New York—Earlier this week, callers to JLBC demanded the removal of an Edi­ble Arrangements ad placed by a Jewish-owned franchise in Fair Lawn. JLBC set out to confirm whether the viral rumor was true. In the interim, the ADL confirmed it was an unsubstantiated lie.

In a statement issued earlier this week, the ADL said, “A widely circulated rumor suggests that the owners of Edible Ar­rangements, a company that sells fruit bas­kets through a series of privately owned franchises across the country, are ‘funding Hamas’ through a charitable foundation they support. Several ideologically moti­vated online sites are urg­ing consumers to boycott the company due to their ‘ties to terrorism.’

“In fact, there is abso­lutely no truth to these un­founded assertions. While the Farid Foundation has provided funding to var­ious organizations in the U.S. and abroad, there is no evidence to suggest that any of those funds have been used to sup­port terrorism. More­over, the company has clearly and unequivocal­ly denounced terrorism, in­cluding those forms of ter­ror used by Hamas.

“It should also be not­ed that the company’s fran­chise owners come from a variety of religious back­grounds; some are Jewish, including the company’s current president.”