Response to ADL in Boston Globe

ADL casts stones of accusation
January 6, 2010

IN HIS Dec. 24 letter “In league with anti-Semites,’’ Derrek Shulman, New England regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, casts accusatory stones at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an organization that has consistently condemned all forms of bigotry, including anti-Semitism, and has a long record of defending the civil and religious rights of all Americans, regardless of faith.

For example, CAIR condemned an Iranian cartoon contest mocking the Holocaust. The council also called on an Arab-American publication that printed excerpts of the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion to apologize, and condemned bias attacks on a rabbinical assistant in Brooklyn and on a Jewish student on the campus of Temple University.

CAIR disagrees with Israeli occupation policies, the likely genesis of the ADL’s smears. But converting legitimate disagreement with the policies of a foreign government to hatred of Jews is a logic-defying stretch.

Usually, the driving motivation behind letters such as the one published by Shulman is the Israel-Palestine conflict. CAIR is on record condemning both terror attacks on Israeli civilians and Israeli state terror attacks on Palestinians. Unfortunately, organizations such as the ADL lack a similar track record when it comes to condemning the killing of Palestinian civilians.

The ball’s in Shulman’s court. Will we keep casting stones at each other or, God willing, seek a way to actualize a word both our faiths love: shalom, salaam, peace?

Corey Saylor
National legislative director
Council on American-Islamic Relations
Washington