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AFP
AFP
Washington (AFP) – US President Joe Biden condemned a “ferocious surge” in anti-Semitism on Tuesday, in a Holocaust memorial speech that came at a fraught moment in Israel’s war in Gaza and with protests roiling American universities. Biden, who has backed Israel since the start of the conflict, said too many people were forgetting that it was the Palestinian militant group Hamas that “unleashed this terror” with the October 7 attack on Israel. “I have not forgotten, nor have you, and we will not forget,” Biden said at the US Capitol in a keynote address to mark the US Holocaust Memorial Museu…
The following e-mailed comments were received by San Diego Jewish World which I as editor pass along in the interest of presenting a range of Jewish opinion:
REACTIONS:
American Jewish Committee issued the following statement:
American Jewish Committee (AJC) thanks President Biden for his resolute commitment to combating antisemitism and protecting Jewish communities, highlighted in remarks delivered today at a Holocaust Remembrance Event at the U.S. Capitol seven months after Hamas carried out the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust and in the wake of yesterday’s remembrance of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day).
“Every protester on college campuses perpetuating false narratives about Israel and threatening Jewish students should watch President Biden’s speech,” said AJC CEO Ted Deutch. “The President put into words what so many Jews are experiencing around the world, especially Jewish college students. I commend President Biden for not only standing up against rising antisemitism in word but for reminding the world of the realities of the Holocaust and October 7.”
During his remarks, President Biden called attention to the disturbing parallels between October 7 denial and Holocaust denial and the impact this has on Jews here in the United States and around the world. The October 7 terrorist attack against Israel by Hamas, in which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed and hundreds more taken hostage in Gaza, was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Yet, as President Biden said, “[t]oo many people [are] denying, downplaying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and October 7 – including Hamas’ appalling use of sexual violence to torture and terrorize Jews. It’s absolutely despicable, and it must stop.”
“To deny atrocities against Jews is to relieve the perpetrators of responsibility; it is rhetoric like this that fuels the rising antisemitism here at home and around the world,” said Deutch. “This surge of antisemitism in the U.S. is an urgent threat to Jews and all Americans.”
AJC also welcomes the Biden Administration’s announcement today of additional actions building on The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, including new Department of Education guidance for all school districts and colleges on antisemitic discrimination, the creation of an online campus safety resources guide from the Department of Homeland Security, and State Department outreach to technology companies to discuss best practices to combat antisemitism on their platforms.
AJC will continue to support and advocate for students at all levels of education and engage with school and university administrators as this urgent fight against antisemitism on campus requires deep and ongoing collaboration between the Jewish community, the White House, the Department of Education, and educational institutions.
“AJC’s State of Antisemitism in America 2023 Report found that more than 1 in 5 American Jews who experienced antisemitism online (22%) reported that the online incident(s) made them feel physically threatened and that 62% of American Jews reported seeing or hearing antisemitism online or on social media in the past 12 months. We have been working with technology companies to help identify and reduce antisemitism on their platforms and welcome the Special Envoy’s expertise and guidance as we work to make these online public squares free from harassment,” said Deutch.
AJC is the global advocacy organization for the Jewish people. With headquarters in New York, 25 regional offices across the United States, 15 overseas posts, as well as partnerships with 38 Jewish community organizations worldwide, AJC’s mission is to enhance the well-being of the Jewish people and Israel and to advance human rights and democratic values in the United States and around the world. For more, please visit http://www.ajc.org
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Jewish Voice for Peace issued the following statement:
On the occasion of President Biden’s speech marking Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jewish Voice for Peace reminds the President that the enduring lesson from the Nazi Holocaust – Never Again – means Never Again for Anyone. As the Israeli government is pledging to launch a large-scale ground invasion of Rafah, where 1.3 million trapped Palestinian refugees are sheltering, the President’s insistence on inaccurately linking the Israeli government to Jewish safety signals, yet again, the extent of U.S. governmental support for the Israeli military’s genocide against Palestinians.
“It is a horrific lie that Jewish safety is protected by the Israeli government’s slaughter of Palestinian families or that riot police arresting peaceful protestors is for the sake of Jewish students,” said Stefanie Fox, Executive Director at Jewish Voice for Peace. “Biden’s speech used accusations of antisemitism to distract the American public from our complicity in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. It was a grotesque betrayal of the memories of our families murdered in the Holocaust.”
President Biden linked the history of the Nazi Holocaust to the student activists calling for an end to their universities’ complicity in militarism, occupation and war. Jewish students are a strong presence in the campus protests, marking Jewish holidays like Shabbat and Passover at the encampments, where they feel safety and belonging. These students feel that their Jewish tradition compels them to join this interfaith, multiracial, movement for Palestinian freedom.
President Biden also failed to address the primary source of antisemitism in the U.S.: White supremacy and the rise of the far-Right.
“As a Jewish student at UCLA, I reject President Biden’s vicious and false portrayal of student activists. President Biden’s fear mongering puts student activists, including Jewish student activists like myself, at tremendous risk. By misstating the source of antisemitism, President Biden is effectively sowing confusion and making it harder to identify and dismantle antisemitism when it occurs,” said Benjamin Kersten, member of JVP-UCLA, who has participated in the student protests for Palestinian freedom.
“For so many of us, the only way to honor the memory of our ancestors murdered in the Holocaust is to do everything we can to stop the horrors unfolding in Gaza. We know in our bones what it means to hear Israeli officials dehumanize an entire people, to witness the Israeli military mass murder tens of thousands of Palestinians, to watch Israel systematically destroy civilian infrastructure, cultural institutions, universities, and hospitals. To see Israel purposefully deny food, medicine, and shelter to refugees,” said Rabbi Brant Rosen of Tzedek Chicago synagogue.
“Biden speaks about antisemitism as a never-ending virus, insists on antisemitism rising in isolation from other forms of racism and violence, and uses uncontestedly biased data from a group that counts criticism of Israel as antisemitism. Exceptionalizing antisemitism completely isolates Jews and Jewish history, and makes it impossible to fight against all forms of racism, imperialism, and injustice together,” said Nina Mehta, a JVP member and researcher and educator on antisemitism with the organization she co-directs, PARCEO.
“How dare Biden invoke the Holocaust, a genocide against Jews like my family, to justify the current genocide of Palestinians. What is so hard to understand about Never Again for Anyone? It is the great moral imperative of our lives that we force the US to stop funding and arming Israel’s slaughter of over 34,000 Palestinians, at least 13,000 of them children. Now.” said Elena Stein, Director of Organizing Strategy for Jewish Voice for Peace, and descendant of a Holocaust refugee who lost almost all of her family in the Holocaust.
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