Jewish groups push White House to help counter antisemitism. For Doug Emhoff, it's personal.

[TomCADem]

Source: NBC News

As a coalition of prominent Jewish organizations puts pressure on the White House to act in the wake of increased antisemitic incidents in recent weeks, one prolific surrogate for the Biden administration with a personal stake is stepping up: Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president, opened a virtual meeting Wednesday between group leaders and senior White House officials and staff, including with the National Security Council and the departments of Justice and Education. He said the administration stands united with them and was working to counter the reported uptick in violence and hate speech against American Jews this month as the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians raged in the Gaza Strip.

"He was very heartfelt in his remarks," said Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, a nonpartisan public policy arm of the nation's largest Orthodox Jewish organization.

Attendees of the private meeting said Emhoff's involvement is an encouraging sign that the White House wants to make combating antisemitism a high priority, and that he has the capability to carve out his own platform as second gentleman beyond campaigning and fundraising on behalf of Democratic candidates and being a high-profile booster of the administration's Covid-19 relief plan.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/jewish-groups-push-white-house-help-counter-antisemitism-doug-emhoff-n1268928

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It is a good move to have the VP's husband take an active role in denouncing the continuing rise of anti-semitism.

Link to tweet

?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1396931247914508289%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcnews.com%2Fpolitics%2Fpolitics-news%2Fjewish-groups-push-white-house-help-counter-antisemitism-doug-emhoff-n1268928

Of course, while Republicans are quick to blame Biden, the truth is that this rise really peaked under Trump.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-antisemitism/watchdog-reports-record-number-of-anti-semitic-incidents-in-u-s-last-year-idUSKBN22O1LK

Watchdog reports record number of anti-Semitic incidents in U.S. last year (2019)

(Reuters) - Jews in the United States suffered the largest number of anti-Semitic incidents last year since the Anti-Defamation League began collecting records 40 years ago, the racism watchdog said on Tuesday.

The 2,107 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in 2019 in the United States included deadly attacks by gunmen at a California Synagogue and a New Jersey kosher grocery store, and a fatal stabbing at a rabbi’s home in New York.

It marked a 12% rise from 1,879 incidents in 2018. Previously, the highest number was recorded in 1994, when the ADL reported multiple unsolved arsons, cross burnings and a drive-by shooting.

The group’s audit of anti-Semitic incidents from 2019 counted 1,127 cases of harassment, 61 cases of physical assaults and 919 instances of vandalism. More than half of the assaults took place in New York City.

[mucifer]

1. Joe has Jewish grandchildren. (so does trump but that doesn't count. trump is a psychopath).

So it's personal for President Biden, too.

[TomCADem]

2. Anti-Semitism seen in Capitol insurrection raises alarms

I think part of the reason why McConnell opposed a bipartisan commission is that it would have exposed how Republicans have leveraged hate groups for political advantage.

https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-race-and-ethnicity-discrimination-elections-a72d2c399574206d64606f3d254c4b01

WASHINGTON (AP) — As a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol last week clamoring to overturn the result of November’s presidential election, photographs captured a man in the crowd wearing a shirt emblazoned with “Camp Auschwitz,” a reference to the Nazi concentration camp.

Two white nationalists known for racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric livestreamed to their online followers after breaking into the Capitol during the deadly insurrection. And video circulated on social media showed a man harassing an Israeli journalist who was trying to do a live report outside the building.

The presence of anti-Semitic symbols and sentiment at the Capitol riot raised alarms among Jewish Americans and experts who track discrimination and see it as part of an ongoing, disturbing trend. As the threat of further chaos lingers over Washington and state capitals ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, they called for more forceful rejection of the conspiracy- and falsehood-driven worldviews on display among the mob.

The insurrection was “not so much a tipping point” for anti-Semitism but rather “the latest explicit example of how (it) is part of what animates the narratives of extremists in this country,” said Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Statement by President Joe Biden on the Rise of Anti-Semitic Attacks

The rise in these attacks is scary. Here is a statement from Joe

Link to tweet

[Lonestarblue]

4. Republicans demonize everyone who is not white or extremist Christian.

The hate and bigotry have always been there, and Republicans have been stoking anger toward minorities for decades to win elections. But Donald Trump opened the bottle and let the genie of hatred out to poison as much of the country as possible. While he didn’t preach specifically against Jews, he encouraged the neo-Nazis and white supremacists to believe he was on their side. And he certainly caused attacks against Muslims and Asian Americans with his rants about the China virus.

I’m glad Mr. Emhoff is taking this on, but fear it may be impossible to shove that genie of hatred back in the bottle.

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R

[AllaN01Bear]

6. the hate of all groups on the rise in the last 4 years was terrible and not just jews ,

[DanieRains]

7. And What Bibi Is Doing To All Them Kids Isn't Helping

The kids on the front page of the Times didn't shoot any rockets.

Just sayyin...

[AZLD4Candidate]

8. How are American Jews responsible for what Bibi does?

You're going to have to explain that to me long and hard with very simple language how I, as an American Jew, am responsible for what is happening over there and why I should be subjected to anti-Semitic bigotry because of it?

[TomCADem]

10. Exactly. It Is Sort of Like Blaming Asian Pacific Americans for China's Actions

People should not respond to prejudice and hate by doubling down on prejudice and hate.

[AZLD4Candidate]

12. How is my wife, who is a Chinese national, responsible for China's governmental actions?

She can't even vote.

[question everything]

9. The attacks on Jews in the past few weeks should put to rest the claim that one can

be anti Israel and not anti Semite. Yes, many on these pages have held this claim. Works in theory but not in reality.

[TomCADem]

11. What? That Makes No Sense. That Was The Justification for Interning Japanese Americans

Yet, you did not see folks with German ancestry being rounded up into concentration camps as was the case for Japanese Americans.

Under your formulation, would you support the internment of people with Japanese ancestry during WWII? Or, are you saying that the U.S. should not have declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor.

[question everything]

14. What I was trying to say was that for years many claimed that they were against Israel, some,

at least, tried to qualify it as being against Netanyahu not against Israel as a whole, but were not antisemites.

But all the attacks that we have seen in the past few weeks were against Jews, when the attackers identified themselves as "Palestinians."

And until these last events, the only proof that I had were the protests in 2008, when a Palestinian woman screamed: "Jews, go back into the oven."

Now, sadly, we have seen plenty of such examples.

So as much as many want to differentiate between the two "anti" the reality shows that in this case they cannot.

[Polybius]

13. So can you be anti-Russia without being anti-Christian?

Same logic.