The White House’s Antisemitism Roundtable Was A Sham

Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff brought together representatives of a handful of Jewish organizations — notably not the ones who’ve taken issue with Biden policies that hurt Jews and Israel — to discuss Jew-hatred in a Wednesday roundtable on antisemitism. While this roundtable could have been a good first step, on antisemitism, the Biden administration must actually walk the walk.

The event was reportedly staffed by White House Domestic Policy Adviser Susan Rice, advisers Keisha Lance Bottoms, Josh Geltzer, and Shelley Greenspan, and the special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt. Groups in attendance included the left-wing Anti-Defamation League and National Council of Jewish Women, the American Jewish Committee, headed by former Democrat Congressman Ted Deutch, representatives of the major religious streams of Judaism, some campus groups, the Jewish Federations, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

Yet the Zionist Organization of America, the leading major American Jewish organization unapologetically defending Israel and the Jewish people, was not invited to the roundtable, nor were other organizations that have criticized left-wing antisemitism or President Joe Biden’s dangerous-to-Jews policies, appointees, and supporters.

President Biden tweeted that “silence is complicity” when it comes to Holocaust denial. I agree. Therefore, the Biden administration should immediately and vociferously denounce Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Ph.D. thesis, from a Soviet university, was a denial of the Holocaust that he then expanded into a book. Abbas has repeated this stance numerous times, yet President Biden calls him “my friend.”

The Palestinian Authority pays terrorists to murder Jews and Americans in Israel, and it does so with American taxpayer dollars. This “pay to slay” program awards lifelong stipends to Palestinian Jew-killers or their families; the more Jews they kill, the more money they make. Abiding by American law, the Taylor Force Act, then-President Donald Trump ended direct funding to the Palestinian Authority, but almost as soon as he took office, President Biden found ways to restore that money. You can’t sincerely decry antisemitism if you give money to people who kill Jews.

Furthermore, Abbas himself was reportedly the financier of the 1972 Munich Olympic Massacre in which Israeli athletes and coaches were kidnapped, tortured, and killed. Abbas is not a moderate, but a blood-soaked terrorist — and yet President Biden calls him a “partner” and seeks to increase engagement with his corrupt regime, which has repeatedly rejected offers of statehood made by the Israelis. Abbas should be utterly condemned.

Biden Administration’s Antisemite Staff

Not long ago, President Biden elevated Hady Amr to the position of special envoy to the Palestinians. Amr is notorious for writing, “I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada,” the terror wars in which Palestinian Arab terrorists murdered or maimed 10,000 Jews. If silence on antisemitism is complicity, what is hiring and promoting someone who finds the murder of Jews inspiring?

The Biden administration is staffed up and down, including in important roles, by appointees with varying degrees of animus toward Jews and Israel.

Current U.S. special envoy on