Antisemitic attacks in the United States have increased over 100% since Oct. 7, 2023, according to a Reuters report. Globally, attacks against Jews have surged after Hamas attacked innocent Israelis. As a result, President Biden announced a new "U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia in the United States." Islamophobia? It is because the Democrats have the tiger by the tail.
Last week, a reporter asked the dimwitted White House press secretary, who makes Kevin Malone of "The Office" look Mensa worthy, a question about rising antisemitism in the United States. Karine Jean-Pierre turned it into a question about Islamophobia. After a day of outrage, she claimed she did not actually hear the question -- a convenient deafness. That deafness now looks like excuse-making.
It is undeniably true that Islamophobia arises when Islamic terrorists do evil, but there has not been anybody physically assaulting Muslim students at Harvard. However, not only have Harvard students called for genocide against Jews, but a top Harvard law student physically and verbally assaulted a Jewish student just the other day. At Cornell, police arrested a student who served as a campus safety officer for making death threats against Jewish students. The University of Pennsylvania should consider changing its colors to red, white, and black to reflect the Nazi-like rhetoric against Jews that its president defends as free speech while she polices micro-aggressions on campus. Misgender is a trans person, and it is violence. Chant "death to the Jews," and it is free speech.
This pathology on the left has consumed a significant portion of the Democratic Party. The party could not even muster unanimity in Congress to condemn Hamas beheading babies in Israel. The New York Times, which lectures Republicans on misinformation and stolen election lies, has writers who insist the babies were not beheaded. The New York Times has also hired a reporter who openly praised Hitler's extermination of the Jews.
So naturally, Islamophobia has to be taken seriously at this time by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The president's party is captured by a pro-terrorist cabal championing evil. The Hamas Caucus in Congress spreads misinformation about Israel, some still claiming Israel blew up a hospital in Gaza that every major news organization and government says was hit by a misfired jihadi rocket.
Biden loves to lecture Americans about racism, hatred, bigotry, and white nationalism. CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times have blasted the rising white nationalists of the right and the tiki torch whites who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. But when it comes to antisemitism from the Left, Biden and much of the media want to understand both sides. Hamas supporters are, in the streets of American cities, tearing down posters of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. The New York Times is more upset at people filming the Hamas supporters and identifying them. According to the paper, Hamas's champions are the victims by being unable to protest by taking down pictures of actual victims.
This is all moral cowardice. It is a rhetorical fog to mask the evil. Joe Biden wants to prattle on about antisemitism in one breath and Islamophobia in the next three breaths because his party is overrun with Islamic terrorist sympathizers championing Hamas's evil and the genocide of the Jews. Instead of boldly denouncing the evil, he needs these terrorist sympathizers to win reelection. So, he will preach Islamophobia, hoping the tiger comes for him last -- just after he has secured money for Israel.
Joe Biden says he supports Israel, but the squeaky wheel gets greased, and the squeakiest wheel in the Democratic Party eerily sounds a bit too much like early twentieth-century German for comfort. Academics, students, and Democrat voters are marching in urban areas, calling for the extermination of Jews and a ceasefire for Hamas to rearm. The president of the United States feeling the need to humor these champions of evil is morally repugnant. Do not expect the American press corps to shame him. Since Oct. 7, we have seen them nuance evil too much to not recognize their complicity with it.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.