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[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
In the early days of June, Deborah Lipstadt, Biden’s antisemitism czar, flew to the United Arab Emirates and condemned Israel’s government while claiming that she worries that the Netanyahu government’s defense of Jews against Islamic terrorism might worsen antisemitism.
This was exactly the kind of excuse for antisemitism that the new White House strategy on antisemitism that she was touting was supposed to stop. Instead, the antisemitism czar promoting the antisemitism strategy was falling into the same kind of behavior.
Since the release of the Biden administration’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, Lipstadt appears to have condemned three foreign governments: Israel, Hungary and Russia.
Lipstadt blasted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, accusing him of “rhetoric that clearly evokes Nazi racial ideology”, for criticizing Muslim migration into Europe.
Was Lipstadt functioning as the envoy to combat antisemitism or Islamophobia?
She also condemned Russian ruler Vladimir Putin for suggesting that Ukraine’s Zelensky “is not Jewish, that he is a disgrace to the Jewish people.”
Lipstadt condemned three countries. One of them was Israel. During this same period, the Palestinian Authority, which is funding the terrorists who have already killed 24 people in Israel this year, continues to praise the killers, describing them as “heroic martyrs”.
“Why shouldn’t we burn the ground under the Jews’ feet?” a member of the Palestine Islamic Scholars Association had asked. “Our young men in Palestine and abroad crave to drink your blood. By Allah, we are thirsty for your blood.”
Lipstadt apparently didn’t think this sufficiently evoked Nazi ideology to bother condemning it.
The pattern here is fairly obvious to spot. The antisemitism envoy’s condemnations have less to do with Jews than with defending some sort of leftist cause.
Lipstadt also complained that Elon Musk’s attacks on George Soros were antisemitic.
It’s not that Lipstadt is always wrong, it’s that her condemnations tend to be selective politically motivated attacks pre-approved by leftists and in defense of leftist personalities or agendas.
Lipstadt is not really there to fight antisemitism, but to enlist the fight against antisemitism in the larger leftist rolodex of causes and then maybe occasionally she will be allowed to condemn an episode of leftist antisemitism, like that of Roger Waters, without drawing too much of a backlash.
What has Lipstadt accomplished in the fight against antisemitism?
The ADL announced that the Associated Press had agreed to change the spelling of ‘anti-semitism’ to ‘antisemitism’ thus solving the problem once and for all.
“When you fight prejudice & hatred, you don’t win many battles. But we won this one. Bravo AP,” Lipstadt tweeted.
Lipstadt is really here to sell the Jewish community on the idea that the Biden administration is dedicated to fighting antisemitism. She has been hard at work conducting briefings for assorted establishment Jewish groups like the JCRC of Boston and the National Council of Jewish Women, which had previously announced that it would keep working with the Women’s March despite its antisemitism.
But the administration has more than one mouth on antisemitism. And it talks out of both of them.
While Lipstadt was selling Jews on the administration’s antisemitism strategy, Douglas Emhoff,
Kamala’s husband joined an army of academics, think tankers, activists, politicians, writers and billionaires flying into Colorado.
This year the Aspen Festival wanted to talk about antisemitism and Emhoff, the ‘Second Gentleman’, appeared on a panel titled, ‘The Resurgence of the “Oldest Hatred”: The Effort to Combat Anti-Semitism’ moderated by antisemitism expert Katie Couric.
Emhoff had previously dismissed any discussion about antisemitism and Israel, claiming, “I’m just focused on antisemitism” and that students want to “feel a part of a broader coalition in dealing with hate”. Israel, implicitly, would just get in the way of uniting Jews and leftists against antisemitism.
Lipstadt wasn’t at Aspen, instead, the other White House representative was Homeland Security Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, an Obama administration vet.
Also present was Erik Ward of Race Forward. Ward, a black activist who had worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center, had defended Black Lives Matter against accusations of antisemitism and his previous discussions of antisemitism had liberally quoted leftist anti-Israel activists and utilized the Nexus definition of antisemitism concocted by anti-Israel activists which had received equal billing in the White House’s antisemitism strategy.
Neither Emhoff nor Sherwood-Randall mentioned Israel. And no one at the White House was willing to even go on the record on where it sees the line between antisemitism and anti-zionism: the key break between the traditional International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and the Nexus one.
An anonymous White House official refused to go on the record and referred a Jewish Insider reporter to the ‘text’ of the strategy.
“It addresses this exactly the way that we want to do so,” the anonymous official claimed. “We are sticking with the approach that we’ve had on this matter, and we’re moving forward with all the agency actions to try to make a real difference in people’s lives.”
The circular statements and the refusal to go in-depth are not the marks of a policy the administration wants to promote, but one that it is seeking to hide. The strategy was the result of an uncomfortable compromise between advocates for the Jewish community and the Left.
It was this compromise that led to only indirect mentions of an Islamic attack on a synagogue in Texas or other forms of antisemitism beyond white supremacy. It was also this compromise that led the antisemitism strategy to give the Nexus definition of antisemitism second billing after the IHRA one. And while compromise is part of politics, Lipstadt, the antisemitism czar, and other apologists have repeatedly misled the Jewish community about what’s actually in it.
