President Joe Biden has found a novel way to fight a dramatic rise in antisemitism since the Hamas terror attack on Israel October 7: putting Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of a new “national strategy on Islamophobia.”
The country has seen a near 400% rise in antisemitic incidents since the start of the war, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
In a video on Twitter/X, Harris said: “As a result of the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, we have seen an uptick in anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, antisemitic, and Islamophobic incidents across America.”
The Biden administration is lumping these separate types of incidents together, as Harris tried to explain:
Taking on hate is a national priority.
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) November 1, 2023
Today, @POTUS and I are announcing the country's first National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia.
This action is the latest step forward in our work to combat a surge of hate in America. pic.twitter.com/pxZAn7RymY
Harris mentioned an attack in Illinois on a Palestinian-American Muslim woman and her six-year-old son, in which the latter was murdered. She did not mention the wave of antisemitism on college campuses and in American cities, some of which is fueled by Muslim and pro-Palestinian activists.
Nor did Harris mention that Hamas is an Islamic fundamentalist organization, devoted to killing Jews not just in Israel but all over the world, and that mainstream American Muslim and Arab communal organizations have been silent on Hamas.
Harris also claimed that Muslims are affected by a disproportionate number of hate crimes, but anti-Muslim hate crimes are dwarfed by hate crimes against Jews, who are the most frequently targeted group.
That claim echoes a widely-panned response by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Oct. 23, when she responded to a question about antisemitism by talking about Islamophobia. That response came amid concerns that Biden might lose votes in the swing state of Michigan because the U.S. has supported Israel’s war effort.
The bait-and-switch of “fighting” antisemitism by appeasing the Muslim community, rather than protecting Jews, appears to be a pattern in the Democratic Party.
In 2019, when Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) provoked outrage with several antisemitic statements, the Democrat-controlled House did not censure or rebuke her directly, but instead passed a resolution that condemned all forms of hate, including hate against Muslims.
Omar took a victory lap, claiming (falsely) that the resolution marked the first time Congress had condemned anti-Muslim bigotry.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
