Justin Elliot talks to the ADL about why they opposed the government-sponsored travel of several Muslim leaders to Holocaust sites, a trip that was apparently a huge success, and comes back with a really weak explanation:
"Mr. Foxman raised the question of the appropriateness of the State Department's special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism to accompany individually and privately sponsored trips," the statement says. "Given that there are many places in the world where anti-Semitism remains a problem, we believe that her leadership role in fighting anti-Semitism is best done government to government."
That refers to Rosenthal, the State Department official, whose grandparents were killed in the Holocaust. Given that the trip resulted in such a strong statement, in which Muslim leaders from around the U.S. publicly denounced anti-Semitism in the strongest terms, the trip organizers saw it as a major success.
That was worth actively lobbying against the trip for? Put it this way: If this was a trip involving Jewish leaders, and CAIR protested on similar grounds, how would Foxman respond?
