U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday warned that the threat of antisemitism is growing, in remarks honouring the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, as his support for Israel’s assault on Gaza divides his Democratic Party.
“Never again simply translated for me means: Never forget. Never forgetting means we must keep telling the story, we must keep teaching the truth,” Biden said as he addressed a bipartisan memorial held at the U.S. Capitol’s Emancipation Hall. “The truth is we’re at risk of people not knowing the truth.”
Biden spoke in a keynote address for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual National Commemoration of the Days of Remembrance, seven months to the day after the Palestinian militant group Hamas led an attack in Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, by Israeli tallies.
“People are already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror,” he said. “I have not forgotten, nor have you. And we will not forget.”
Biden’s speech comes as Israel’s retaliation has killed nearly 35,000 people in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, according to Gaza health authorities, and left many of the area’s 2.3 million people on the brink of starvation.
On Tuesday, Israeli forces seized the main border crossing between Egypt and southern Gaza, shutting down a vital aid route for Palestinian civilians as they prepared a possible offensive aimed at eliminating Hamas fighters.
Takes aim at social media, campus conflicts
Biden aimed to cool a divided and divisive U.S. debate about Jewish security, free speech and support for Israel, in the country with the largest Jewish population after Israel.
He lamented what he called a “ferocious surge of antisemitism” and the presence of “vicious propaganda on social media” while stressing that his commitment to Israel was “ironclad” even amid disagreements with the country’s government.
The Biden administration has expressed concerns about the potential humanitarian impact of a military campaign in Rafah, but the president said Tuesday that, “my commitment to the safety of the Jewish people and Israel is ironclad even when we disagree.”
Many Jewish Americans have been critical of Israel’s Gaza attacks, leading protests against actions of right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and condemning Netanyahu in Congress.
Biden spoke about divisive protests at U.S. colleges and universities over the Israeli military’s campaign in Gaza for the second time in five days on Tuesday, and said that while the country upholds freedom of speech and assembly, Jewish students should be free from harassment and verbal attacks on campuses.
“We’re not a lawless country, we are a civil society,” he said.
On Monday, Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice-President Kamala Harris and the first Jewish spouse of a nationally elected American leader, met with Jewish college students at the White House about the administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism. Emhoff heard students describe their own experiences with hatred, including threats of violence and hate speech, his office said.
Dissent is ‘essential’ to democracy, U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday in remarks about growing pro-Palestinian campus encampments — but he added that protests must be peaceful, and antisemitism, Islamophobia or hate speech of any kind can’t be tolerated.
Trump leans on support for Israel
Biden and Republican rival Donald Trump are expected to again be the two main party candidates for president in the Nov. 5 election.
Biden has said he was inspired to run in the 2020 election by then-president Trump’s response three years earlier to the Charlottesville, Va., white nationalist rally, where marchers chanted “Jews will not replace us.”
On Tuesday, he did not mention Trump, who has sought to exploit Democratic divisions over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and the widening college protests.
While Trump’s administration offered full-throated support for Israel, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and not disputing a previous Netanyahu government’s expansion of contentious Jewish settlements on disputed territory, the candidate himself has been accused of dealing in antisemitic tropes.
On a podcast earlier this year, Trump said that “any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion.”
“They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed,” he told a radio show hosted by Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official.
Antisemitic incidents rise in U.S., Canada
About seven in 10 U.S. Jewish voters support Democrats, while three in 10 are Republican-aligned, according to the Pew Research Center. Many political analysts say that Jewish voters typically do not choose a president based on foreign policy alone.
Trump’s Republican Party has argued that the campus protests are driven by antisemitism.
A new report from Jewish advocacy organization B’nai Brith Canada says self-reported antisemitic incidents doubled in 2023 compared to 2022.
Law enforcement and advocacy groups report a sharp rise in antisemitic attacks in the United States since Oct. 7, as well anti-Muslim attacks. The FBI reported a 36 per cent increase in anti-Jewish hate crime incidents between 2021 and 2022, the latest year for which data is available.
B’Nai Brith, meanwhile, reported on Monday a record number of antisemitic incidents in Canada in 2023.