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| 1990-2000 Spotlight on Terrorism |
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1990-2000 Spotlight on Terrorism
The century's final decade saw unprecedented strides in Arab-Israeli relations. ADL was a witness to the historic signing of the 1993 Israel-PLO treaty on the White House lawn. The League continued to be a vocal supporter of the peace process, working to solidify American backing, while voicing concern about Palestinian terrorism and commitment to the process.
ADL continued its decades-old work of encouraging dialogue
between Jews and Christians and educating Christians to avoid traditional anti-Jewish
attitudes in Christian teachings. ADL played an important role in the historic event in
1994 affecting Christian-Jewish relations: the diplomatic exchange of ambassadors between
the Vatican and Israel.
As the world witnessed the rise in terrorism in the 1990's, ADL
continued to monitor the extremists closely. Six months prior to the 1995 Oklahoma City
bombing, an ADL report alerted the nation about the growing menace of anti-government
militia groups. ADL provided expert testimony to Congressional committees on the militia
threat and urged states to enact anti-paramilitary training laws based on a model statute
drafted by the League.
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| ADL's periodic update on domestic and international terrorism. |
In the Middle East, the shocking assassination of Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the spate of deadly suicide bombings by extremists spurred ADL
to heightened vigilance and increased antiterrorist activity. The League launched a new
publication, Terrorism Update, issued periodically to reveal news and trends on the
domestic and international scene. ADL also proposed a Counterterrorism Action Agenda
designed to strengthen the government's ability to deter domestic and international acts
of terror. In the wake of intensifying efforts to delegitimize Israel's sovereignty in
Jerusalem, ADL established a special Task Force to develop and distribute educational
material about Israel's capital.
In the forefront of the national effort to deter hate crimes, ADL could point with pride to 40 states and the District of Columbia, which enacted penalty-enhancement laws based on or similar to an ADL model originally drafted in 1981. In a landmark 1993 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of a Wisconsin statute following the ADL approach.
At the first-ever White House Conference on Hate Crimes in
November 1997, ADL programs were highlighted, and Hate Crimes: ADL Blueprint for Action
outlined successful ADL initiatives that can be duplicated across the country.
With the dawning of the technological explosion, ADL noted the
proliferation of messages from white supremacist groups and pseudo-scholarly Holocaust
deniers on the World Wide Web. Documenting the who's who in the on-line hate
establishment, ADL issued numerous reports and launched its own Home Page ( www.adl.org ) to
counter hate propaganda on the Internet.
ADL issued its most comprehensive survey of the radical right,
DANGER: Extremism -- The Major Vehicles and Voices on America's Far-Right Fringe,
featuring profiles of the leading organizations and individuals active in the
violence-prone, conspiratorial, racist, extremist movements.
An ADL survey of anti-government extremists revealed that armed militias continued to pose a significant threat of violence and disorder, with many militiamen and their supporters joining the fast-growing "common law court" movement, which sought to replace our country's legal system with one of vigilante justice. In 1997, ADL published the comprehensive Vigilante Justice: Militias and "Common Law Courts" Wage War Against the Government, reporting on militia violence, criminal activity, racism and anti-Semitism, conspiracies, use of the Internet, "Preparedness Expos" and political activity.
To empower the Jewish community to respond to anti-Semitic
incidents, ADL introduced Confronting Anti-Semitism: A Family Awareness Project, an
interactive workshop fostering communication within families about anti-Semitism and how
to respond to it.
Building bridges among ethnic communities, ADL initiated the
CHILDREN OF THE DREAM® project bringing together Ethiopian-Israeli teen-agers
and American students to shatter stereotypes and forge multicultural bonds.
In advertisements and Op-Ed articles, ADL continued to condemn
the separatism and virulent anti-Semitism of demagogues like Louis Farrakhan, head of the
Nation of Islam. ADL placed full-page ads in The New York Times and The Washington Post
prior to Mr. Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March in Washington, DC, pointing out that
despite the repentant theme of the March, Mr. Farrakhan had yet to express atonement for
his years of inflammatory anti-Semitic, anti-white, racist remarks.
Next: 1913-2000 |
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