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Today Abe Foxman, National Director of the ADL, published an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, “ADL and the Ground Zero Mosque,” in which he defends his decision last month to join in the chorus of bigots maligning the proposed downtown Manhattan Islamic cultural center, Park 51, deeming its establishment an act of insensitivity to the victims of 9/11 (despite the fact that 35 victims of 9/11 were themselves Muslim).

Without the faintest hint of self-awareness, Foxman writes:

It was only after a few days of misguided attacks on us that thoughtful individuals across the ideological spectrum, from the left and the right, began to articulate a better understanding of what we had said and why we were in the right. In “The Mosque Is Not About the First Amendment,” Martin Peretz, publisher of the New Republic, wrote that “the Anti- Defamation League, which fights anti- Semitism and other forms of religious bigotry, produced an admirably balanced response to the controversy, one that respected both the constitutional and historical aspects of it. While defending Muslim religious freedom unreservedly, the ADL warned that building the mosque at Ground Zero ‘will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.’ In other words, if the consortium wants to build it, it can build it. But it would be a very bad idea.

In “Ground Zero Mosque Protected by First Amendment – but it’s still salt in the wound,” on the Newsweek/Washington Post blog “On Faith,” Susan Jacoby condemned The New York Times for its allegation that ADL had joined in the “rationalization of bigotry.”

Referring to ADL’s position, Jacoby said: “To be classified as bigoted for objecting to the location of this project – without denying the First Amendment right to build – is completely unjust.” It was refreshing to receive support from two serious analysts who are staunch believers in the First Amendment. It was equally refreshing that they cared about what we actually had said.

Problem #1: Peretz was citing an article by Christopher Caldwell in the Financial Times and therefore the quote Foxman attributes to Peretz is not, in fact, his.

Problem #2: Nary a month after penning “The Mosque Is Not About the First Amendment,” Peretz authored another piece that concluded with the line:

I wonder whether I need honor these people [Muslims] and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

How five days after this egregious statement of intolerance and bigotry, which prompted broad condemnation throughout the Jewish community (which in turn elicited a half-hearted apology from Peretz), Foxman can call Peretz “a staunch believer in the First Amendment” is beyond me, but with Foxman’s increasingly compromised ethics and self-serving logic it seems to be par for the course.

Problem #3: Foxman concludes his editorial by stating that, “It is more and more difficult to take non-partisan, nuanced positions in our politicized world.” This is of course ironic for someone who insists on referring to the Park 51 project with the incendiary pejorative, “the Ground Zero Mosque.” Talk about a lack of nuance…

Despite coupling his opposition to Park 51 with a denunciation of anti-Muslim bigotry, there is nothing non-partisan, apolitical or unbiased about lending the weight of the ADL’s voice to a manufactured controversy instigated by a Birther allied with European neo-Nazis. You would think that a 45-year veteran of anti-racist activism would have more seichel, but alas — you would be wrong.

All of this serves to illustrate, once again, that Abe Foxman is woefully out-of-touch and that the ADL, under his leadership, has become the laughing stock of the civil rights community. How long he can go on embarrassing himself and the Jewish community before he loses his job or his stature stands to be seen.  At the going rate, we have years more hypocrisy, hilarity and humiliation to look forward to.