The activist academic behind the DroptheADL campaign

The DroptheADL campaign seems to be the brainchild of Emmaia Gelman. Nora Lester Murad, with Gelman’s support, began the DroptheADL from Schools campaign.

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Nora Lester Murad, the activist behind the DroptheADL from Schools campaign, claimed that the DroptheADL campaign (of which DroptheADL from Schools is a spin-off) launched in 2020. Emmaia Gelman, who seems to be the driving force behind the DroptheADL campaign, made a similar claim during a webinar with Murad.

However, the domain name for the DroptheADL campaign was registered on May 11th, 2018.

By May 31st, 2018, Adalah-NY had tweeted about the campaign. And in a June 2018 post, Adalah-NY, along with various branches of Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups, is listed as an early endorser of the campaign. Also listed as an early endorser is NYC- Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (NYC-QAIA).

NYC-QAIA is affiliated with Emmaia Gelman. Gelman would post on the NYC-QAIA blog under the pen name MishMoshkeleh.

Gelman also goes by Mishmoshkeleh on Instagram.

Here is Gelman on Instagram, on October 8th 2023:

Institute for Critical Zionism Studies and DroptheADL

Gelman is currently the director of the Institute for Critical Zionism Studies (another member of the “Institute” is Christine Hong, who fought for the Community Responsive Education Ethnic Studies contract in Pajaro Valley Unified School District).

Gelman has a long history of “anti-Zionist” activism. After the Second Intifada, Gelman formed “Jews Against the Occupation”, as Gelman describes:

“In September 2000, Palestinians launched the second intifada. I don't know why that made Israeli violence more visible to me than it had been before, but I wasn't the only one. A group of mostly young, mostly queer Jews came together as Jews Against the Occupation, a collective whose purpose was to be a Jewish voice dissenting against Israeli repression of Palestinians. But the topic was so new to most of us that we had to do a lot of learning first. We all knew about resistance, we all knew something about state power and racism, but we didn't really know yet how much of what we had learned and taken on as Jewish culture, history, experience was stage scenery for a Zionist narrative that rationalized colonization. For a growing cohort of young NYC Jews who had already been activists and artists dealing with HIV/AIDS, queer issues, the religious right, tenant organizing, police brutality, and economic justice issues, it became a time of really intense exploration of history, received knowledge, and the role of each of our families in Zionist violence.”

Gelman also has a long history of critiquing the ADL. She wrote her PhD dissertation on the Anti-Defamation League, arguing that the ADL is “a key producer of conservative ideas about race, identity, and “protecting rights” in the United States” and describing its “deployment of those ideas to oppose antiracist organizing in domestic and global spheres.” Gelman is working on turning that dissertation into a book.

The Sparkplug Foundation

Aside from her involvement in the DroptheADL campaign and the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, Gelman is on the board of her family’s foundation, Sparkplug Foundation. As a board member, Gelman earns $34,044.

In 2023, Sparkplug Foundation gave Gelman’s Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism a grant of $26,509. While this is listed on Sparkplug’s most recent 990, the grant does not appear to be listed on Sparkplug Foundation’s website, where past and present grantees are listed.

Sparkplug has also given money to organizations regularly covered in this Substack - The W.E.B Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction ($20,000) and Xicanx Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO).

All told, XITO has received $45 000 from Emmaia Gelman’s family foundation. XITO works with the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) “Teach Palestine” project to develop K-12 curriculum. The Network Contagion Research Institute found that MECA has ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a US-designated terror organization.

Sparkplug has also funded Palestinian Youth Movement and National Students for Justice in Palestine.

Emmaia Gelman, Nora Lester Murad and DroptheADL from Schools

Gelman makes no secret of her involvement with the DroptheADL campaign. Back in September 2024, Gelman hosted a webinar with Nora Lester Murad to kick off the DroptheADL from schools campaign - a month after the DroptheADL from schools website was registered. The campaign went “live” in October.

