In response to ADL's call on Fox News to fire host Tucker Carlson, the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) wrote a letter on Tuesday calling out the organization for its "grossly misplaced charges of antisemitism."
The letter was supported by 1,500 traditional orthodox rabbis, who informed ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt that "alas, the ADL has become markedly partisan under your leadership."
The ADL had called for Carlson to be fired because, in a segment on the right-wing cable news channel last week, Carlson endorsed the idea that there is a coordinated campaign to replace the population of the United States with immigrants from the “third world.”
The conspiracy theory that Jews are orchestrating a “great replacement” of white westerners with nonwhite immigrants is popular among white supremacists and fueled the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, among other attacks.
On ADL's blog, the organization wrote that "the alt right has gone from relative obscurity to being one of the United States' most visible extremist movements."
However, the CJV's letter mentioned that the ADL's focus on these right wing neo-Nazis as the core source of antisemitism neglects radical Islam and the democratic and college progressive movements, which are just as dangerous.
The letter additionally attacked ADL for 'lending credibility' to American civil right activist and host of MSNBC, Al Sharpton, who expressed his regrets privately to Jewish leaders for the incendiary rhetoric that helped fuel the deadly Crown Heights riots in 1991.
CJV called for an ADL reform, hoping it would return to its 1913 mission of fighting antisemitism without any "partisan preoccupations."The CJV shared its letter with The Jerusalem Post:
Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of the Fox Corporation, wrote ADL that Fox News will not be firing Carlson over allegations that he endorsed “replacement theory,” a white supremacist conspiracy.
In explaining his response, Murdoch cited Carlson’s statement, later in the segment, that he wasn’t referring to race but to a question of voting rights.
“A full review of the guest interview indicates that Mr. Carlson decried and rejected replacement theory,” Murdoch wrote in the letter on Sunday to ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. “As Mr. Carlson himself stated during the guest interview: ‘White replacement theory? No, no, this is a voting rights question.'”
Greenblatt’s letter also cited other times when Carlson has downplayed white supremacists as “actually not a real problem in America” or described immigrants as dangerous and unwelcome, including once when he said immigration was making America “poorer, dirtier and more divided.”
In his letter defending Carlson, Murdoch wrote to Greenblatt that “Fox Corporation shares your values and abhors antisemitism, white supremacy and racism of any kind.” He referred to an award the ADL gave his father, Fox owner Rupert Murdoch, in 2010.
“ADL honored your father over a decade ago,” Greenblatt responded. “But let me be clear that we would not do so today.”Ron Kampeas contributed to this report.