“The strategy says the United States government embraces the IHRA definition,” Lipstadt claimed. But the strategy also says that it “welcomes and appreciates the Nexus Document” by anti-Israel activists. And, louder than words, has been the silence of Emhoff and White House officials on the question of antisemitism and Israel.
While the Biden administration uses Lipstadt to sell the Jewish community on the antisemitism strategy, it sends off Emhoff to talk to liberal elites about antisemitism without mentioning Israel.
Can you have an antisemitism strategy that is half not antisemitic and half that is?
The inclusion of CAIR, an Islamist antisemitic group and of the Nexus definition embrace the antisemitic side of the antisemitism strategy, but the real kicker has been the lack of substance on the side that is supposed to actually be fighting antisemitism.
The anti-Israel Left succeeded in getting a seat at the table when defining antisemitism, while the Jewish community has been sold more self-serving delusions from a communal establishment that specializes in pretending to be insiders while accomplishing nothing.
Lipstadt has been content to act as an administration attack dog rather than to follow antisemitism wherever it leads. Worse still, she has misled Jews into thinking that the Biden administration is ready to do the same thing and to fight antisemitism from Islamists and leftists.
It’s not.
1. Why not just call it Jew hatred? Anti-Semitism (however you spell it) is just a euphemism.
2. Before he became the house Jew, when did the second gentleman Emhoff ever speak about Jew hatred, Judaism, the Jewish people or Israel? Why would anybody care what he has to say now?
Judaiophopia?
It’s too short for the comment software but it would be a better choice of words.
Antisemitism was invented by a German antisemite to highlight the foreignness of Jews, but there’s no particularly good term in English. Judenhass works well in German, Jew Hatred just looks awkward in English. I’m somewhat partial to Judeophobia, but it sounds too similar to Islamophobia.
Hatred of Jews is probably simpler and clearer.
What it is called hss no importance. How it is defined has. As shown in this article. The hard left wants to see its antisemitism removed from the definition, to make it self -serving and iclude only the hard right antisemitism. I guess the hard right wants to do the same thing, because antisemitism is not a popular thing since the Nazis.
So we have to fight against these marginal, self-serving definition and support the best one, that of IHRA. And apply it without mercy when anti-Zionists rear their ugly heads.
Deborah Lipstadt has made the journey from opposing Holocaust deniers to providing comfort for Holocaust promoters.
The liberal’s progress.
Lipstadt is just pissed because she’s so butt-ugly.
It surprises me no end that folks do not seem to trace Jew hatred from its inception at the time of theByzantine creation of the Christian church & the conversion of Roman Europe but also creating a wooping lie that Jesus was crucified by Jews. Crucifiction was a strict Roman punishment. However the church wanted believer, they started preaching that Jews crucified Christ and started forcefull conversion of Jews, as inquisition and it never stopped grossly villifying Jews who lived around the Mediteranean Basin it was non stop murder to this day for 2000 years the lies were spread & refreshed until modern day a altar boy Hitler brought about a final Inquisition of muderiong millions not only Jews yet the Church was very silent Pius II not a word at the end, the worse NAZI Criminal had an escape Via the Vatican to Sth America
Excellent expose. The Anti-Semitism Czar is there to promote Anti-Semitism.
Once upon a time Lipstadt fought Holocaust denial.Now she denies the uniqueness of anti Semitism
Yes, I remember that well, and her suing David Irving.
Now it seems she wants to get married to him.
The hatred starts at the top. TaliBiden has been making war
On Israel one of his top priorities for the past 50 years now
Remind me which senator I saw (on video) interviewing her for confirmation who brought up that she had defamed him on social media without ever meeting him! She referred to him as white supremacy and worse. He read her quoted tweet aloud. She acknowledged she had no evidence and apologized to him (sort of).
It was totally obvious right then that she was only a die-hard leftist and cared nothing for any other matter.
Giving rise once again to all those questions we always have about what happens to leftist brains?!? Maybe it’s a brain eating amoeba or electric shock torture?
How does a person famous for opposing Holocaust denial become a brain dead leftist? And not see the Nazi-esque characteristics of todays left. How dare she malign the Jewish nation and cheat Jewish people of true representation about their civil rights in the US? How does this occur?
There’s no answer. And she’s no true representative of me or any other Jew on this planet.
Thanks for this excellent revealing article.
P.S. isn’t Kamala hubby Second Gentleman? . IDK
Lipstadt’s role on Holocaust denial was semi-accidental. David Irving chose to pick a fight with her which make her very famous.
P.S. you’re right
Lipstadt and her husband/wife Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, are both far leftists before any other allegiances. She’ll fight anti-Semitism as long as she can use it to attack the “right” but will not if it means criticism of another member of the Left’s intersectional coalition.
Exactly. That’s the situation across the board. Lots of support for fighting antisemitism when politically convenient and practiced by the other side.
whinegarten is married to a homely lesbian ‘rabbi’, not lipstadt.
