President Joe Biden has come under scrutiny by members of the Roman Catholic clergy. One church bishop recently argued that Biden, who often identifies as a practicing Catholic, “doesn't understand the Catholic faith." A few weeks earlier, Cardinal Wilton Gregory described Biden as a "cafeteria Catholic” who picks and chooses which church tenants to believe and which to ignore. It’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of his Catholicism and Biden appears to be doing no better as a Jew.
On September 14, Biden told a gathering of rabbis, “I, you might say, was raised in the synagogues of my state. You think I’m kidding, I’m not.” A few months later, Biden was promoting “our shared moral responsibility to stand up to antisemitism and hate-fueled violence at home and abroad and to make real the promise of ‘Never Again.’”
But earlier this week, the president told a reporter asking whether he would condemn the outbreak of antisemitic violence on college campuses "I also condemn those who don't understand what's going on with the Palestinians.” It was perhaps the most tone deaf comment of his presidency to date.
On one hand, Biden extolls the need to remember the promise of ‘Never Again’ but at the same time, condemns people for not understanding why American college students are engaged in threatening and violent protests against American Jews on campuses around the nation. This escalation of hatred toward Jews and Israel makes one wonder if ‘Never Again’ still matters.
The United States is a long way from the atmosphere of bigotry in 1930s Germany and most Americans share little to nothing with the ideology of campus militants screaming “death to America, death to Israel,” and other antisemitic slogans and threats. But current events suggest that too many people have failed to learn the lessons of the Holocaust.
Through formal education, literature and film, my knowledge of the Holocaust began as a little boy and it shocked me like nothing else. Beginning with my earliest exposure to this atrocity, I struggled to understand how this level of hatred was humanly possible and why the world’s Jews were the target of it. I was very young and couldn’t fully comprehend it but I knew enough to understand what ‘Never Again’ meant.
It’s unclear whether Columbia University can say the same. The Ivy League institution is in the heart of New York City, home to more than two million Jews. But rather than shutting down these hateful demonstrations in the American city with the nation’s largest Jewish population, the college has decided to conduct remote classes for the remainder of the academic term. The school’s antisemitic bigots have created an environment that’s just too dangerous for Jewish students to learn in the classroom.
Columbia’s accommodation of this bigotry is consistent with Joe Biden’s response to the situation. He and his campaign staff know the political risks involved with denouncing anti-Jewish hatred; these racists are part of the president’s constituency. So instead of using his bully pulpit to call for an end to this madness, he offers condemnation of people who he thinks don’t understand the violent protests supporting Hamas and the Palestinian cause.
Biden may not be overtly supporting these domestic antisemites but his failure to confront this bigotry lends tacit support to the radicals fomenting hatred of Jews and Israel. One could be forgiven for seeing faint parallels between American antisemitism today and that of central Europe 90 years ago. It’s like fighting weeds in your garden; if you don’t get rid of them when they first sprout, they’ll try to take over.
We use the term ‘Never Again’ to express our moral indignation of the Holocaust and our dedication to never letting the weeds of antisemitism take over. But those two words don’t seem to mean much to a sizable chunk of President Biden’s voter base so it’s natural to wonder whether they mean much to him. After all, this is the same man who once said abortion was not “a choice and a right,” but now makes the sign of the cross at pro-abortion rallies.
I very much want to believe ‘Never Again’ means something to Joe Biden but his response to the tumult spreading from campus to campus is unconvincing. He campaigned for the presidency in 2020 on a pledge to fight the battle for the soul of America. But in turning a blind eye to the virulent antisemitism blighting the nation today, Biden is presiding over a newly energized infestation of hatred. If the soul of America can no longer remain true to the meaning of ‘Never Again,’ we’re in more trouble than we reckoned.