BEN NORTON: It's The Real News.
I'm Ben Norton.
Coffee giant Starbucks has faced intense criticism
in the past two weeks for racial discrimination
against black customers.
On April 12, two black men were arrested at
a Starbucks in Philadelphia.
They had been sitting in the store waiting
for a friend to arrive, and after just two
minutes the store manager called the police
, claiming the men refused to buy anything.
Police soon arrived and immediately arrested
them without explanation.
Video of the racist incident quickly went
viral, and in response to the public backlash,
Starbucks announced that it will begin conducting
racial bias training with its employees.
However, in order to do this racial bias training,
Starbucks said it will be working with the
Anti-Defamation League.
The ADL claims to be a civil rights organization,
but in reality is a pro-Israel lobby group
that spends the majority of its time and resources
advocating on behalf of the Israeli government.
In fact, the ADL has repeatedly been accused
of spying on progressive activists, especially
Palestinian and other Arab activists.
The ADL was also accused of spying on activists
who opposed the apartheid regime in South
Africa, which was allied with the U.S. and
Israel, and has been accused of spying on
antiwar activists who campaigned against the
U.S. arming of far-right death squads in Central
America in the 1980s and '90s.
Jewish Voice for Peace, the largest grassroots
Jewish organization working for the full equality
of all people in Israel-Palestine, published
a statement criticizing Starbucks for partnering
with the ADL.
Jewish Voice for Peace has launched a campaign
called #DropTheADL.
Joining us to discuss this is Rebecca Vilkomerson.
Rebecca is the executive director of Jewish
Voice for Peace.
She was named one of the 50 most influential
Jewish figures named worldwide by The Jerusalem
Post in 2017, and she also frequently writes
for major newspapers.
Thanks for joining us, Rebecca.
REBECCA VILKOMERSON: Thanks for having me.
BEN NORTON: So , JVP released a statement
on this, and you wrote, quote: "The ADL has
a long history of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim,
and anti-Palestinian advocacy, and at a minimum
has shown profound insensitivity toward black
communities."
Can you talk about some of this?
REBECCA VILKOMERSON: Yeah it felt really important
to us to come out and say that because, you
know, we have a long-standing commitment to
anti-Islamophobia.
We have and against Islamophobia that's been
active for a long time.
We also have a campaign against police exchanges,
of which ADL is one of the largest purveyors,
are police exchanges between the U.S.
And Israel.
And so it felt really important to add our
voices to the many voices, I have to say,
that that spoke out in the wake of the ADL
being named as one of the trainers.
And I would want to say that the other groups,
Equal Justice Initiative, and Demos, and the
NAACP that were named as trainers, we think
the world of all three of those organizations
and we're really thrilled that they're going
to be part of that training day.
You know, obviously it's a first step.
There's a lot to be said about the ways Starbucks
as a corporation is dealing with this day.
But I think it is an important step that they're
taking, and we are glad that those three organizations
are involved, but we do have really serious
concerns about the ADL, given its history
that you just ran down, of really partnering
quite closely with the police in particular,
again, against Muslim communities, and and
at the very least being very insensitive to
many concerns in the black community.
And I think in addition to that, you know,
from our perspective and the work we do, we
find that although the ADL often calls itself
a civil rights organization, it also spends
a lot of its political capital on supporting
and defending Israel.
So it, for example, supports the U.S. embassy
move to Jerusalem.
It attacked the unarmed protesters in Gaza
who were being mowed down by the Israeli army
and sort of blamed it on them and on Hamas.
They sort of, they have worked against, worked
to promote anti-BDS bills, anti-Boycott, Divestment,
and Sanction bills, that are going through
state Houses and the federal legislature.
So they spend a lot of their time and credibility
that they get as a civil rights organization
supporting Israel's position.
So a combination of all those factors made
it feel really important that we take this
moment to say, hey, the ADL was not exactly
the right organization to be used when Starbucks
is responding to an incident when, you know,
of this kind of policing.
BEN NORTON: Yeah.
And JVP wrote in its statement, quote: "The
ADL's aggressive support of Israel often comes
at the cost of human and civil rights of Palestinians."
A colleague of mine who writes for Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting, a media watchdog,
Adam Johnson, has repeatedly documented how
media outlets will quote the ADL as if it's
this neutral civil rights organization.
But then when you look to their website and
you look up things like police brutality,
broken windows, you know, things that affect
largely communities of color that you think
a civil rights organization would campaign
against, there aren't that many mentions compared
to Israel.
If you go look at his website the vast majority
of the press releases and statements the ADL
releases are about Israel-Palestine.
So can you talk about how it has marketed
itself not just to people around the country,
but to media outlets?
REBECCA VILKOMERSON: Yeah, I mean, I think
it's really important.
There's a few different pieces of it.
One is that they have positioned themselves
as the preeminent experts on anti-semitism,
and especially as anti-semitism has sort of
reared its ugly head in a new way since the
Trump era, I think more and more people have
turned to the ADL as experts on that.
And it's not to say that there isn't some
kind, some work they do that's valuable.
But one thing that's extremely distressing
is that they often equate anti-Semitism with
anti-Israel speech, and fudge the difference
between those, and I think that's incredibly,
incredibly dangerous.
So that's one problem.
Another problem is that they often are willing
to sacrifice human rights for the sake of
defending Israel.
So recently the New Orleans City Council passed
a blanket law that was going to try to keep
the city of New Orleans to some human rights
standards globally around who they contracted
with and who their vendors were.
And the ADL came out against it, and said
you have to it you have to overturn this law,
solely because it was going to then be applied
to Israel.
So they're really making an exception out
of Israel and saying that there's a carve
out for human rights, and they do that over
and over and over again.
So I think they use their bona fides as a
civil rights organization in order to try
to push this pro-Israel agenda, while at the
same time, again, not to forget the ways that
they're continually fueling Islamophobia,
the way they're partnering deeply with the
police, the way they honored the St. Louis
Police Department one year after Mike Brown
was killed.
That is just sort of the different ways that
they are superficially supporting civil and
human rights while actually often undermining
them in a systematic way.
I think there's a lot public discussion.
BEN NORTON: Well, we'll have to end it there,
but thanks so much for joining us.
We were speaking with Rebecca Vilkomerson.
Rebecca is the executive director of Jewish
Voice for Peace, and JVP has recently launched
a campaign pressuring Starbucks to #DropTheADL.
Thanks for speaking with us, Rebecca.
REBECCA VILKOMERSON: Thanks so much.
BEN NORTON: Reporting for The Real News, I'm
Ben Norton.
