Unknown
to the great majority of Africans, a small segment of the European Jewish community keeps tabs on the African community. Although
the public understands the Jewish community's right to keep tabs on known anti-Semites, in the case of African Americans,
this small segment finds it necessary to analyze the thought patterns of all African Americans. If this segment finds something
with which it disagrees, the entity against which the spying is directed is oftentimes subjected to some form of negative
publicity.
Abraham H. Foxman of the Anti Defamation League reportedly conducted a survey's called the Index of Anti-Semitic Belief.
According to this survey, "one segment of American society, Jew-hatred is still strong among African-Americans."
Furthermore, it states that 34% of black Americans fit into the ADL's category of most anti-Semitic" and that "34
percent of black Americans fit into the ADL's category of most anti-Semitic. That is compared to only 9 percent of the
general population."
This segment's desire to keep tabs on African Americans has translated itself into spying, sometimes
to the point of violating the law. Robert I. Friedman, a writer with the Village Voice wrote an article regarding a man named
Roy Bullock. Roy Bullock was paid by the Anti-Defamation League to spy on various organizations. Although some of these organization
may have been anti-Semitic in nature, not all of them were. Regarding the ADL's spying activities writer Robert Friedman
says: Over a 30-year period, he (ADL spy Roy Bullock) compiled computer files for the ADL on 9876 individuals and more than
950 groups of all political stripes, including the NAACP, the Rainbow Coalition, ACLU, the American Indian Movement, the Center
for Investigative Reporting, Pacifica, ACT UP, Palestinian and Arab groups, Sandinista solidarity groups, Americans for Peace
Now, and antiapartheid organizations. Bullock, who even spied on the recently slain South African nationalist Chris Hani when
he visited the Bay Area in April 1991, sold many of his ADL files on antiapartheid activists to South African intelligence.
Meanwhile, between 1985 and 1993, the ADL paid him nearly $170,000, using a prominent Beverly Hills attorney as a conduit
in order to conceal its financial relationship with Bullock."
The article goes on to say:
"The ADL swung sharply to the right during the Reagan administration, becoming a bastion of neoconservatism. To Irwin
Suall, a repentant Trotskyite who heads the ADL's powerful Fact Finding Department, the real danger to Jews is posed not
by the right -- but by a coalition of leftists, blacks, and Arabs, who in his view threaten the fabric of democracy in America,
as well as the state of Israel ... For years, journalists and liberal members of the Jewish community knew the ADL spied on
right-wing hate groups. As long as the targets were anti-Semitic organizations like the Liberty Lobby and Lyndon Larouche,
no one seemed to be particularly troubled. But the Bullock case reveals that the ADL also spied on groups that have a nonviolent,
and progressive orientation. This apparent massive violation of civil liberties may end with the ADL's criminal indictment
in San Francisco, where the investigation began. The human rights group faces possible criminal prosecution on as many as
48 felony counts, including an indictment for gaining illegal access to police computers."1
According to Mr. Friedman, the ADL also engaged in a smear campaign against respected intellectuals
and Middle East scholars who disagreed with its political views by blacklisting them, thereby smearing their reputations.
He states that many believe that the ADL is increasingly in the defamation business. Some victims of ADL's smear campaigns
include Jesse Jackson, James Abourezk and the leaders of the New Jewish Agenda.
Another Jewish organization that
engaged in spying on African Americans is AIPAC, an influential pro-Israel lobbying group. In an article written by Calev
Ben-David of the Jerusalem Post it says: In 1988, the investigative show 60 Minutes ran a critical piece on AIPAC using information
supplied by its former communications director (and ex-Jerusalem Post reporter) Barbara Amouyal. Among the material supplied
by Amouyal was an internal memo suggesting that the media be fed stories regarding Jesse Jackson's private life.
Counterpunch, another news organization reported on the spying activities of the Anti-Defamation League. In the article entitled"
Were the Spies "Journalists? The ADL Snoops," dated January 23, 2002 it says: "The organization's main
'fact-finder' was doubling as a spy for the white South African government while his buddy, a San Francisco cop who
had tutored El Salvadoran death squads on the finer aspects of torture, was providing its officials with personal information
on the organization's putative enemies when the story broke in San Francisco in December, 1992. The organization was the
Anti-Defamation League. The ADL claims to be the nation's leading defender against prejudice and bigotry but in this instance
its targets were members of the African National Congress and its supporters, and apparently everyone, Arab and non-Arab,
who had the temerity to criticize Israel. This included some who drove to Arab community events where the ADL's 'fact-finder,'
Roy Bullock, and the cop, Tom Gerard, took turns writing down their license plate numbers, which Gerard turned into addresses
thanks to his access to California motor vehicle records. Their spying efforts proved to be part of a much larger intelligence
gathering operation that targeted some 12,000 individuals and more than 600 left-of-center organizations in northern California.
