WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Tuesday rolled out the first national strategy to combat rising anti-Semitism and when it was her turn to speak, historian Deborah Lipstadt—special envoy for anti-Semitism—added context by noting how decades ago, official US policy, driven, she said, by “Jewish hatred,” made it difficult for Jews fleeing the Holocaust to escape. themselves from the Holocaust. enter the United States.
It was then. It's now.
Allowing growing antisemitism to fester and normalize threatens our democracy, Biden officials said while announcing the 60-page plan detailing more than 100 proposals for governments, private entities, sports teams and schools to take up.
Joining Lipstadt—a renowned authority on Holocaust denial and antisemitism—at the briefing were Doug Emhoff, the second male, first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president; home security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall and home policy adviser Susan Rice.
Emhoff, husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, who has made the fight against antisemitism a major focus, said, “Antisemitism provides a simple, false and dangerous narrative that leads extremists to commit deadly violence against Jews.”
The impetus to combat antisemitism came when the FBI found that by 2022, American Jews make up only 2.4% of the US population, “but antisemitism drives 63% of reported religiously motivated hate crimes. Perhaps most worryingly, antisemitism is increasingly ‘normalized' in American society.”
According to the Office of the Midwest Anti-Defamation League, in Illinois, antisemitic incidents increased from 53 to 121 between 2021 and 2022.
In Chicago, according to the ADL Midwest, the number of reported antisemitic acts increased from 15 in 2020, to 28 in 2021, to 47 in 2022.
A teenager was arrested by Highland Park police this week after a swastika and other antisemitic signs were found in a trash can in a northern suburb with a dense Jewish population.
In Washington late on Monday, police said a Nazi flag was found on a U-Haul truck that a 19-year-old Missouri man used to try to break down a security barrier around the White House. Police said the man praised Hitler when he was arrested.
“Silence is engagement,” Biden said in a video statement.
This strategic package comes after the Biden White House worked for the last six months with some 1,000 stakeholders to develop new actions that were needed, said Lipstadt, “because this scourge threatens not only the safety of Jews, but the strength of our democracy.”
After the event, I spoke to Lipstadt, who is based in the State Department and who has the full title of Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, and I asked him why it was important for him to bring up how the US government, by not letting large numbers of Jews into the US, is leaving them to be killed by the Nazis.
“You can't move forward individually or collectively until you look back and see where you went wrong and you corrected those mistakes, and then you move forward,” says Lipstadt.
These proposals include:
- Sherwood-Randall said the strategy included “10 separate calls for technology companies to establish zero-tolerance policies on hate speech on their platforms, to ensure that their algorithms do not deliver hate speech and extreme content to users and to listen more closely. Jewish groups to better understand how anti-Semitism manifests itself on their platforms.
This was in response to online platforms allowing “antisemitic conspiracy theories and content” on their sites, leading to “high-profile politicians, athletes, celebrities and others” using “their influential platforms to spread conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial”.
- The federal government will support “research into anti-Semitism, its impact on American society, and its intersection with other forms of hate” and better report hate crimes.
- The National Security Council “will strengthen the financial, technical and training assistance offered to state and local partners to build and expand these community-based prevention efforts.”
- Congress will be required to approve more funds – up to $360 million – to help synagogues and other Jewish institutions pay for security.
- The Ministry of Education is tasked with tackling anti-Semitism in schools and college campuses.
- The government will develop programs to counter hatred directed at other communities – such as Islamophobia – by developing and supporting “effective cross-community solidarity building efforts.”
- The Biden administration has secured commitments from professional sports leagues and teams — the NBA, WNBA, NFL, NHL, NASCAR, and Major League Soccer — to “discuss strategies, tools, and best practices for effectively fighting anti-Semitism and all forms of hate.”
David Goldenberg, ADL Midwest Regional Director, said Biden's plan means that “in Chicago, it provides us with additional fuel for our work with companies that we are pushing to incorporate anti-Semitism education into DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) work.”
The Presidents' Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations — representing about 30 organizations — said in a statement: “In an era of increasing anti-Semitism in the US and around the world, we appreciate the clarity and urgency shown by the White House in releasing its National Strategy Against Anti-Semitism.”
There is debate about the definition of anti-Semitism: The US has embraced and the strategic plan underscores that the Biden administration will continue to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's “working definition.” Some Jewish groups on the left claim that Israel is sheltering itself from criticism of its policies; to address this, the Biden White House said in its report that it noted and “appreciated” other definitions, prompting outrage from the right.