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.

Unlike his past many predecessors, President Joe Biden does not have a plan for solving the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Moreover, his administration has indicated its skepticism about renewing the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. John Bolton nevertheless believes that there could be a collision between the new Benjamin Netanyahu-led Israeli government and the Biden White House:

In possibly his last term, Netanyahu’s top national-security priority will be ending, not simply managing, Iran’s threat. This is infinitely distant from Biden’s Iran policy, which venerates Barrack Obama’s inaugural address: “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

Tehran’s fist is today otherwise occupied, pummeling its own people. Still, it will continue menacing Israel and America unless and until the internal resistance finds ways to fracture the senior levels of Iran’s regular military and the Revolutionary Guards. Netanyahu undoubtedly sees Iran’s growing domestic turmoil as an opportunity for regime change, which Israel and others can facilitate. Simultaneously, Jerusalem can be preparing its military and intelligence services to attack Tehran’s nuclear program, something the White House simply refuses to contemplate seriously. Biden’s obsession with reviving the disastrous 2015 nuclear deal utterly blinds the White House to the potential for a more significant victory.

To make matters worse, Biden has just created a Washington-based position at the State Department, a “special representative for Palestinian affairs,” that has already drawn criticism in Israel both for the new position itself and for the person named to fill it. Advocated as one more step toward “upgrading” U.S. relations with the Palestinian Authority, the new position looks nearly certain to become the locus not of advancing American interests regarding the failed Authority, but of advancing the Authority’s interests within the Biden administration.