In case you were still under the impression that the Anti-Defamation League is a civil rights organization, let me direct your attention to some deranged comments its director made on Tuesday.

Jonathan Greenblatt appeared on CNN, where he was asked about the Trump regime arresting and jailing international students for criticizing Israel. (I still can’t believe that’s a real sentence.) The legal statuses of recent Columbia University grad Mahmoud Khalil, Columbia undergraduate student Mohsen Mahdawi, and Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk were all revoked without warning so that they could be jailed for opposing Israel’s war in Gaza. And that’s where all three remain right now, presumably while they await deportation.

Khalil, whose wife just gave birth to their first child after he was denied release for the occasion, organized protests at Columbia last year and went on CNN and condemned anti-Semitism. Ozturk, meanwhile, merely co-signed an op-ed in the student newspaper, opposing Israel’s genocide. And Mahdawi was head of Columbia’s Palestinian Students Union and appeared on 60 Minutes in December 2023 and condemned anti-Semitism.

None has been charged with a crime. Instead, the Trump administration and its propagandists have lobbed vague smears of “anti-Semitism” against the three without providing any evidence. But in our current political climate, merely accusing some powerless college kids – foreigners, no less – suffices.

These are just three of the more than 1,000 international students or recent students who have had their legal statuses promptly revoked by the State Department.

Any real civil rights organization – even one dedicated primarily to combating anti-Semitism – would be appalled by these developments. In fact, a civil rights organization chiefly concerned with Jew-hatred might actually be more inclined to offer a rousing condemnation of these arrests because these egregious civil rights violations are being committed under the pretext of “anti-Semitism,” which cheapens the term.

But the ADL is not a civil rights organization; it’s a pro-Israel advocacy outfit that uses “anti-Semitism” both as a cudgel and, apparently, an excuse for inaction when Israel’s critics are imprisoned.

CNN’s Dana Bash asked Greenblatt, “What is the ADL doing to pressure the White House to give students who are being arrested due process?”

Here’s his defamatory response:

Well, look, at the ADL, it’s our job to protect the Jewish people. We’re not sort of public defenders for some of the Hamasniks on these college campuses. And I don’t want to be. And I think I really need to say that. If you take Mahmoud Khalil, who’s one of the ringleaders at Columbia, based on his conduct, we thought he was a very problematic individual. I don’t know if he lied on his visa application or anything like that.

But on his conduct, not his speech, the challenge becomes when the administration doesn’t substantiate or clarify the specifics of the charges. So that’s where this due process thing comes into the works. Now, again, it’s not my job at ADL to provide due process for some of these young people.

Neither the Trump regime nor Greenblatt has offered evidence that the arrestees support Hamas, but Greenblatt knows he can get away with calling them “Hamasniks.” He also knows he can skate when he calls Khalil a “ringleader” whose “conduct” makes him “a very problematic individual.” That’s because this is the mainstream media, which will give him all the space necessary to malign some college kids whose views he doesn’t like. That goes double here for Dana Bash, who’s a shit interviewer and has ludicrously compared campus protests to European anti-Semitism in the 1930s.

As we’ve seen from this and other instances, Greenblatt and the ADL will happily tee off on pro-Palestine campus protesters. After all, the demonstrators have relatively little power and aren’t say, the world’s richest man Elon Musk, who threw Nazi salutes in January and in 2023 endorsed a tweet alleging that Jews cultivate a “hatred of whites.”

Oh, and last month Musk retweeted and then deleted a post stating, “Stalin, Hitler and Mao didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector workers did.”

And how did Greenblatt respond to these acts, which are far more consequential coming as they do from such an influential person in Musk who has a cult following as opposed to some powerless campus protesters?

Regarding the anti-Semitic tweet endorsement, Greenblatt said, “At a time when antisemitism is exploding in America and surging around the world, it is indisputably dangerous to use one’s influence to validate and promote antisemitic theories.” This is a condemnation for sure, but hardly a scathing one by ADL standards.

As for Musk’s Nazi salute, you may recall that the ADL implored people to cut the guy some slack:

This is a delicate moment. It’s a new day and yet so many are on edge. Our politics are inflamed, and social media only adds to the anxiety.

It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge.

In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a new beginning. Let’s hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead.

We’re still waiting to hear from the ADL about Musk’s since-deleted claim that Hitler “didn’t kill millions.”

These wildly disparate responses give away the ADL’s whole game. As the reichest man in the world, Musk could be a powerful enemy of the organization, a powerful ally, or anything in between. As such, the billionaire is entitled to “a bit of grace.” But college protesters? The only thing they have to offer Greenblatt are stark examples of how “Hamasniks” took over college campuses.