After the first flurry of publicity, the ADL's spin doctors successfully kept the story from receiving the national coverage
that the situation warranted. But the story hasn't gone away. Last November the California Court of Appeals handed down
a decision that paves the way for a major test later this year of the ADL's penchant for spying on its enemies. It was
the most significant episode in a slow-moving class-action case filed in 1993 by 19 pro-Palestinian and antiapartheid activists
who claim to be victims of the ADL's snooping operations. The plaintiffs say they were illegally spied on by Bullock,
then considered the ADL's top "fact-finder" by his now deceased chief, Irwin Suall, and that such spying constituted
an invasion of privacy under the provisions of the California Constitution."2
On rare occasions, individuals who have been subjected to negative publicity
by the Anti-Defamation League have won court cases against the ADL for defamation of character and invasion of privacy as
a result of spying. In the case of the Quigleys, a couple living in the suburb of Evergreen, Colorado, the jurors in the case
awarded them $10.5 million in damages. The Quigleys had been called anti-Semites by the ADL and subjected to spying by both
their Jewish neighbors and the ADL itself. The Institute for Historical Review, in its article entitled "Anti-Defamation
League Suffers Major Legal Defeat" it says: "At a 1994 news conference, the ADL had accused the Quigleys, a couple
in the Denver suburb of Evergreen, of perpetrating the worst anti-Semitic incident in the area in ten years. The ADL accused
them of launching a campaign against their Jewish neighbors, Mitchell and Candace Aronson, to run them out of town and threatening
to commit acts such as painting over doors on their neighbors' home. Concluding a four-week trial, the jury found that
more than 40 statements by Saul F. Rosenthal, director of the ADL's Mountain States chapter, were defamatory and "not
substantially true."3
Former congressman Pete McCloskey, was another victim of the ADL's spy/smear campaign. In a case between Mr. McCloskey
and the ADL, the jury decided that the ADL had violated Mr. McCloskey's rights and awarded him $150,000. According to
an article written by Barbara Ferguson of the Arab News dated April 25, 2002, it says: "The lawsuit came after raids
were made by the San Francisco Police Department and the FBI on offices of the ADL in both San Francisco and Los Angeles,
which found that the ADL was engaged in extensive domestic spying operations on a vast number of individuals and institutions
around the country. During the course of the inquiry in San Francisco, the SFPD and FBI determined the ADL had computerized
files on nearly 10,000 people across the country, and that more than 75 percent of the information had been illegally obtained
from police, FBI files and state drivers’ license data banks."4
Unlike ethnic groups like the Satmar and Hasidic Jews who are not readily open to outsiders, African
Americans tend to be very open to strangers. African diasporal neighborhoods are filled with businesses from diverse ethnic
backgrounds -- Italian, Dominican, Korean, Chinese, Greek, Middle Eastern and yes, Jewish. Our openness places us in the position
of being infiltrated by individuals who do not have our best interest at heart.
It is unhealthy to have a relationship
with any entity whose members engage in activities that disparages one's existence or even violates one's
rights. Sadly, this is the relationship that Africans have with the European Jewish community. There are many European Jews
who share a love of justice with Africans and want to see African people treated fairly. But when all is said and done, those
same Jews will maintain their silence about any violation of an African's right if it means exposing the immoral or illegal
actions of a member of their own group.
Africans must realize that since there are very few Jewish organizations
that have our best interests at heart, Africans must exercise restraint regarding what information we share with these organizations
and caution with whom we choose as friends.
A known situation were Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation
League can (and probably will) engage in spying against Africans is at protests and rallies. Africans leave themselves open
to be spied on by organizations bent on portraying Africans as criminals. Sometimes it is better to engage in the enforcement
of our rights behind closed doors -- where it becomes more feasible to identify those individuals who are legitimately associated
with the African struggle, and even more importantly, to perform necessary background checks on these individuals to ensure
that those involved in the African struggle with us are not spies.
This is not intended to erode any attempts
between the European Jewish and African communities, but ask yourself: Why should I make the details of my life
known to them when they are not making the details of their lives known to me?
In Matthew 10:16 Jesus left a
very important message that the African diasporal community would do well to obey: "Look! I am sending you forth as sheep
amidst wolves; therefore prove yourselves cautious as serpents and yet innocent as doves."
Footnotes:
1. http://www.webshells.com/adlwatch/news22.htm
2.
http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/spies.htm
3. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v19/v19n3p18_ADL.html
4. http://www.impactnet.org/html/adl_spying.html
