True, Young's comments did deserve censure. However, I am not happy with Foxman's performance as head of the ADL. It's become a leftist mouthpiece, and forgotten about real issues affecting Jews today. Our community is not without a few very real and growing problems, and the ADL should be seeking solutions, rather than looking for anti-semitic boogeyman on the right and leading witchhunts against them.
BTW, does the ADL purport to speak for Canadian Jews as well?
The ADL has always been on the "Left," though "Left" has meant different things at different times. Back in the Sixties they often published materials against "the Right," but to be fair, it must be admitted that at the time "the Right" often was anti-Semitic, including anti-Israel. I can attest to the fact that, despite the fact that Fundamentalist Protestantism long being pro-Israel and Zionist (even back then), the conservative movement at the time was very different. Despite the fact that the Communist world was uniformly anti-Israel, the conservative movement at the time often shared that view. As with the pro-smoking position today, the anti-Israel position was simply "the conservative position" on the Middle East. This wasn't limited to "extremists" either, but was mainstream conservatism as represented by mainstream figures and publications, many of which have changed sides today. I know personally of at least one very prominent conservative who started out very anti-Israel (he and I even had an argument through the mail about it) who wound up completely changing his position. As one who remembers when the mainstream conservative position on the Middle East conflict sounded very much like the Communist position (and Israel was merely another "liberal Jewish" cause) I can personally testify to my own extreme satisfaction at how things have turned out. I grew up conservative and pro-Israel, and had no idea that those two ideas were supposed to be at odds with each other. When I discovered the anti-Zionism of the right I regarded it as a betrayal, since the people the right claimed to represent, at least in my neck of the woods, was pro-Israel.
All that being said, there is no denying the historical Leftism of the ADL, and maybe of B'nai B'rith as a whole. But I do remember that one of the men who preceded Foxman as ADL head was a gentleman who engaged in none of ad hominen attacks and bizarre crusading for homosexuality that Foxman does. But then, liberalism as a whole has moved Leftward since that time and perhaps he would do so today.
My suggestion for the dilemma (which is going to get me in hot water) is that the whole concept of a secular "Jewish leadership" is wrong. The Jewish People are a Theocratic nation in exile, not a religious denomination, and for most of their history they possessed sovereignty, even in the Exile. I believe this sovereignty, under the Orthodox Rabbinate and Battei-Din, should be restored. And before anyone calls that suggestion "un-American," I point out that even libertarians regard American Indian tribes as sovereign nations who can do pretty much whatever they want to (even if it involves violating libertarian principals). I don't hear anyone calling Indian sovereignty "un-American."