/webapps/mpp/aboutx
PayPal Twitter: @PayPal
PayPal Customer Service: (402) 935-7733 or (888) 221-1161 or 408 967-1000 or (402) 935-2050
PayPal former owner Ebay twitter (Many Ebay sales exclusively use PayPal payments): @ebay
(Please email results of your correspondence and calls, and any additional contact info to liz@zoa.org.)
READ MORE: Click HERE for Background on the ADL and ADL Center on Extremism Targeting Some Pro-Israel Groups
Background on ADL “Center on Extremism” Targeting Some Pro-Israel groups: In June 2021, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)―which is now headed by former Obama official Jonathan Greenblatt―published an ADL “Center on Extremism” report entitled “Extremist and Hate Groups May Be Abusing Non-Profit Status.” ADL’s report demands defunding, preventing donations to, and removing the tax exemption of eight groups whom ADL considers to be “extremists” or “hate groups.” Five of those groups appear to be small white nationalist groups or online forums; only one of those groups appears to have any assets. But the ADL report’s real targets are 3 strong pro-Israel groups: Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN); the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI); and the American Freedom Law Center.
Here are the three pro-Israel groups that the ADL Center on Extremism is now targeting:
(1) Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN): The Christian Zionist organization PJTN, headed by Lauri Cardoza-Moore, has this pro-Israel mission: “PJTN educates, advocates, and moves to activate Christians, Jews and all people of conscience in building a global community of action and prayer in support of Jews and Israel.” PJTN also combats antisemitic bias in textbooks, and opposes efforts to universalize (water down) Holocaust education.
(2) American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI): AFDI leader Robert Spencer is the author of the brilliant “must read” pro-Israel book “The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process.” (See ZOA Book Club Video.) Robert Spencer also plays a vital role in alerting the public to radical Islamist threats. This week, Mr. Spencer alerted the public that Al Qaeda resumed publishing jihadist magazine, Inspire, dormant since 2017, and that the new Al Qaeda magazine praises Ahmad Al-Issa’s recent massacre of 10 innocent people at a Colorado grocery store, calls for Muslim jihadis to murder more Americans, and contains grisly instructions for maximizing the number of Americans who are killed.
(3) American Freedom Law Center: This group, via its Jewish attorney, David Yerushalmi, files free speech and other civil rights cases, including cases to protect Jews from antisemitism, and protect all Americans from harassment. For instance, Yerushalmi filed a case to help a female Jewish pro-Israel professor who was harassed and physically assaulted; and a case to quash harassing subpoenas that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued against individuals who signed a petition. (CAIR is an unindicted conspirator involved in funneling millions of dollars to Hamas.)
ADL is thus targeting some Jewish, Christian, and other groups and leaders who courageously speak out against radical Islamist terrorism and that combat left wing and Islamist antisemitism.
Notably, the recent ADL “Center on Extremism” report does NOT mention any real, dangerous far-left and Islamist antisemitic extremist hate group, such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) – which harasses and has physically attacked Jewish students on college campuses; Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) – the organizer of the “Block the Boat” BDS campaign to violently prevent an Israeli-based shipper from unloading medical and other supplies need by Americans at U.S. ports; the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) – whose leader opposes Israel’s existence; the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) – an unindicted co-conspirator involved in funneling millions of dollars to Hamas, that calls convicted murderers of Jews “heroes”, promotes anti-Israel BDS, and defames its opponents as “hate groups” (sound familiar?); and Samidoun – a subsidiary of designated terror organization PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) – which is also involved in violent BDS actions in the U.S. We could go on and on about the many dangerous antisemitic far-left or radical Islamist groups that ADL’s report completely ignores.
Why is ADL’s Center on Extremism targeting some of the Jewish people’s best Christian friends, and ignoring real, major threats?
