Biden warns against ‘surge of antisemitism’ at Holocaust event

Joe Biden warned against a “ferocious surge of antisemitism in America” at a Holocaust event Tuesday, as student protests against Israel’s military strikes on Gaza and the resulting humanitarian crisis continued to roil campuses across the US.

Addressing a bipartisan Holocaust remembrance event at the US Capitol, the president reasserted his “ironclad” commitment to the “security of Israel and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state … even when we disagree”. Hatred towards Jews didn’t end with the Holocaust, he said – it was “brought to life on October 7 2023” when Hamas unleashed its attack on Israel killing 1,200 people.

“Now here we are not 75 years later, but just seven-and-a-half months later, people are already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror … I have not forgotten, and we will not forget.”

Biden’s forceful evocation of the shadows of the Holocaust and the scourge of antisemitism was made at a volatile moment when Israel’s retaliatory military operation in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, and brought 2.3 million people to the edge of starvation. Demonstrations against the war and calls for a ceasefire has led to turmoil at scores of US universities and colleges – and opened fissures within Biden’s Democratic party that could imperil his re-election hopes in November.

The president, who has generally avoided commenting on the campus protests since they erupted at Columbia University in New York three weeks earlier, acknowledged that his remembrance speech fell “on difficult times”. He also said that he understood that “people have strong beliefs and deep convictions”, adding that the US respected free speech.

But he went on to decry antisemitic