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Biden Compares Hamas Attack to Holocaust in Antisemitism Warning
US President Joe Biden and Speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson (R-LA) hold photographs of Holocaust victims on the day he addresses rising levels of antisemitism, at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Annual Days of Remembrance ceremony, at the US Capitol building in Washington, US, May 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
US President Joe Biden warned on Tuesday that the threat of antisemitism is growing in the United States, including on college campuses, as his support for Israel‘s military campaign against the Hamas terror group in Gaza divides Democrats and alienates some young voters.
In a speech honoring the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust, Biden joined a heated American debate about Jewish security, Zionism, free speech, and support for Israel, in the country with the largest Jewish population after Israel.
Addressing a bipartisan audience at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual commemoration, he warned of the risk that the truth about the systematic killing of Jews during World War Two would be lost.
“‘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 at the US Capitol’s Emancipation Hall. “The truth is we’re at risk of people not knowing the truth.”
Biden spoke seven months to the day after Hamas, the Palestinian terror group that rules Gaza, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping over 250 others as hostages in what he has called the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
“This hatred [of Jews] continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many people in the world and requires our continued vigilance and outspokenness,” Biden said.
“Now here we are, not 75 years later, but just seven and a half months later, and 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 came amid growing opposition, including from his administration, to Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 massacre. The Jewish state has waged a military campaign against Hamas in Gaza aimed at freeing the hostages and incapacitating the Islamist group to the point that it can no longer pose a major threat to the Israeli people. The Israeli war effort has sparked protests in the US demanding that universities and Biden withdraw support for Israel.
Biden acknowledged Americans’ right to protest and demonstrate, but didn’t mention the deaths in Gaza.
“We know scapegoating and demonizing any minority is a threat to every minority,” Biden said. “There is no place on any campus in America for antisemitism, hate speech or threats of violence of any kind.”
On Tuesday, Israeli forces seized the main border crossing between Egypt and southern Gaza as they prepared a possible offensive aimed at eliminating Hamas terrorists.
Biden said his commitment to Israel was ironclad, even amid disagreements with the country’s government. The US government has been holding up several shipments of weapons to Israel, a source told Reuters on Tuesday.
ANTISEMITISM, HATE CRIMES JUMP
Law enforcement and advocacy groups report a sharp rise in antisemitic attacks in the US since Oct. 7.
“Antisemitism is reaching crisis levels in our country,” said Carol Ann Schwartz, national president of Hadassah, a women’s Zionist organization that has been consulted by the White House.
Biden, who is in a tight race for the White House with Republican rival Donald Trump, pledged to unite the country.
He said he was inspired to run by then-President Trump’s response to the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia, white nationalist rally, where marchers chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” Biden now governs a country no less divided than when he took office in 2021, most statistics show.
The FBI reported a 36 percent increase in anti-Jewish hate crime incidents between 2021 and 2022, the latest year for which data is available, as well as a jump in crimes against Black Americans and gay men.
More recently, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released a report showing antisemitic incidents in the US rose 140 percent last year, reaching a record high. Most of the outrages occurred after Oct. 7, during the ensuing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
On college campuses specifically, the ADL report found that antisemitic incidents rose 321 percent, disrupting the studies of Jewish students and leaving them uncertain about the fate of the American Jewish community.
Meanwhile, antisemitic incidents have also skyrocketed to record highs in several other countries around the world, especially in Europe, since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7.
CAMPUS PROTEST POLITICS
Trump has sought to exploit Democratic divisions over Israel‘s response and widening college protests to improve Republicans’ lot with Jewish voters, who traditionally vote Democratic.
Police crackdowns on some campuses have given ammunition to Trump’s claim that US cities are under siege from violent crime, illegal migration, and out-of-control leftist policies. Trump’s Republican Party has argued that the protests are driven by antisemitism.
“Jewish Americans are realizing that the Democrat Party has turned into a full-blown anti-Israel, antisemitic, pro-terrorist cabal,” said Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson.
Biden has asked the Department of Education to provide colleges with examples of antisemitic discrimination that could lead to a federal civil rights investigation, and technology firms to determine the best ways to monitor antisemitism online.
About seven in 10 US Jewish voters support Democrats, while three in 10 are Republican-aligned, according to the Pew Research Center.
The US House of Representatives passed a bill last week that would apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which has been adopted by dozens of governments and hundreds of civic institutions around the world, to enforce federal anti-discrimination laws on college campuses.
To help clarify its definition, IHRA provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
Critics have argued the widely adopted definition is vague and infringes on freedom of speech, including the ability to criticize Israel.
