Jeffrey Blankfort pt 1 – lawsuit against Anti-Defamation League for illegal spying on Americans- #24

Video Description

Jeffrey Blankfort is a Jewish-born journalist and has been for many years a radio broadcaster in northern California. He has long been an activist for Palestinian rights and an ardent anti-Zionist critic of Israel (as well as an ardent lifetime advocate for “progressive” causes, generally). In 2002, he was among those few who received a settlement in a lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League. The case centered upon illegal spying by the ADL on him and hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals, including many who were Jewish. As the JEWISH NEWS OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA framed the story, “The Anti-Defamation League this week settled a 9-year-old civil suit against the agency, agreeing to pay three remaining plaintiffs $178,000. The suit, originally filed in 1993 by 19 plaintiffs, had accused the ADL of illegally obtaining and disseminating the private records of these individuals for the purpose of blacklisting them.” The FBI broke open the spying story in 1993, raiding ADL offices in San Francisco. On one ADL computer there was information on 9,876 people, including large numbers of Jewish American citizens critical of Israel. In boxes also were spying reports on people labeled “Pinko,” “Right,” “Arabs,” “Skins,” and “ANC” (African National Congress). A similar follow-up lawsuit was filed against the ADL branch in Los Angeles in 1996. A settlement was reached, with the ADL admitting nothing. The ADL’s spy files in San Francisco were revealed to include social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, addresses, phone numbers and organizational memberships. An estimated 75% of the information had been illegally obtained. All sorts of organizations across the political spectrum had been monitored. Labor groups, for example, under such surveillance included the San Francisco Labor Council, the Oakland Educators Association, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Irish Northern Aid, the International Indian Treaty Council, and the Asian Law Caucus, among others. Some of this ADL spying material was passed to foreign governments, including Israel and (then-apartheid) South Africa. ADL spying was even revealed to include the use of local police networks in the San Francisco area. This 2010 interview starts out with Blankfort’s explanation of the Anti-Defamation League’s spying effort and his lawsuit against it, and the fact that he was able to get a settlement because he was lucky enough to get a copy of the ADL’s files on him before a judge “sealed” all such documents from public view. Later Blankfort discusses the ADL’s reluctance to debate him at public forums, Israel’s lock on American politicians, censorship against those who criticize Israel (including guests from Israel who are refused platforms in America to speak), the Jewish Lobby’s use of the Holocaust to target Jews and others to the pro-Israel cause, Jewish/Zionist influence in the mass media, “intimidation” against even Jewish resistance to Zionism, Blankfort’s history of the Anti-Defamation League (“starting at least in 1937 it had already started keeping files on progressive Jewish Americans”), Blankfort’s lifetime resistance to believing common Jewish convictions that antisemitism is everywhere (a tool, he says, for the ADL and, hence, Israel), Jewish American day schools and high schools that teach “racist” notions against others, Blankfort’s assertion that seminal Jewish religious texts are a “record of thirsty bloody genocide,” the hypocrisy of the Return to the Jewish Homeland argument, stories about Blankfort’s father who was a blacklisted communist screenwriter in Hollywood (and his eventual turning away from the state of Israel), Blankfort’s learning in his youth that Israel was a “racist state,” his surprise at so many far Leftist Jews becoming supporters of Israel in the 1960s, even joining far right Jewish groups (“I had not been raised to think that Jewish identity was something separate from universal identity”), Blankfort’s assessment that about half of Mother Jones magazine’s long list of top financial donors to both Democrat and Republican parties were Jewish (and how after he wrote an article mentioning this fact in a different leftist journal, Mother Jones deleted its list), Blankfort’s notion that “antisemitism is the glue that holds the Jewish community together … Antisemitism is necessary to talk about it, or to warn about it, or to provoke it. It’s absolutely necessary to maintain the whole Zionist operation,” racism in the Jewish community against non-Jews, the recognition of “Jewish power” as being labeled antisemitic, “the Jewish establishment and the Zionist lobby are the same thing,” Jewish/Zionist influence in the mass media, etc. (Audio in the last 10 minutes of this 2-hour interview becomes muffled when Blankfort shifted (The sound in that section can probably be improved) If you can help support this channel: https://www.givesendgo.com/GNDPM