Defamation

According to Yglesias, the Anti-Defamation League has expanded its services beyond calling Jews like me anti-semitic, to conducting polls of the Israeli people on whether or not to attack Iran. (Surprise: Israelis want to attack Iran.) Needless to say, this has nothing to do with defamation…except, perhaps, self-defamation: the ADL is in the processing of destroying itself via extremist Likudnik partisanship. Abe Foxman, the ADL leader, has, in effect, become a lobbyist for U.S. military action against Iran–which, as I’ve said in the past, may or may not be in Israel’s interest, but it certainly isn’t in ours. This is a shame or, as my grandmother would say, a shonda–which, in Yiddish, implies something beyond a shame. It is, in fact, a corruption, a putrescence, an embarrassment to the vast majority of American Jews.