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Dear John,

A few weeks ago, standing with a thousand people at a gathering commemorating the Tree of Life shooting, I witnessed a moment of true hope and unity of purpose.

The room suddenly became silent as the University of Pittsburgh sports teams marched into the hall: dozens upon dozens of young men and women, Jews and non-Jews, blacks and whites, Latinos and Asian Americans, as diverse as the rest of the crowd that had joined together to mourn, remember and show resolve. Because in Pittsburgh, no one saw what happened as an attack on a single house of worship. All stood together because it was clear: this was an attack on the whole community, and things must change.

When you work at ADL, you are acutely aware, on a daily basis, of the hate in the world. But sometimes, you get to see the good in people who stand up — in their communities, online and in the halls of power — to fight for changes for the better.

So, I’m kicking off my 2019 year in review by sharing a few of my favorite moments of hope:

- After years of advocacy and relationship building by ADL, Utah passed
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a landmark bill that dramatically strengthened its hate crimes laws.
- ADL has been pushing YouTube
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to do more to crack down on white supremacist videos — an important step toward fighting cyberhate,
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although they still have a long way to go. ADL has been working with tech companies including YouTube to counter hate speech.
- Oregon passed
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a new law mandating Holocaust and genocide education in public schools, inspired by Claire Sarnowski, a teen who developed a strong relationship with a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor. ADL’s board testified in support of this bill and advocated for its passage.
- ADL was a key champion behind California’s
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“Mezuzah Bill,” barring landlords and condo associations from prohibiting “the display of religious items” of a certain size on doors, which passed in July.
Despite these and other promising signs of hope and progress, the past year has not been an easy one. We saw extremist attacks in Christchurch, Poway, Sri Lanka, El Paso and Halle. We saw black churches burned to the ground, mosques defaced in the ugliest of ways, and refugees and immigrants dehumanized.

The past year brought an increase in hate-motivated shootings and assaults. It brought reports of swastikas on gravestones, synagogue walls and garage doors. It brought a stream of anti-Semitic rhetoric from politicians across the spectrum, who blamed the “globalists” for their troubles or insinuated dual loyalties.

The increase in anti-Semitism is not just a feeling, it’s a fact.

Just a few weeks ago, the FBI released statistics showing that Jews were the target of the most religion-based hate crimes in 2018. In Brooklyn neighborhoods where large numbers of Orthodox Jews live, attacks have become so frequent and so aggressive that parents are afraid to let their children walk down the street.

ADL just released the results of our
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Global 100 Index, the most comprehensive study of anti-Semitic attitudes worldwide.
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You can read all the findings here, but the key takeaway is both shocking and sadly predictable: about one in four Europeans harbors anti-Semitic beliefs.

It’s so overwhelming that it’s easy to grow numb. But we can’t.

We won’t allow complacency to win out over courage, or apathy to overtake action. The time for action is now. In just the past few months,

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ADL announced a partnership with Integrity First for America on a lawsuit against the organizers of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va.
- We doubled funding for our
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No Place for Hate (R) educational programming in Brooklyn schools.
- We testified before House and Senate committees to recommend new steps to fight extremist content online and to combat the increasingly networked white nationalism in the U.S. and abroad.
- We expanded our online resource,
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Hate on Display, to include 36 new entries of hate symbols. Hate on Display helps law enforcement, educators and others recognize symbols that may warn of the presence of extremists and anti-Semites in a community.
- Our new
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Backspace Hate initiative is pushing on both the federal and state level for new and improved laws that hold perpetrators accountable for their harmful actions online.
If you want to get a sense of the work that’s been going on at ADL this year, I recommend
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watching the highlights from our flagship Never is Now summit last month, where many of the issues that we have been focusing on came to life. You may be one of the 1.3 million people who have already streamed
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Sacha Baron Cohen’s speech on ADL’s YouTube channel. When the comedian and actor accepted the International Leadership Award, he highlighted the way social media is used to spread hate online — at a scale we never could have anticipated. His remarks resonated with people around the globe who have felt the effects of online hate, disinformation and harassment.

Fighting online hate has been a major focus for ADL this year. Our Center for Technology and Society challenged the large digital platforms to strengthen and vigorously enforce their terms of service and report transparently on the removal of virulent anti-Semitism and other forms of hate. We recently published a
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list of accounts that are promoting hateful ideologies online, and demanded that social media platforms remove them.

During Never is Now, we watched a video from Judah Samet, a Tree of Life congregant and a Holocaust survivor whose life was spared because he was four minutes late to shul that day last October. Judah said, “I have the right to believe that the world is a rotten place, but I don’t.” I agree with him — despite the hate we confront on a daily basis.

This has been a challenging year for our country and around the world. But with your leadership and activism as part of the ADL community, I am optimistic about our future.

So, let’s get to work.
Sincerely,

Jonathan Greenblatt
CEO and National Director
ADL

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