By Another day, another example of Democrats having a major antisemitism problem that they refuse to reckon with.
In October, following the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust and a nearly 400 percent increase in antisemitic violence, along with massive protests that have disrupted Jewish businesses and flashed swastikas, the White House announced that the real problem was Islamophobia. As part of a “National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia,” the president buddied up to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, giving it a major role in setting the administration’s policies.
Now, the White House finds itself in hot water as the group’s leader, rather than promoting tolerance between religious minorities, has justified terrorism. During a conference in November, Council on American-Islamic Relations Executive Director Nihad Awad claimed that the rape and murder of innocent children was akin to “breaking the walls of the concentration camp.”
“Yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land that they were not allowed to walk in,” Council on American-Islamic Relations Executive Director Nihad Awad said at a November conference hosted by American Muslims for Palestine. Audience members cheered Awad’s remarks, according to Jewish Insider.
Awad characterized the Oct. 7 attack as “self-defense,” which he said Palestinians have a right to — while Israelis do not.
“Yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, had the right to defend themselves,” said Awad. “Yes, Israel as an occupying power does not have that right to self-defense.” Awad did not mention Hamas in his speech; he did not differentiate between “the people of Gaza” and the perpetrators of the Oct. 7 attack.
“Gaza became the liberation source, the inspiration for so many people,” said Awad. “The Gazans were victorious.”
Awad ended his tirade by playing into the antisemitic notion, proffered famously by Rep. Ilhan Omar, that Jewish people control the federal government. He concluded his speech with a call to action, encouraging the audience to contact their elected officials: “We have to free so many people from the shackles of AIPAC and its affiliates who have sold the soul of America.”
In wake of the comments, the White House has “scrubbed” any mention of working with CAIR from its website.
BREAKING @J_Insider: "The White House scrubbed a mention of the Council on American-Islamic Relations from an antisemitism fact sheet and pledged that the group has no involvement in efforts to draft a national Islamophobia strategy" (via @GSDeutch)https://t.co/tTHvmKmcVD
— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) December 7, 2023
The comments from CAIR come as another group of major allies to the Democratic Party has received major backlash following testimony before Congress, forcing the White House to do major damage control.
Earlier in the week, the presidents of Harvard University, MIT, and Biden’s favorite university, the University of Pennsylvania, embarrassed themselves before a congressional committee dedicated to investigating the rise of antisemitism on campus. The three presidents refused to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews.
NBC News explained, “Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., the chairwoman of the House GOP Conference, asked Gay, Magill and Kornbluth whether a student’s calling for the genocide of Jews would violate student codes of conduct at their schools, but they repeatedly deflected the question.
Gay said in her testimony that ‘it depends on the context’ in determining whether calling for the genocide of the Jewish people violates Harvard’s code of conduct.
‘Antisemitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct, it amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation. That is actionable conduct, and we do take action,’ Gay said.
Stefanik asked Magill whether a student’s calling for the genocide of Jews violates Penn’s rules when it comes to bullying and harassment. Magill said, ‘If the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment.’
‘It is a context-dependent decision,’ Magill said when she was repeatedly pressed to clarify her testimony.”
Andrew Bates, White House senior communications adviser and deputy press secretary, said in a statement, “It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country.
Any statements that advocate for the systematic murder of Jews are dangerous and revolting – and we should all stand firmly against them, on the side of human dignity and the most basic values that unite us as Americans.”
The three college presidents clearly received negative feedback from donors after returning to campus. All three later issued statements backtracking from the congressional testimony after billionaire Bill Ackman called for the presidents to “resign in disgrace” following the hearing.
Business Insider reported that “Magill later released a video around 7 p.m. on Wednesday, after an online uproar called the university’s policies on free speech and harassment into question.
‘In that moment, I was focused on our university’s longstanding policies aligned with the US Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable,’ Magill said in the video. ‘I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It’s evil — plain and simple.’
Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, went further, saying, ‘There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students. Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.’
Kornbluth addressed the ongoing criticism in an open letter on Tuesday. In the letter, the MIT president echoed the sentiments of the school’s faculty and shared an excerpt from their own letter to the MIT community.
‘After these past weeks, I know many of you are exhausted and hurting. We have to make room for each other, in our hearts and in our daily lives,’ Kornbluth wrote. ‘We cannot and must not let events in the world drive us apart, or erode our respect for each other’s humanity, or thwart the great mission we’re here to pursue together.'”
Being forced to condemn Liz Mcgill’s tolerance of antisemitism must have been particularly difficult for Joe Biden. During the same hearing, the Penn president defended paying the president $400,000 a year for a no-show job on campus.
Asked by a GOP congresswoman what the then-former vice president did at the university to earn such an extravagant salary, Magill said that Biden was a “professor of practice” and was on staff for a little more than two years.
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