A group of 100 Orthodox Jewish rabbis from across the United States are urging Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to end his association with the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) through its AmazonSmile charity program, citing the center’s so-called “hate map” which they say puts their community at risk.
The SPLC has repeatedly added mainstream conservative organizations to its map to besmirch their reputation and dox them for targeting from left-wing critics.
Fox News reported on a September 1 letter obtained from the Coalition for Jewish Values that said SPLC’s method for identifying so-called hate groups is “uniquely detrimental and even dangerous to the Jewish community:”
The letter charges that the SPLC “frequently vilifies groups based upon nothing more than their advocacy for biblically-based beliefs about sexuality and family ethics that were uncontroversial a generation or two ago.” It adds that the SPLC map omits groups “which ally with international terror organizations, openly glorify murder under the guise of ‘resistance,’ and frequently descend into clearly anti-Semitic expression.”
“According to the SPLC, Christians can only incite hate, and Muslims can only be its victims,” the letter states. “Yet more Jews have been murdered in the past 50 years due to radical Islamic terror organizations than all those groups that the SPLC does mention — combined. This level of dishonesty directly endangers the Jewish community.”
AmazonSmile is a program launched in 2013. It allows customers to select a charity to which Amazon donates 0.5% of the purchase price of eligible items. Amazon relies on SPLC to determine if a charity is legitimate or is a “hate group.”
The coalition also condemns the SPLC for its relationship with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which “according to both the FBI and a Federal Judge — once conspired to provide material support to Hamas, an internationally-recognized terrorist group with beliefs rooted in radical Islam and genocidal anti-Semitism written into its charter.”
“The letter’s signatories include Rabbis Yitzchak Adlerstein, Mordechai Becher, Emanual Feldman, and Dr. Aaron Glatt, the chief of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau in New York, an expert in COVID-19’s impact in the Orthodox community,” Fox News reported.
Conservatives and conservative groups that have been slandered by SPLC include the Family Research Council, the Alliance Defending Freedom, White House speechwriter Stephen Miller, One America News reporter Jack Posobiec, moderate Muslim Maajid Nawaz, and Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
The center also slandered Dr. Ben Carson, a renowned neurosurgeon and now Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump administration. SPLC in 2015 added him to a “extremist file,” for, among other things, his Christian believes, including that marriage is between a man and a woman.
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