100 Orthodox Rabbis Confront Amazon for Using SPLC Hate List That 'Directly Endangers the Jewish Community'

A group of 100 Orthodox Jewish rabbis has stepped up to request that Amazon quit using the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) controversial "Hate Map" to deny support to nonprofits from the AmazonSmile charitable gift program.

The rabbis affiliated with the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) sent a letter to Jeff Bezos, president, CEO, and chairman of Amazon.com on Sept. 1 asking him to terminate Amazon's use of the SPLC list. In the letter, the rabbis argued that the SPLC list, besides unfairly targeting conservative organizations for opprobrium, was "detrimental and even dangerous to the Jewish community".

The AmazonSmile charity support program uses the SPLC "Hate Map" to exclude otherwise-eligible charities. The rabbis' letter notes that in addition to vilifying charities "based upon nothing more than their advocacy for biblically-based beliefs about sexual and family ethics that were uncontroversial a generation or two ago... the SPLC specifically avoids identifying radical Islamic groups as the leading source of modern-day anti-Semitic violence," and even characterizes groups opposing Islamic terrorism as "anti-Muslim" and hateful.

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As CBN News has reported, the far-left group SPLC has itself been labeled a "hate group" for targeting conservative, Bible-believing, non-profit ministries, and organizations. 

The SPLC list has led some organizations to blacklist Christian groups outright.  As CBN News reported on Wednesday, the spotlight focused on a major tech company called MobileCause, which stands accused of censoring conservatives by abruptly terminating a contract with the Christian organization the Family Research Council (FRC).

MobileCause said it began investigating FRC after the spam complaint and learned that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) had labeled FRC a hate group, which led them to terminate FRC's contract right before a major event which MobileCause had contracted to assist.

In late August, Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Bezos arguing that the SPLC demonstrated "bias against certain conservative non-profits," and requesting a briefing on the relationship between the SPLC "Hate Map" and AmazonSmile. The CJV letter, which was shared with the Committee members, underscored the unique danger the SPLC's slant posed to Jews.

Last month, the delegates of the Republican National Committee passed a resolution condemning the SPLC, calling the organization "a far-left organization with obvious bias." 

"According to the SPLC, Christians can only incite hate, and Muslims can only be its victims," the rabbis' letter said. "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."

"Far from fighting hate, the SPLC has descended into hateful conduct itself. Indeed, the hate map has already been employed by a domestic terrorist to identify innocents to murder. And its association with AmazonSmile denies needed funding from groups that fight terrorism and the murders that are terror's primary tactic," the letter concludes.