WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden condemned the “ferocious surge of antisemitism in America and around the world” during a Tuesday ceremony to remember victims of the Holocaust at a time when the Hamas attack on Israel and controversy over the war in Gaza have sparked new waves of violence and hateful rhetoric toward Jews.
President Joe Biden condemned the “ferocious surge of antisemitism in America and around the world” during a Tuesday ceremony to remember victims of the Holocaust at a time when the Hamas attack on Israel and controversy over the war in Gaza have sparked new waves of violence and hateful rhetoric toward Jews.
“We’re at risk of people not knowing the truth,“ Biden said of the horrors of the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were systematically killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. “This hatred continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many people in the world.”
Biden’s remarks at the Capitol played out out as pro-Palestinian protests — some of which have involved antisemitic chants and threats toward Jewish students and supporters of Israel — rock college campuses across the country.
Biden has struggled to balance his support for Israel after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack — the deadliest day for Jews worldwide since the Holocaust — with his efforts to constrain its war on the militant group in Gaza.
“This hatred continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many people in the world,“ Biden said of antisemitism, saying that on Oct. 7, Hamas „brought to life“ that hatred with the killing of more than 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians.
“Not 75 years later, but just seven and a half months later, and people are already forgetting, they’re already forgetting, that Hamas unleashed this terror that it was Hamas that brutalized Israelis, that it was Hamas that took and continues to hold hostages,“ Biden said.
