New York, NY, December 28, 2011 ... The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued the following statement in response to concerns about recent statements made by bloggers and other writers at the Center for American Progress:

Overall, the criticisms of Israel made by the Center for American Progress do not veer into anti-Semitism. There are, however, two exceptions to this. In one case a CAP staffer referred to supporters of Israel here as "Israel Firsters," playing into the old anti-Semitic notion that Jews are more loyal to some foreign entity than to their own country. Fortunately, the staffer later tweeted that he didn't realize the implication of this term, apologized for it, and indicated he would be more careful about his language.
 
A second troubling example was an accusation in a blog that the Israel lobby was marching America to war against Iran as it did with regard to Iraq.

We have strong disagreements in the manner CAP speaks to issues related to Israel, American-Israel relations and US policy in the region. Most of their blogs come from a perspective of blaming Israel for the lack of progress in Israeli-Palestinian affairs and minimizing or rationalizing the Iranian threat. We have raised our concerns directly with CAP about the preponderance of articles critical of Israel, and take some encouragement from a recent blog post by Matt Duss of CAP in which he criticized Thomas Friedman's accusation that Congress "was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby." We hope this is indicative of a reexamination of the way CAP covers Israel-related issues.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.