Antisemitism Awareness Act Against Israel: The Case for the 2018 Charlottesville, Va. March of White Supremacists

A piece of legislation that could cause a lot of trouble if passed by the Senate is the result of that panic. Since 2016, pro-Israel politicians have pushed versions of a bill called the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which would codify, for the purpose of enforcing federal civil rights law in higher education, a definition of antisemitism that includes rejection of Israel as a Jewish state. In the past, civil libertarians were able to head such legislation off, but that’s become harder in the current fevered climate.

In order for nonviolence to work your opponent must have a conscience, which is disdained by the statement. The United States has none.” Within the movement, I imagine such rhetoric functions as a sign of total commitment, a no-going-back rejection of hollow liberal pieties. Outside of it, this language serves to stoke a raging panic about the protests that both distracts from the war and feeds a growing backlash that threatens academic freedom.

Biden often talks about how the 2017 march of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va. chanting “Jews will not replace us” played a big role his decision to run for president — though he did not recount this story at the bipartisan event at the Capitol on Tuesday.

He described Jewish students facing harassment, and posters and slogans “calling for the annihilation of Israel” as well as efforts by some to deny what happened on Oct. 7.

“We are aware that hate never goes away.” It hides under the rocks and comes out when oxygen is given to it. We also know what stops hate — one thing — all of us.”

He continued that people are free to speak, protest and debate about issues they feel strongly about. “No place on any campus in America is for threats or hate speech, or antisemitism of any kind,” he said.

The president describes how his father lectured to his family about the horrors of the Holocaust. The lesson: that silence is complicity. Biden took his children and grandchild to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany in order to make sure they learned from that experience.

His track record on the issue makes him uniquely positioned to make the case that Americans need to pay attention to antisemitic incidents, said Sarah Hurwitz, former speech writer for Michelle Obama and author of Here all Along, a book about Judaism.