Jonathan Greenblatt speaks onstage during the 2024 ADL “In Concert Against Hate” at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall in November. Photo by Getty Images
By Arno Rosenfeld and Jacob KornbluhJune 6, 2025
Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League CEO, repeatedly compared pro-Palestinian student protesters to Islamist terrorists in comments to Republican attorneys general and said the left harbored the “real deal threat” to Jews.
“We are an apolitical, non-partisan organization, but you have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to see what’s happening on the left,” Greenblatt said Friday, according to audio from the event obtained by the Forward.
“There is a throughline from Occupy Wall Street to BLM to ‘defund the police’ to ‘River to the Sea,’” he added, referring to the Black Lives Matter movement launched last decade ago to protest police violence. “They are the same people, these are the same kind of nihilists.”
Greenblatt also criticized Mahmoud Khalil, the recent Columbia University graduate who was taken into federal custody over his role in campus protests against Israel.
“Mahmoud Khalil, the man who was detained or whatever by DHS, he was a 27-year-old from Jordan — or, yeah, from Jordan or Syria, forgive me — but this was not some child,” Greenblatt said. “I am sure we’re going to find out about his ties to groups overseas.”
🎧More exclusive audio from ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt at the GOP AGs national meeting:
“Mahmoud Khalil… was not some child. He was one of the ringleaders of this group, and I am sure we’re going to find out about his ties to groups overseas.” pic.twitter.com/HVzvVBM7r0
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) June 6, 2025
An ADL spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions Friday afternoon about which foreign organizations Greenblatt was referring to or what evidence he had.
Khalil, a permanent resident of the United States, is an Algerian citizen who was born in Syria to Palestinian parents. A number of liberal Jewish groups have decried the arrest of Khalil and other foreign born students as overreach and unhelpful in the fight against antisemitism.
Earlier this week, all the leading New York City mayoral hopefuls called for the release of Khalil, including former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has made fighting antisemitism a central theme of his campaign. “He shouldn’t have been detained in the first place,” Cuomo said.
The remarks were a significant escalation in rhetoric for Greenblatt, whose organization has taken an increasingly hard line against anti-Zionism and criticism over Israel, especially since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel.
The ADL has recently sought to walk back some of its previous praise for the Trump administration’s crackdown on student protesters and universities.
Comparing protesters to terrorists
Greenblatt compared campus protesters to Middle Eastern terrorists at multiple points in his remarks, which were part of a panel discussion at the Republican attorneys general annual summer conference.
“You have people hiding their faces behind scarves and keffiyehs like they’re in ISIS, storming libraries, vandalizing buildings and literally – I’m not exaggerating – terrorizing their classmates,” he said.
At another point he said the state officials should support laws that ban people from wearing masks at protests because “the founding fathers didn’t want al-Qaeda right running rampant on our streets.” The ADL advocated in the mid-20th century for the passage of anti-mask laws as a means of exposing Ku Klux Klan terrorists.
He said later that student activists were “frothing at the mouth, looking like they just came out of Mosul,” an apparent reference to a major battle against the Islamic State in the northern Iraqi city.
Greenblatt acknowledged that “white supremacists and armed militia” posed a right-wing threat to Jews, but suggested officials who said antisemitism was “a problem on all sides” were misguided.
The “real deal threat” was rather “this convergence of what I call the radical left and, like, Islamist groups here in the U.S.,” which he said was resulting in the worst expression of hate against any group in the country for the last 100 years.
“I have never seen anything like this before, ever — ever,” he said.
Praise for Trump administration
The ADL issued a statement with tepid criticism of President Donald Trump’s executive order Thursday banning travel to the United States from 12 mostly Muslim countries, saying that it did not believe the measure “directly will reduce the surge of anti-Jewish hate.”
Greenblatt penned a series of essays earlier this spring tempering earlier praise of the Trump administration’s approach to campus antisemitism and emphasizing the importance of civil liberties. But on Friday, he offered strong support for Education Secretary Linda McMahon during the morning panel.
“I don’t agree with everything the Trump administration is doing, I don’t want to shut down these schools altogether,” he said. “But you know what? God bless Secretary McMahon.”
🎧EXCLUSIVE AUDIO: Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, at the Republican Attorneys General summer national meeting in NY today:
“I don’t agree with everything the Trump administration is doing.… But you know what? God Bless [Education] Secretary McMahon…” pic.twitter.com/VA6lE26S2k
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) June 6, 2025
“The rot in these universities runs deep,” he added. Greenblatt said the audience should also focus on K-12 education because student protesters were “not going to work at Goldman Sachs, they’re not going to work at Google, they’re going to become middle school teachers, they’re joining the NEA,” referring to the teachers union.
He also sought to connect the fight against antisemitism to broader conservative concerns, arguing that left-wing protesters and opponents of Israel were seeking to undermine the entire country.
“They’re not just opposed to Jews, although they are,” he said. “They’re opposed to the West, they’re opposed to capitalism, they’re opposed to America.”
