Last month, the comedian and talk-show host Whoopi Goldberg found herself at the center of the controversy-of-the-week when she described the Holocaust as disconnected from racism, since, she said, it involved “two white groups of people.” Jason Greenblatt, head of Anti-Defamation League (ADL), came on her television program the next day and patiently clarified her misunderstandings. But the incident, Seth Mandel notes, highlights the direction in which Greenblatt has taken this venerable, and once avidly nonpartisan, organization:

One thing Greenblatt did not do was ask Goldberg where on earth she could have gotten such a preposterous and offensive idea. . . . For on the very day that Goldberg made her comments about the impossibility of a conflict being racial in nature if the perpetrators and victims had similar complexions, the definition of the word “racism” on the ADL’s website read, . . . “The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”

Follow the logic: according to the Anti-Defamation League itself—the Jewish organization set up in 1915 specifically to combat anti-Semitism—Whoopi Goldberg’s remarks were accurate. The Holocaust couldn’t have been about race, under the ADL’s definition of the word “racism,” because American Jews cannot be victims of racism.

Almost from the moment [Greenblatt] took over in 2014, the ADL has been mired in accusations of political bias, of providing cover for anti-Semites on the left from the kind of accountability the organization doggedly pursues for anyone on the right. Those accusations are true. But the organization is in the middle of a more consequential turn. To gain admission to the new progressive pantheon, the ADL has found itself compelled to jettison its century-old mission and become a different kind of organization entirely.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.