This article is intentionally link-heavy. Deliberately so.

The links are not decoration. They are notice architecture.

They are here so that no Jewish organization, donor, synagogue board, federation executive, museum director, rabbi, supporter, or journalist can later say the record was too scattered, too obscure, or too difficult to review. A substantial part of that record is already in the public domain through the work of Grant Arthur Gochin, Silvia Foti, Eugene J. Levin, Michael Kretzmer, and Dillon Hosier. The issue now is not whether Jewish institutions can know. The issue is whether they will look before they lend legitimacy.

That is the question of due diligence.

Lithuania is still prosecuting Artur Fridman, a Jewish citizen, over Holocaust-related speech. That fact alone should have triggered a basic institutional response from every Jewish organization that continues to host Lithuanian officials, partner with Lithuanian institutions, honor Lithuanian state-linked initiatives, or share platforms built around Holocaust memory. Instead, public reaction has been weak, selective, or absent.

At this point, the problem is no longer missing information. The information is there.

My own writing has already asked Jewish institutions to explain themselves. Eugene Levin has done the same. Michael Kretzmer has done the same. Silvia Foti has done the same. Dillon Hosier has done the same. The archive is no longer thin. It is cumulative. Anyone who wants a starting point now has one.

It matters, because an institution may begin in ignorance. It cannot remain innocent after notice.

The Lithuanian state has become adept at turning memory into protocol. A ceremony is arranged. A museum visit is offered. A panel is convened. A statement is issued. A rescue commemoration is staged. Jewish participation is then folded back into the state’s own presentation of itself. The result is familiar. The photograph becomes the proof. The event becomes the alibi. The platform becomes borrowed absolution.

The sequence is backwards.

Evidence should come first. Review should come first. Questions should come first. If the ceremony comes first, the ceremony itself starts doing the work that truth has not yet done.

This is not an argument against engagement. It is an argument against engagement without prior scrutiny.

That distinction now has to be made plainly.

In Eugene Levin’s recent article The Museum, the Prosecution, and AJC, the problem comes into focus. What we see there is not an honest misunderstanding. We see AJC dealing with a Lithuanian government presentation that the public record already shows is designed to deceive. The point is plain. The contradictions are public. The asymmetry is public. The state’s willingness to say one thing ceremonially, another thing administratively, and a third thing prosecutorially is public. If a major Jewish organization still approaches that structure with trust, that is no longer naivete. It is institutional malpractice.

This is not a small matter. It means the problem is no longer confined to Lithuania’s conduct. It extends to Jewish institutional judgment.

So what should due diligence mean here?

Not a mood. Not a slogan. Not “constructive dialogue.” Not “we are monitoring the situation.” A real standard.

Before a Jewish organization accepts an honor, joins a panel, signs a statement, hosts a diplomat, co-sponsors a Holocaust-related program, or lends its name to Lithuanian state-linked memory work, it should be able to answer a few simple questions.

What record did you review?

Which public criticisms did you read?

Did you examine the work already published by this network of Times of Israel writers and others?

Did you ask what falsehoods have been corrected?

Did you ask which honors for Holocaust perpetrators have been revoked?

Did you ask whether formal foreign inquiries have been answered?

Did you ask whether Lithuania is prosecuting a Jew for Holocaust-related speech?

Did you ask the Lithuanian side for written answers?

And after all that, why did you proceed?

This is not an impossible burden. It is minimal diligence.

Any donor has the right to ask those questions. Any member has the right to ask them. Any congregant, board member, or supporter has the right to ask them. Jewish organizations do not spend only their own authority. They spend communal authority. They spend the moral capital attached to Jewish memory, Jewish suffering, Jewish credibility, and Jewish trust.

For that reason, the public also has standing.

If a Jewish institution platforms Holocaust revisionists, Holocaust distorters, or representatives of institutions credibly accused of such distortion after the record has been placed in front of it, then it owns the consequences of that choice. It owns the reputational consequences of the platform it provides. It owns the moral consequences of lending Jewish legitimacy where Jewish legitimacy should have been withheld or at least conditioned. It owns the communal consequences of normalizing what should have triggered review.

That does not depend on whether the error began knowingly or unknowingly. What matters is what happens after notice.

Once the record is public, and once it has been assembled for review, ignorance weakens as an excuse. Once the warnings are repeated, it weakens further. Once the articles, letters, questions, and contradictions are all sitting in front of an institution and it still chooses not to look, the defense collapses.

This piece is meant to mark that point.

It is meant to make one excuse harder to use: that the material was too dispersed to evaluate.

It is not too dispersed now.

It is here. It is public. It is linked. It is readable. It is usable. It can be handed to a donor, a board member, a journalist, a rabbi, a communal professional, or Fridman’s lawyer, and the first question can be asked directly: what due diligence did the institution perform before it showed up, signed on, lent its name, or shared the stage?

A responsible organization does not need to sever every relationship instantly. It does need to stop pretending that review is optional. It should pause before future engagements, review the public record, put questions in writing, identify what it has read, and explain to its own community why it thinks the engagement is justified despite the unresolved record. If it cannot do that, it should not proceed.

It is not extremism. It is seriousness.

Lithuania has already shown what it is willing to do. The real question now belongs to Jewish institutions. What will they do with what they have been shown?

Will they read before they go?

Will they audit before they honor?

Will they review before they platform?

Or will they continue lending Jewish legitimacy first and examining the record later?

The links in this article are deliberate. They are here so that no one can later claim the evidence was inaccessible or unknown. If, after this, a Jewish organization fails to do its due diligence, that failure demands a public accounting to its board, its donors, its members, and the wider Jewish community. It should carry consequences for the people who approved it and for the institution that allowed it.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)