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What Biden Didn’t Say About Antisemitism
US President Joe Biden addresses rising levels of antisemitism, during a speech at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Annual Days of Remembrance ceremony, at the US Capitol building in Washington, DC, US, May 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – U.S. President Joe Biden’s speech on May 7 at the U.S. Capitol, during which he eloquently revisited Nazi Germany’s journey from racial laws discriminating against Jews to outright genocide, demonstrating the parallels with today’s febrile situation along the way, struck all the right notes.
And that, perhaps, was the problem.
While I applauded pretty much every word that I heard, what frustrated me was that there was nothing new. True, it’s reassuring that an American president understands what the Holocaust was, how it was carried out and how it still continues to impact Jewish communities. As Biden said, “[B]y the time the war ended, 6 million Jews—one out of every three Jews in the entire world—were murdered.” Nearly 80 years on from the victory over Nazi Germany, and despite the existence of a Jewish state and an unprecedented flowering of Jewish communities in many of the world’s democracies, there are still fewer Jews now than there were before Hitler embarked on his program of slaughter. And as Biden’s speech indicated, what was in relative terms a post-war “Golden Age” is now over.
That was why I’d hoped I would hear something new, something different. But in the end, even if Biden spoke movingly, his words were safe and, for most Americans, non-controversial. Much of the closing part of his speech was given to a memoir of Tom Lantos, the late California congressional representative and a Holocaust survivor from Hungary who once worked on Biden’s staff. Lantos’s story is certainly inspiring, but an affectionate review of his life isn’t going to explain or deter the antisemitic wave we are facing.
On the pro-Hamas protests that have roiled U.S. campuses, again Biden correctly depicted the slogans and signs on display as “despicable.” Yet there was precious little detail in the speech about how to confront this problem, save for acknowledgement of truths that are widely recognized, at least among Jews (“We know hate never goes away, it only hides”), and a few bland clichés (“We also know what stops hate. One thing: all of us.”)
Any plaudits that Biden earned from American Jews were quickly lost in the days that followed the speech. As Israeli troops prepared for an assault on Rafah, the last bastion of Hamas in the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip, Biden announced a suspension of key weapons deliveries to the Israel Defense Forces in a bid to force a ceasefire. For many Jews, including the huge number who say they would never vote for Donald Trump under any circumstances, Biden’s decision to hand the Hamas rapists and murderers an operational advantage felt like the worst betrayal. Contrasting his speech at the Capitol with the subsequent interview he gave to CNN’s Erin Burnett, it was tempting to conclude that the kinds of Jews that Biden identifies with are those who stoically accept their fate while believing that there is sufficient goodness among the wider population to alleviate their plight. But fighting back? Seeking to destroy irredeemable enemies before they destroy us? That, it would seem, is a step too far.
What could Biden have said that he didn’t say on the day? What aspects of the current surge of antisemitism would have convinced a besieged Jewish community that the leader of the free world is not just an ally, but someone who fundamentally grasps the nature of contemporary threats on multiple fronts?
There was something of a clue in the middle of his speech, when Biden referred to the “ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people off the face of the earth.” It was this observation that needed expanding because it gets to the heart of the issue. For while the basic impulse here hasn’t changed over the centuries, the difference today lies with the bearers of this message. Pockets of antisemitism remain on the far right and among certain Christians, but that problem can be contained. The existential threat now emanates from Red-Green alliance of Islamists and the far left—this was what Biden should have identified. But he didn’t.
For this coalition, the existence of a Jewish state is the vehicle through which the “ancient desire” described by Biden manifests. Hence, the presentation is different. Whereas Jews were once portrayed as obstacles to spiritual redemption—a cursed people whose existence, as St. Augustine famously argued, is an example of what happens when Christ is rejected—in our contemporary secular world, Jews are obstacles to the realization of national and social justice, universalist goals that have been fatally compromised by Jewish particularism. Yet again, Jews are scorning both the messenger and the message, so yet again, they must suffer for it.
In the pro-Hamas encampments that have sprung up on college campuses across the United States, as well as in Europe and Australia, ancient cries of “Death to the Jews” and other epithets have been heard, but these have been overshadowed by sloganeering deemed progressive and enlightened: “Free Palestine,” “From the River to the Sea,” “Globalize the Intifada” and so on. The immediate targets are not largely defenseless Jewish communities but the denizens of a nation-state armed to the teeth. Jews outside the territory of Israel who denounce the Jewish state are, for the time being anyway, welcome allies, but the remainder—90%, more or less, of the world’s Jews—are beyond the pale for as long as they support the State of Israel.
What Hamas and its Western allies are asking us to endorse is—in the memorable phrase of the 2006 conference in Tehran staged by the Iranian regime—the vision of a “World Without Zionism.” “Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury, any Islamic leader who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world,” the then-president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared at the time. For the enemies of the Jews, therefore, this is a zero-sum game: us or them. And that idea has now been globalized, resulting in the transfer of Iranian regime slogans to our campuses and, increasingly, our city streets, our workplaces and all the other locations where we gather to get on with our lives.
That is the challenge that Biden should have addressed.
