In a letter sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, a group of over 100 Orthodox Jewish rabbis called on Bezos to sever all ties between his company Amazon and the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), according to Fox News.
The letter, submitted on September 1st by the Coalition for Jewish Values, specifically focuses on Bezos’ charity, AmazonSmile, which allows Amazon customers to donate a small percentage of their online purchases to a charity of their choice. The system currently uses the SPLC’s “hate map” to determine what qualifies as a “real” charity and what is ineligible from receiving donations. The SPLC has a history of labeling virtually every conservative or right-wing organization in the entire country as a “hate group,” while ignoring far-left groups.
The rabbis’ letter describes this dependence on the SPLC as “uniquely detrimental and even dangerous to the Jewish community,” particularly due to the SPLC’s frequent discrimination against Christians. 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.”
The letter also points out that, while the SPLC overwhelmingly targets Christians, it turns a blind eye to even the most radical Islamic beliefs. As the letter states, “according to the SPLC, Christians can only incite hate, and Muslims can only be its victims,” even though “more Jews have been murdered in the past 50 years due to radical Islamic terror organizations than all those loose groups that the SPLC does mention combined.”
The SPLC has come under heavy fire in recent years as conservatives and the Republican Party increasingly begin to fight back against its influence. At the 2020 Republican National Convention, delegates formally passed a resolution on behalf of the party condemning the SPLC.