The Biden administration has speciously deployed the race-card to trumpet so-called hate crimes that advance its agenda while turning a blind eye to hate-based attacks when doing so would be politically inconvenient.
Democrats’ recent double standard on Asian- and Jewish- based assaults offers a shining example.
President Joe Biden last week signed a bill opposing Asian hate crime, even while failing to condemn anti-Semitic violence directed toward supporters of Israel in its defensive strikes on Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
On Thursday, Biden signed a new bill in the East Room of the White House where he thanked lawmakers for coming together to pass Asian–American hate crime legislation.
He called hate against Asian Americans “the ugly poison that has long haunted and plagued our nation,” according to an NPR report.
“My message to all of those who are hurting is: We see you and the Congress has said, we see you,” Biden said. “And we are committed to stop the hatred and the bias.”
Vice President Kamala Harris added, “Here’s the truth: Racism exists in America. Xenophobia exists in America, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia—it all exists. And so the work to address injustice wherever it exists remains the work ahead.”
Yet, that same standard concern appeared to be lacking when it came to addressing anti-Semitic hate speech in recent days.
A growing spate of attacks on Jewish citizens has only been exacerbated by hostile rhetoric from pro-Palestinian Squad members and other Democrat leaders, some of whom claim to be longtime supporters of Israel.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., reportedly confronted Biden on a tarmac in Michigan, telling him, “The U.S. can’t continue to give the right-wing Netanyahu government billions of dollars to commit crimes against the Palestinians.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki subsequently appeared to show support for Tlaib when responding to a reporter’s question on Friday.
“Certainly, [Biden] understands that there are a range of viewpoints as it relates to the conflict in the Middle East, which we were in the heat of over the last several days,” Psaki hedged.
“And he felt it was important to have a discussion with her on the tarmac so he could convey his point of view, certainly hear hers, and—you know, he’ll look forward to continuing to engage moving forward,” she added.
Other powerful Democrats have also blamed Israel for the surge in hostilities, even after the nation brokered several historic peace deals during the Trump administration.
“The United States should not be rubber-stamping weapons sales to the Israeli government as they deploy our resources to target international media outlets, schools, hospitals, humanitarian missions and civilian sites for bombing. We have a responsibility to protect human rights,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez tweeted on Wednesday.
The United States should not be rubber-stamping weapons sales to the Israeli government as they deploy our resources to target international media outlets, schools, hospitals, humanitarian missions and civilian sites for bombing.
We have a responsibility to protect human rights. https://t.co/OctBNYFpwp
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 19, 2021
She failed to mention Israel had been targeted by more than 4,000 rockets on civilian targets.
Tlaib tweeted on Friday, “Is this what a ceasefire looks like? The Israeli apartheid government has no shame.” She linked a video of Israeli forces responding to violence in the area.
Is this what a ceasefire looks like?
The Israeli apartheid government has no shame. https://t.co/Row3thUuSE
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) May 21, 2021
Over the weekend, Biden finally spoke out against anti-Semitism.
Squad members followed suit, though none apologized for past comments against Israel or the Jewish people.
Ocasio–Cortez tweeted in response to American anti-Semitic attacks last week, “There is no room for anti-semitism in the movement for Palestinian liberation. Our critique is of Israel and their human rights abuses. This is not an excuse for anti-semitic hate crimes.”
Yet some Jewish advocates see the response as too little, too late.
Seffi Kogan, the global director of young leadership at the American Jewish Committee, noted that AOC’s half-hearted retraction came from an account with a smaller audience than her original Israel-bashing tweet.
“While anti-Zionist gangs beat up Jews in her city, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was providing a quasi-intellectual basis for their actions, defaming Israel as an apartheid state employing indiscriminate force in what she seems to think is a capricious quest to murder as many Palestinian children as possible, instead of a highly restrained military operation tightly targeted on terrorists,” Kogan wrote in an op-ed for Newsweek.
“Rep. Ocasio-Cortez didn’t call for violence, but she carved out an area of respectability for a certain type of anti-Semitism, and others were only too happy to rush in, fists flying,” Kogan added.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