Major donors to ADL’s “Center on Extremism” are listed in its June 2021 report. Some donors appear to be innocent Jewish foundations that may not realize that ADL’s Center on Extremism is targeting some strong pro-Israel groups, and ignoring the worst dangers to the Jewish community. But other donors are the funders of radical left wing anti-Israel groups. An ADL “Center on Extremism” funder, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, also funds groups that demonize Israel, including: B’tselem; T’ruah; NIF; Tides; One Voice; and J Street, among others.
Background on ADL Targeting Some Pro-Israel & Conservative Groups & Individuals:
ADL has been targeting some pro-Israel and conservative groups and individuals since Jonathan Greenblatt became ADL’s CEO in 2015.
In April 2018, ADL tried to derail mainstream then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s confirmation to become Secretary of State by writing a lengthy letter condemning Pompeo’s legitimate, appropriate concerns about Islamic terrorism related to the Boston Marathon massacre. (Incidentally, the massacre’s perpetrators previously brutally slit the throats of three young Jewish men on the 10th anniversary of 9-11, and attended a radical mosque associated with eight prominent terrorists, including the mosque’s founder.) ADL’s letter also wrongly branded pro-Israel, pro-American terrorism experts and organizations―Frank Gaffney, Center for Security Policy and Lebanese Christian Brigitte Gabriel, Act for America―“Islamaphobes” and “notorious anti-Muslims,” and then essentially accused Director Pompeo of “guilt by association” for speaking with the experts whom ADL wrongly labeled.
ZOA immediately sent a lengthy response to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, debunking ADL’s false characterizations of Director Pompeo, Act for America, Brigitte Gabriel, Frank Gaffney, and the Center for Security Policy.
In 2017, ADL signed 29 joint letters with anti-Israel hate groups JVP, CAIR, MPAC, and ISNA, that falsely maligned the pro-Israel “Act for America” organization. (See “ZOA Criticizes ADL Signing Joint Letter with Israel Haters,” June 15, 2017.)
Some strong pro-Israel groups and others who disagree with ADL’s left wing agenda may end up on ADL’s vindictive “hit list,” and could be financially harmed by the ADL-PayPal partnership. The ADL-PayPal partnership is a danger to a free and open society.
Journalists and Rabbis Warn About ADL’s Bias:
Journalists and others have also warned about ADL’s political bias, and the dangers of the ADL-PayPal agreement. See “Forget Using PayPal If Your Views Run Afoul of This Left Wing Group,” by Jonathan Tobin, New York Post, July 29, 2021; “PayPal and ADL Team Up,” by Tyler O’Neil, PJ Media, July 26, 2021 (noting that the ADL-PayPal effort is similar to the discredited SPLC’s efforts to target and cut off financial services to conservative groups and groups that document radical Islamist terrorism, by labeling them as “hate groups”); “1,500 Rabbis Slam the ADL for ‘Grossly Misplaced Charges of Antisemitism,” by Tyler O’Neil, PJ Media, Apr. 14, 2021; “The Jews Who Are Complicit in Jew-Hatred,” by Seth Mandel, Commentary Mag., July/Aug. 2021; “The ADL Is Not Jewish and No Longer Speaks for Jews,” by Rabbi Dov Fischer, Esq., American Spectator, Apr. 16, 2021; and “Jonathan Greenblatt is Destroying the Anti-Defamation League,” by Alex VanNess, New York Post, Dec. 9, 2016 (noting that Greenblatt “laid blame for this resurgence [of antisemitism] almost exclusively at the hands of the political right”; has “largely ignored antisemitism spawning from the left”; “downplayed the antisemitic nature of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement—the ultimate goal of which, its founder has openly admitted, is the destruction of Israel”; “promoted the Black Lives Matter movement, for example, by creating school lesson plans that promote it, despite BLM’s support for BDS and open hostility toward Israel” and recently “accused American Jews of living with ‘white privilege.’”).
Despite their surely good intentions, it is a mistake for PayPal to partner with ADL’s misdirected, biased Center on Extremism.