The post Biden Compares Hamas Attack to Holocaust in Antisemitism Warning first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Treasure Trove explores the connection between errant arrows on Lag ba-Omer and comments that hit the mark
Are these kids the worst archers you have ever seen? Based on where their hands are, it is not obvious how the arrows will fly (which is probably a good thing, since most of them are facing each other). This 1910 postcard printed by the Hebrew Publishing Company of New York depicts the holiday of […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the connection between errant arrows on Lag ba-Omer and comments that hit the mark appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel’s Gantz Demands Gaza Day-After Plan By June 8, Threatens to Quit Cabinet
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz speaks at Reichman University on Nov. 23, 2021. Photo: Ariel Hermoni / IMoD
Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz demanded on Saturday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commit to an agreed vision for the Gaza conflict that would include stipulating who might rule the territory after the war with Hamas.
Gantz told a press conference he wanted the war cabinet to form a six-point plan by June 8. If his expectations are not met, he said, he will withdraw his centrist party from the conservative premier’s broadened emergency coalition.
Gantz, a retired top Israeli general who opinion polls show is Netanyahu’s most formidable political rival, gave no date for the prospective walkout but his challenge could increase strains on an increasingly unwieldy wartime government.
Netanyahu appears outflanked in his own inner war cabinet, where he, Gantz and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant alone have votes. On Wednesday, Gallant demanded clarity on post-war plans and for Netanyahu to forswear any military reoccupation of Gaza.
If the prime minister were to do that, he would risk angering ultra-nationalist coalition parties that have called for Gaza to be annexed and settled. Losing them could topple Netanyahu, who before the war failed to enlist more centrist partners, given his trial on corruption charges he denies.
“Personal and political considerations have begun to penetrate the Holy of Holies of Israel‘s national security,” Gantz said. “A small minority has seized the bridge of the Israeli ship and is piloting it toward the rocky shoal.”
Gantz said his proposed six-point plan would include bringing a temporary U.S.-European-Arab-Palestinian system of civil administration for Gaza while Israel retains security control.
It would also institute equitable national service for all Israelis, including ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are now exempted from the military draft and have two parties in Netanyahu’s coalition determined to preserve the waiver.
The post Israel’s Gantz Demands Gaza Day-After Plan By June 8, Threatens to Quit Cabinet first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Pushes Into New Parts of Northern Gaza, Recovers Another Slain Hostage
Smoke rises following Israeli strikes, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Jabalia refugee camp northern Gaza Strip, May 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa/File Photo
Israeli troops and tanks pushed on Saturday into parts of a congested northern Gaza Strip district that they had previously skirted in the more than seven-month-old war.
Israel’s forces also took over some ground in Rafah, a southern city next to the Egyptian border that is packed with displaced people and where the launch this month of a long-threatened incursion to crush hold-outs of Palestinian Islamist terror group Hamas has alarmed Cairo and Washington.
In what Israeli media said was the result of intelligence gleaned during the latest incursions, the military announced the recovery of the body of a man who was among more than 250 hostages seized by Hamas in a cross-border rampage on Oct. 7 that triggered the war.
Ron Binyamin’s remains were located along with those of three other slain hostages whose repatriation was announced on Friday, the military said without providing further details.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
Israel has conducted renewed military sweeps this month of parts of northern Gaza where it had declared the end of major operations in January. At the time, it also predicted its forces would return to prevent a regrouping by the Palestinian Islamist group that rules Gaza.
One site has been Jabalia, the largest of Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps. On Saturday, troops and tanks edged into streets so far spared the ground offensive, residents said.
“Today is the most difficult in terms of the occupation bombardment, air strikes and tank shelling have going on almost non-stop,” said one resident in Jabalia, Ibrahim Khaled, via a chat app.
“We know of dozens of people, martyrs (killed) and wounded, but no ambulance vehicle can get into the area,” he told Reuters.
The Israeli military said its forces have continued to operate in areas across the Gaza Strip including Jabalia and Rafah, carrying out what it called “precise operations against terrorists and infrastructure.”
“The IAF (air force) continues to operate in the Gaza Strip, and struck over 70 terror targets during the past day, including weapons storage facilities, military infrastructure sites, terrorists who posed a threat to IDF troops, and military compounds,” the military said in a statement.
RISING DEATH TOLL
Armed wings of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and Fatah said fighters attacked Israeli forces in Jabalia and Rafah with anti-tank rockets, mortar bombs, and explosive devices already planted in some of the roads, killing and wounding many soldiers.
Israel’s military said 281 soldiers have been killed in fighting since the first ground incursions in Gaza on Oct 20.
In the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 1,200 people were killed. About 125 people are still being held in Gaza.
In Rafah, where Israeli tanks thrust into some of the eastern suburbs and clashed with Palestinian fighters there, residents said Israeli bombing from the air and ground persisted all night.
Israel says it must capture Rafah to destroy Hamas and ensure the country’s security.
The post Israel Pushes Into New Parts of Northern Gaza, Recovers Another Slain Hostage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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