In January, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)—which was founded in 1910 for the explicit purpose of stopping “the defamation of the Jewish people,” among other things—hired a new outreach director, community organizer Tema Smith. In the aftermath of a series of attacks on religious Jews in New York, David Harsanyi documents, Smith declared that “the Jewish community’s reactions to anti-Semitism coming from Black people [are] inherently tied to (implicitly racist) fears of Black violence.” She also urged Jews to listen to Palestinians explain why they often resort to terrorism. These and other statements, Harsanyi argues, are part of what makes Smith “the perfect hire for the new ADL.”

The ADL, self-anointed arbiter of anti-Semitism, is useful in providing lazy journalists with quotes confirming preexisting notions about anti-Semitism being largely a right-wing phenomenon. There is the [occasional] condemnation of some leftist Jew baiting, but . . . in many ways, the ADL is now complicit in normalizing Jew hatred, by shielding from condemnation the progressive politicians who peddle it.

[T]he new ADL [is] a Democratic partisan outfit run by the former Barack Obama appointee Jonathan Greenblatt, who’s spent years degrading the group’s mission of fighting anti-Semitism and building its social-justice agenda. . . . Hiring Smith is just the latest example of this problem

Last week, the New York Times reported, based on unnamed sources within the Trump administration, that the president had asked Israel not to carry out a planned strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. That is, somebody deliberately gave this information to the press, which later tried to confirm it by speaking with other officials. Amit Segal writes that, “according to figures in Israel’s security establishment,” this is “the most serious leak in Israel’s history.” He explains:

As Israel is reportedly planning what may well be one of its most consequential military operations ever, the New York Times lays out for the Iranians what Israel will target, when it will carry out the operation, and how. That’s not just any other leak.

Seth Mandel looks into the leaker’s logic:

The primary purpose of the [Times] article is not as a record of internal deliberations but as an instrument of policy itself. Namely, to obstruct future U.S. and Israeli foreign policy by divulging enough details of Israel’s plans in order to protect Iran’s nuclear sites. The idea is to force Israeli planners back to the drawing board, thus delaying a possible future strike on Iran until Iranian air defenses have been rebuilt.

The leak is the point. It’s a tactical play, more or less, to help Iran torpedo American action.

The leaker, Mandel explains—and the Times itself implies—is likely aligned with the faction in the administration that wants to see the U.S. retreat from the world stage and from its alliance with Israel, a faction that includes Vice-President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and the president’s own chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Yet it’s also possible, if less likely, that the plans were leaked in support of administration policy rather than out of factional infighting. Eliezer Marom argues that the leak was “part of the negotiations and serves to clarify to the Iranians that there is a real attack plan that Trump stopped at the last moment to conduct negotiations.”