The Biden administration has released the country’s first national strategy to combat anti-Semitism Thursday, a call to government, law enforcement and schools to address discrimination and curb the spread of hate online.
“Silence is complicity,” President Biden said in a videotaped announcement. “An attack on one group of us is an attack on all of us.”
Last year there were 3,697 reported incidents of anti-Semitic assault, harassment and vandalism in the United States, according to an annual audit by the Anti-Defamation League. The figure, up 36 percent from 2021, is the largest number of incidents against Jews in the United States since the organization began its assessments in 1979.
In its announcement, the White House noted that American Jews make up 2.4 percent of the U.S. population, but are the target of 63 percent of reported religious hate crimes. according to the FBI
Developed in consultation with some 1,000 federal and local officials, faith leaders and community groups, the strategy includes more than 100 recommendations for the federal government to follow within a year. The actions include workshops to counter bias in the hiring and workplace, enhanced Holocaust education programs offered by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and a concerted effort to remove barriers to reporting potential hate crimes.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, called the Biden administration’s national strategy “historic.”
“It’s the first time we’re seeing something like this, at a time when anti-Semitism is unequivocally on the rise,” said Mr Greenblatt. “If we want to turn this around, we need an all-hands-on-deck approach. ”
Mr Greenblatt added that the number of incidents has increased by more than 500 per cent over the past decade. The incidents included a range of actions such as social media harassment and vandalism; they also include acts of violence, such as the mass shootings at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and at the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in Poway, California, in 2019.
“The breadth of it is really striking,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel advocacy group. “The approach of the whole working group was to take a broad view of bigotry and hatred, in the context of that rise of nationalism.”
The administration sought the views of academics and religious leaders, community activists and law enforcement. For the first time, Biden sought advice from foreign special envoys fighting anti-Semitism in Europe, who were invited to the White House earlier this year to share their experiences fighting anti-Semitism.
“The fact that the Biden administration wanted to hear from us what should be included in US strategy was a high point” in US-European relations on the issue, said Felix Klein, Germany’s commissioner for Jewish life and combating anti-Semitism , who participated in the White House Effort.
Europe is also experiencing an increase in anti-Semitic incidents, and its historic battle with anti-Semitism is increasingly seen as instructive for the United States, Mr Klein said.
“In the past, discussions have focused on European issues,” he added. “American leadership in this area is very good and important.”