Jewish groups have used paid informants to protect synagogues from antisemitic violence, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has claimed that it was funding KKK members for similar reasons, but a group that represents 2,500 Orthodox Jewish rabbis is crying foul. Last week, a federal grand jury indicted the SPLC on wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy charges for sending money to members of the very white supremacist groups the center claims it exists to dismantle. The SPLC did not deny funding members of the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations, but insisted the funds were part of an informant program that it used to prevent violent attacks. The Forward, a Jewish news outlet, cited multiple Jewish organizations condemning the indictment and featured historian Stephen J. Ross, whose book “The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy,” was published Tuesday. Ross’s book covers the history of Jewish groups embedding informants in white nationalist organizations. Yet Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, insisted that any tie between the history of Jewish groups using informants to prevent violence and the SPLC’s defense of funding KKK members is “ludicrous.” “It’s a ludicrous comparison, for the simple reason that not all transactions are created equal,” Menken told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “Infiltration and use of paid informants have been used throughout history to learn enemies’ intentions and capabilities. The SPLC is accused of advising and funding hate in America in order to have causes against which to fundraise. If true, this is simply reprehensible.” A History of Private Informants Ross defended the practice of nonprofit organizations hiring informants to defend against violent threats. “If a government cannot protect the lives of its citizens, it is up to the citizens to protect their own lives,” the author told The Daily Signal in a Tuesday interview. Ross’s earlier book, “Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America,” outlines the history of the informants hired by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League from the 1930s into World War II. “The Secret War Against Hate” covers the end of the Second World War to Jan. 6, 2021. The AJC maintained informants until the 1960s, the Anti-Nazi League maintained them until the 1970s, and the ADL still maintains them, Ross told The Daily Signal. Neither the AJC nor the ADL responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment. He said most organizations require paid informants to sign a document stating something to the effect of “I will not pretend to be a government authority, nor will I break any law.” “They want you to go undercover, find out what’s going on, if you can accumulate evidence, and then report it back,” and they would forward that information to law enforcement, Ross explained. According to the Justice Department indictment, the SPLC was paying some of the same activists it highlighted in “extremist profiles.” Ross said that “isn’t odd.” “If you want to give somebody legitimacy within that group, the fact that they are put on a most wanted list by the Southern Poverty Law Center only strengthens their position within that group,” he argued. All the same, he said neither the ADL nor the AJC nor the Anti-Nazi League ever engaged in that kind of behavior, to his knowledge. Ross condemned the indictment against the SPLC, saying, “I think this is a harassment case. To my mind, it’s not a legitimate case.” He condemned what he called the “hypocrisy” of the FBI working with the Justice Department to bring charges against the SPLC when the FBI also pays informants. Are They Really Informants? The indictment suggests the recipients of SPLC cash were more than mere informants, however. The indictment claims the SPLC supervised the “racist postings” of an organizer of the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, for instance. Critics have long faulted the SPLC for placing conservative and Christian nonprofits that do not advocate for violence on a “hate map” alongside Klan chapters. The SPLC bills the map as revealing the “infrastructure upholding white supremacy.” The indictment suggests that the funding to members of the KKK has more to do with propping up a false “hate” threat to use in fundraising than to actually combat violence. Menken, the leader of the Coalition for Jewish Values, accused the SPLC of effectively abetting antisemitism. “We have long pointed out that the SPLC is itself acting as a hate group,” he told The Daily Signal. “Not only does it vilify those with biblically-based viewpoints on family values, it also calls out causes as ‘anti-Muslim’ for opposing radical Islamic groups which ally with designated foreign terror organizations and engage in antisemitic expression.”