The post What Biden Didn’t Say About Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Vancouver police raid a home linked to the director of Samidoun—which is now a terrorist entity in Canada
Vancouver police arrested and released one person at the home of Charlotte Kates, director of the terror group Samidoun, in a dramatic raid on Nov. 14. The raid was conducted […]
The post Vancouver police raid a home linked to the director of Samidoun—which is now a terrorist entity in Canada appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Trump Won A Majority of Votes In Heavily-Jewish New York City Precincts, Election Data Claims
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Forum River Center in Rome, Georgia, US, March 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Alyssa Pointer
President-elect Donald Trump won an overwhelming majority of the votes in New York City (NYC) precincts that were at least a quarter Jewish, according to a data analysis by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), a prominent Washington DC-based political group.
RJC presented data on Friday affirming the notion that Trump won a higher proportion of the NYC Jewish vote than in previous elections, potentially signaling an ideological shift in the traditionally-liberal voting bloc. According to RJC data, Trump received the “overwhelming” majority of votes in precincts with a Jewish population of at least 25%.
Trump’s 2024 performance among Jews in NYC seems to mark a substantial improvement over the 2020 and 2016 elections, contests in which the president-elect struggled to make inroads among Jewish voters.
Voting data from the 2024 election also indicate that there was a significant shift among Jewish voters in Pennsylvania. President-elect Trump also enjoyed greater success in heavily-Jewish enclaves of deep-blue cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, according to data compiled by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners and the Los Angeles Times, respectively.
Trump’s increased success among Jewish voters in the Big Apple comes amid simmering anger over surging antisemitism across the country.
In the year following the Hamas slaughter of roughly 1200 people throughout southern Israel, college campuses have become embroiled in an unrelenting onslaught of protests opposing the Jewish state. Moreover, many Jews have expressed dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, suggesting that the president has not been a firm ally of the Jewish state.
Over the past year, NYC has been ravaged with raucous, often-violent anti-Israel demonstrations and an unrelenting spate of antisemitic hate crimes.
Columbia University, one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in the world, became a poster-child for the anti-Israel campus movement, erecting encampments and holding protests calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Many NYC public schools came embroiled in scandal after teachers presented students with lesson plans that accused Israel of committing “apartheid” and “genocide” against the Palestinians.
Though most national Democrats continue to express support for Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas terrorists, some figures in the party have, over the past year, adopted a more adversarial posture toward the Jewish state, often citing the humanitarian situation in Gaza as a key reason.
High-profile Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) have suggested that Israel has perpetrated a “genocide” against Palestinians in Hamas-ruled Gaza, where Israel has been waging a military campaign targeting terrorists since the Oct. 7 atrocities. Earlier this year, a group of dozens of Democratic lawmakers, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), sent a letter to US President Joe Biden, urging him to “reconsider” approving offensive arms shipments to Israel.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. While courting Jewish voters, Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them once he retains office in January.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
The post Trump Won A Majority of Votes In Heavily-Jewish New York City Precincts, Election Data Claims first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Attempted Robbery of Jewish Man in Brooklyn Puts Orthodox Community on Edge
Screenshot of masked men who attempted to rob Jewish man in Crown Heights, Brooklyn on Thursday. Photo: Screenshot
The Jewish community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York was the target of another attack on Thursday evening, as three men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the neighborhood.
Footage of the incident was shared on X/Twitter by Yaacov Behrman, liaison of Chabad Headquarters and founder of the Jewish Future Alliance (JFA) nonprofit. It shows the men, whose faces were concealed by hoods and ski masks, chasing the man into the street and through the neighborhood after attempting to accost him.
No arrests have been made.
“He doesn’t give in easily, and I don’t think they got anything,” Behrman tweeted. “The Jewish Future Alliance is deeply concerned not only about the increase in crime but also the fact that, once again, the perpetrators were wearing masks. We need to reinstate mask laws.”
The explosion of an antisemitic hate crime spree in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn has set the Orthodox Jewish community on edge in recent weeks.
Last Tuesday, two men beat a middle-aged Hasidic man after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery. According to multiple accounts, the assailants were two Black teenagers.
That incident was the third time in eight days that an Orthodox resident of Crown Heights was targeted for violence and humiliation. Before then, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily neighborhood, which is heavily Jewish, and less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face.
Most recently, a masked man was caught on video approaching a visibly Jewish father walking with his two sons and grabbing one of the children in broad daylight. He was unable to secure possession of the child, whose father fought back immediately and did not let go of his son. Police later identified the man as Stephan Stowe, 28 — a suspect gang member with an extensive criminal history which includes 33 prior arrests — and charged arrested him attempted kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child.
In each case, the suspect was allegedly a Black male, a pattern of conduct which continues to strain Black-Jewish relations across the Five Boroughs.
Black-on-Jewish crime is a social issue which has been studied before. In 2022, a report published by Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA) showed that Orthodox Jews were the minority group most victimized by hate crimes in New York City and that 69 percent of their assailants were African American. Seventy-seven percent of the incidents took place taking in predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Of all assaults that prompted criminal proceedings, just two resulted in convictions.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” AAA founder and former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D) told The Algemeiner. “Shouldn’t there be a plan for how we’re going to deal with it? What’s the answer? Education? We’ve been educating everybody forever for God’s sake, and things are just getting worse.”
The problem has become acute in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face. Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.
According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Attempted Robbery of Jewish Man in Brooklyn Puts Orthodox Community on Edge first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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