Biden to discuss ‘scourge of antisemitism’ in Holocaust Remembrance Day speech
May 7 keynote address at Capitol comes amid record-high rates of anti-Jewish hate, and as anti-Israel campus encampments have caused many Jewish students to feel unsafe
US President Joe Biden will discuss rising levels of antisemitism in a May 7 speech to mark Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, the White House said on Wednesday, as college campuses face growing anti-Israel protests that have renewed concerns of rampant anti-Jewish sentiment.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Biden’s keynote speech at a Capitol Hill event hosted by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum will address “our moral duty to combat the rising scourge of antisemitism” and the administration’s work to that effect.
Biden will report on the results of his strategy to combat antisemitism, rolled out a year ago, according to the Haaretz newspaper. When the strategy was unveiled in May 2023, Biden pledged to implement it within a year.
The announcement of the speech, to be delivered at the US Capitol Visitor’s Center, comes as police have been called in to clear out pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel encampments on campuses across the country, and to arrest protesters who disregard orders to leave.
On Tuesday night, hundreds of protesters were arrested in New York City and across the country as police cracked down on the encampments, which university administrators have said pose a threat to public safety. Some Jewish students on those campuses say they have faced intimidation and hate speech.
That same night, violence broke out at the University of California, Los Angeles encampment when a group of pro-Israel activists attacked its perimeter.
On Tuesday, Biden condemned the protesters’ use of the word “intifada,” as well as the group of Columbia University students who illegally occupied and barricaded a campus building. Biden also alluded to the campus turmoil in his proclamation this week marking Jewish American Heritage Month.
“Here at home, too many Jews live with deep pain and fear from the ferocious surge of antisemitism — in our communities; at schools, places of worship, and colleges; and across social media,” he said. “These acts are despicable and echo the worst chapters of human history.”
Biden and the White House have repeatedly slammed instances of antisemitism during the campus protests.
The US Holocaust Museum, in a rare statement on US domestic politics, last week condemned the expressions of antisemitism on campuses. It specifically cited chants at Columbia.
“The shocking eruption of antisemitism on many American college and university campuses is unacceptable and university and all other appropriate authorities must take greater action to protect Jewish students,” the statement said. “Demonstrators at Columbia University calling for Jews to return to Poland — where three million Jewish men, women and children were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators — is an outrageous insult to Holocaust memory, a failure to appreciate its lessons, and an act of dangerous antisemitism.”
After Hamas launched the war with Israel with its October 7 mass onslaught, Biden accelerated some parts of the strategy to combat antisemitism, especially components having to do with campus. In the nearly seven months since the outbreak of the war, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has launched dozens of civil rights investigations into allegations of campus antisemitism. Republicans are also seizing on the turmoil and antisemitism on campuses, seen as redoubts of progressive activism.
Also scheduled to speak at the Capitol next week is Abraham Foxman, the former national director of the Anti-Defamation League, and a Holocaust survivor.
An ADL report released last month documented a record-high number of antisemitic incidents of assault, vandalism and harassment in the US last year, particularly in the wake of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
The organization tallied 8,873 antisemitic incidents in 2023, a 140 percent increase over 2022 and a record high since the group began keeping track in 1979. Over 5,200 incidents were reported after October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 253 hostage.
In December, the organization said that in the two months between October 7 and December 7, it recorded the most antisemitic incidents in any two-month period since it began its monitoring, representing a 337-percent increase over the same period in 2022.