Chutzpah, meaning audacity, is a Hebrew word now very much at home in the English language, defined as audacity in the Oxford Dictionary.
The origin of this hebrew word “chutzpah” is a combination of “chutz”, which means outside or out of, and “pah”, or “peh”, which means a mouth. So, the words that come out of an anti-Semite’s mouth are chutzpah. A male anti-Semite is a chutzpan and a female anti-Semite is a chutzpanit.
Saying, doing, inciting something anti-Semitic is
chutzpahdik. The suffix “dik”, which changes the noun form of chutzpah into an adjective or adverb, though it has overtones of english anatomical crude slang, which, not coincidentally is absolutely applicable to the concept of hate fueled audacity, is actually a shortening of the hebrew “dikduk”, meaning precision.
For non “ch” speakers, it’s important to remember that the hebrew “ch” sound begins in the back of the throat, as if you are about to gargle. It accentuates the meaning.
Biden cum Obama administration has all the chutzpah of the Third Reich.
But now you see that chutzpah has limits. It’s too mild, folks.
It lacks gravitas.
It is beyond-chutzpah when non Jews decide what hating a Jew is.
That is what this all too willing administration is doing. Just imagine a certain kind of moustache on all their faces, male and female.
This group of Israel haters has now begun, after successfully inciting and increasing anti-Semitism in America, to roll out implementation of an actually deliberately conceived anti-Semitic
plan. And at this…. Aspen Festival. At a…..festival?? Of course. A fest, as in Oktoberfest.
Now that’s Chutzpahdik!
I can’t be the only person conscious of the rudiments of pre Holocaust history who sees a parallel of this festival to the January 20, 1942 Wannsee Conference.
I don’t think we should be waiting around for the “implementation”.
Expect that the government‘s next move will be to organize another “festival” to start to tell us who/what Jews are.
The government has already been telling us what Israel is. It’s approach now has to be more up close and personal. Your neighbor. Your friend. Your colleague. You name it.
Just put on a moustache and join the fun.
As Hermann Goering said on March 10, 1933: “I decide who is Jewish.”(page 88, Blood and Banquets: A Berlin Social Diary, by Bella Fromm)
She should have taken lessons from Kamala and searched for the “root case”. She at least went to one of the best places to find antisemitism (anti-semitism?) whatever. But she couldn’t find it so, Israel, Hungary, Russia, three places she didn’t go.
This administration is less coordinated than a game of blind ping pong.
BTW, does anyone know what their thing is with the hyphen? Why is anti-Semitism different from antisemitism. Is the possible capitalization of the Semite that offends?
Like writing white race in lowercase but Black race (whose lives matter so much more) in uppercase?
I don’t get it. I will never make it as a leftist.
The vile Dhimmi-crats’ feckless Jew-hate and Israel vilification/slander in obsequious deference and obeisance to Dhimmi-crats’ Muslim supremacist/terrorist allies and bedfellows is sadly now standard operating procedure and a de facto part of the Dhimmi-crat Platform.
The former US President, William Howard Taft had, wisely, declared in a speech “Antisemitism is a noxious weed that should be cur out. It has no place in America.” – Neither should Joe Boden and his crew have a place of power in America.”
No surprise here. Biden and his minions harbor a deep resentment of Israel….and especially Prime Minister Netanyahu. Netanyahu embodies all that Biden is not. A strong leader, respected and a stalwart protector
of his country.. Lipstadt is just the latest in a long list of anti Semitic nominees/appointments.by BIden..
when we remember who is pulling the strings on the puppet, everything becomes clear.
I remember meeting Lipstadt many, many years ago, either 1976 or 1977 when she spoke before a group of Jewish Singles at the OLD Skirball Museum when it was located down the street from USC. I remember someone saying that if Jews didn’t marry and procreate, then Hitler would have won.
Well, look at little ugly sour puss Debster. She sued Irving for Holocaust Denial, but at this point she’d probably want to marry him. No difference between suing an anti-Semite and working for one. JINOs like her, Blinky, Nides, Garland, Mayorkas and that disgusting feigele Emhoff and their refusal to confront LEFT NAZI anti-Semitism are not fighting Jew-hatred at all.
They are working for Adolf’s posthumous victory.
It looks like to me another moron fell out of the spigot of hate. A graduate of the school of Barack Obama.
Democrats don’t like religion, except for the one that is invading the free World.
Leftist Jews who hate Israel are an interesting study. Norm Finkelstein, Soros, Chomsky, Bernie Sanders, Lipstadt and many more.
What drives them to hate the Jewish State? Is it self hatred? Some deeper form of psychosis?
An interesting phenomenon in my view.
Antisemitism isn’t accurate since Jew are not Semites, but European.,
I once heard Lipstadt speak about Holocaust Denial and her experience in the suit brought by David Irving. She is a huge disappointment. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she knows that she’s enabling antisemitism thinly and wholly unconvincingly disguised as “woke” ideology or “Anti-Zionism”. She is as despicable as former kapo George Soros.