I learned the hard way that the Anti-Defamation League makes it tougher to defend Israel on a college campus.

It really isn't difficult to take apart a zealous college leftie spouting rubbish learned from some "fact sheet" about the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. You can show them that their information is wrong, or selective, or that they are applying their claimed principles inconsistently. Some will listen, some won't. Some will scoff and bluster in the heat of the moment, but mull it over at a later, less theatrical moment. But one thing almost all of them will do is try to strawman you, which too frequently means shouting off about some nonsense spouted by the ADL.

You can fight through this, but it's tough. It takes time. Time wasted explaining, "Well perhaps the ADL said that, but that's not what I'm saying, and if you are serious about this issue, you should be able to engage with real arguments rather than just denounce the silly ones." It's frustrating. The ADL's name works too much like a "Get Out of Debate Free" card.

I thought about this this morning when I read a short op-ed written by Armenian-American Berge Jololian and published this week in the Massachusetts newspaper The Patriot Ledger. The op-ed is titled "Anti-Defamation League has lost moral authority," and it is a spare, devastating, and utterly incontrovertible demonstration of why it is so unwise for the advocates of any decent cause, the leadership of any decent organization, to associate themselves with the ADL. I encourage you all to read it.

What Jololian describes--the hypocrisy, the arrogance, the ignorance, and worst of all the high-minded universalist rhetoric in defense of Jewish rights matched with utter contempt for the rights of other communities--these things are simply poison to any organization or cause that hopes to influence the general population.

For Israel's sake, I hope the ADL never says another word about her. And for any organization that maintains a working relationship with the ADL, I hope you jump ship now.