The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism included the DroptheADL from schools campaign on its advertised list of events and shared resources to do with the campaign. The Institute advertised the campaign under the umbrella of the Coalition to End Zionist Repression. The Institute is a member of this coalition, along with Sparkplug Foundation grantees Palestinian Youth Movement, National Students for Justice in Palestine, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and U.S. Palestinian Community Network-USPCN.

DroptheADL from Schools

Activists behind DroptheADL from schools include Gelman, Nora Lester Murad, Merrie Najimy and Teaching While Muslim.

Nora Lester Murad and Merrie Najimy also work together in the Together for an Inclusive Massachusetts group, formed to challenge the Massachusetts State Legislature Special Commission Against Antisemitism.

Murad has also worked with members of the MTA to forward the DroptheADL campaign.

Murad is on the board of Visualizing Palestine. Visualizing Palestine has received grants from Gelman’s Sparkplug Foundation.

Here is Murad on October 7th, 2023, as the terrorist massacre was ongoing stating that it offered a “glimmer of hope” that the “oppression” of Palestinians might end.

Still on October 7th, 2023, 12 hours after the start of the massacre, Murad takes to Instagram again, with the hashtag #GazaUnderAttack

On October 8th, 2023, Murad says “If you support Israel no matter what they do to Palestinians, you’re supporting war.”

On October 16th, 2023, Murad posted this image to her Instagram:

On October 17, 2023, Murad filmed herself pulling down posters of kidnapped Israelis because, she claimed, the posters incite violence and are “antisemitic.” Why? Because they “make Jews scared of Palestinians.”

Murad appeared on CodePink’s podcast to discuss the DroptheADL from schools campaign

There is an ecosystem of organizations that work in the United States and specifically in the K-12 schools that kind of... make Zionism, normalize Zionism and compulsory Zionism, if you've heard of that term, in many ways, including by through curriculum, through teacher training, through all kinds of things…So over time, the Anti-Defamation League, like other parts of the mainstream Jewish community, started relating to Israel and working on Zionism and over the last, I'm going to say 10 years, it's like on steroids. Why is this important? Why does it matter what the kids learn in school? Well, first of all, because those kids grow up and they become the president and the senator and the congressman, etc. But they also become the general public who are by their experience in our schools, predisposed to believe some of the distorted messages of the mainstream media, including very racist messages, and then are unable to fully understand and to take action for social justice because they kind of don't get it. And not only about this issue, about other issues as well. We know we need to educate the population better for social justice.

Murad appears on Gelman’s Insitute for the Critical Study of Zionism’s podcast “Unpacking Zionism” to discuss “CAMERA.” In this podcast, Gelman calls the sexual violence committed by Hamas against Israelis on October 7th “fictional.”

Teaching While Muslim (TWM) describes itself as “an organization that focuses on creating a supportive network for Muslim American teachers and advocates for fighing against discrimination, implicit bias, and institutional racism.” It has worked with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to design curriculum, such as its 9/11 curriculum which blames the cause of 9/11 on US foreign policy in the Middle East and ignores the influence of radical Islam. TWM distributed flyers in New Jersey schools which called the United States “a co-conspirator with Israel, preventing Muslim Palestinians from partaking in Ramadan as the Israeli Zionist occupation enacts a genocide against them.”

As previously covered in this substack, TWM provides resources to teachers on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, resources like this one celebrating the first intifada. TWM has also taken part in “teach-ins” with extremists like Thuraya Zeidan and Nerdeen Kiswani of Within Our Lifetime.

Najimy is the former president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the founder of MTA Rank and File for Palestine. Unsurprisingly as a member of the DroptheADL from schools team, Najimy spoke in favor of the motion to drop the ADL as a partner of the National Education Association at the recent NEA Representative Assembly.

DroptheADL from schools: well coordinated campaign

The DroptheADL from schools campaign came out of a well supported network of institutions and activists, including a power player within the Massachusetts Teachers Association, an organization which collaborates with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and most particularly, Gelman’s Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, funded by her family’s foundation, and using the trappings of academia to legitimize the Institute’s bald activism.