Biden's envoy to fight anti-Semitism says she saw a surge in hatred after October 7
When Deborah Lipstadt was appointed as the special envoy for the Biden administration’s fight against anti-Semitism abroad, she first visited Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates because what she described was encouraging exchanges with the leaders of two Muslim countries.
Her hope is that Gulf leaders can use their voices to help anti-Semitism among Muslims around the world.
“It's all promising,” said Dr. Lipstadt, a historian and anti-Semitism and genocide scholar who served as ambassador in 2022 before she took the post. “I think there's a real conversation going on.” ”
Then there is the October 7, 2023 attack on Hamas-led Israel.
It was the deadliest day for the Jews since the Nazi genocide in World War II. Israel's devastating reaction took place over the next 15 months, a war that killed thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, nearly displaced inside the population and left the territory in ruins.
“October 7 certainly changed everything,” Dr. Lipstadt said in Jerusalem before the end of his term.
Now, Dr. Lipstadt returns to Emory University as a distinguished professor and writes memoirs for her experiences serving the former president. She rejected a proposal to teach a course at Columbia University next year.
Dr. Lipstadt said in an article published in Free Media on Monday that she did not want to “use it as a prop or fig leaf” or put herself or students at risk after she was described as a weak response from the campus government to anti-Israeli protesters who violated regulations and harass other students. Colombia said in a statement that Dr. Lipstadt was invited “informally” to consider teaching a course and that when she expressed her intention to “not continue the conversation”, interim Colombia president Katrina Armstrong reached out and reached out to hire her personally and share her personal commitment to combat anti-Semitism. ”
In an interview with Dr. Lipstadt in January, she reflected on the two years of Mr. Biden’s envoy, saying the 2023 attacks on Israel released a series of events that led her to call it an “anti-Semitism tsunami.”
She said people are accusing Israel of online genocide as rescuers are still collecting the bodies of victims from the Israeli community on October 7. Once Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza, Hamas' support and defense were immediately demonstrated.
In the following months, with Gaza's death, suffering and destruction, pro-Palestine demonstrations swept across U.S. university campuses and cities around the world, sometimes with anti-Semitism.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, the number of anti-Semitic attacks in the United States soared to the highest ever, a rights group that roughly tripled the number of cases reported to the group in the year after the October 7 attack.
In the months leading up to the attack, a survey of Jews in the EU found that 90% of respondents encountered anti-Semitism online in the previous year, 56% encountered offline anti-Semitism in people they knew, and 37% were harassed for becoming Jews the previous year. After the attack, some European Jewish organizations reported that anti-Semitic events had increased by more than four times.
Dr. Lipstadt, 77, said anti-Semitism is an ancient curse that has been boiling. But after October 7, “it suddenly became pretty good, almost normalized,” she added.
The Trump White House accused the Biden administration of turning a blind eye to “the movement of intimidation, deliberate destruction and violence on American campuses and streets.”
Dr. Lipstadt wrote in the free media that President Biden did condemn violence on campus, often saying unambiguously: “But there are too many moments that are encountered silently.”
The Biden administration released its first U.S. national strategy in 2023 to resist anti-Semitism, calling for bipartisan efforts to enable governments, law enforcement and schools to work to address the spread of hate online. In 2024, the United States led 38 national and four international agencies outlined best practices for dealing with Jewish hatred, known as the Global Anti-Semitism Guide.
In January, President Trump signed an executive order that vowed to more strongly protect American Jews from anti-Semitism. It allows visa cancellation and deportation of foreign students who sympathize with Hamas, a Palestinian radical group that has ruled Gaza for most of the past two decades.
Israel has filed anti-Semitism charges against the state, foreign leaders and institutions, including the International Criminal Court’s signing of the warrant for International Criminal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and the International Court of Justice’s genocide case against Israel. They are charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Dr. Lipstadt describes anti-Semitism as the oldest continuous hatred, deeply rooted and nearly impossible to eliminate. She sees her work as an opportunity to summon it and use diplomatic and government leverage to calm ancient bias.
Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem World Holocaust Memorial Centre, said Dr. Lipstadt has provided a global resonance for the issue. But unfortunately, her mission “was not covering domestic anti-Semitism in the United States when it is very needed.”
In the summer of 2022, shortly after playing the role, Dr. Lipstadt traveled to Saudi Arabia to make a counterintuitive choice for her first overseas trip.
The wealthy Gulf Kingdom has no formal diplomatic relations with Israel. But less than two years ago, its two Gulf neighbors, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, had established complete ties with Israel. And when it comes to Saudi Arabia following the lawsuit soon – Mr. Trump pursued it again in his second term.
“I'll go there and make a statement,” she said.
Her pitching is that no matter their position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “anti-Semitism is wrong and unacceptable.”
After Saudi Arabia's visit, she traveled to the United Arab Emirates, where her first meeting with President Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed, ran for a long time and lasted for 95 minutes.
Dr. Lipstadt returned to two Gulf Arab countries at the end of his term. But the Gaza War and its ripples in the region have made Gulf leaders highly aware of anti-Israeli sentiment among their people, which has sparked new hesitation in anti-Semitism, she said.
The line between legitimate criticism of Israel’s policy and anti-Semitism has been rampant.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere on American college campuses was prosecuted.
Many Jewish students say they feel unsafe. Meanwhile, other students complained about anti-Muslim bias and freedom of speech by pro-Palestinian students and faculty.
But Dr. Lipstadt said she effortlessly distinguished between legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism.
The International Holocaust Memorial Union adopted the definition of anti-Semitism in 2016 and has been recognized by more than 40 countries, including the manifestation of “the target of the state of Israel, considered as the collective nature of the Jews”, but there is no Israeli criticism similar to other countries.
Dr. Lipstadt said that if all of these criticisms were seen as anti-Semitism, many Israelis would be seen as anti-Semitism.
“The national sport in Israel is not football,” she said. “It is a criticism of the government.”
She said that when people question Israel’s right to be a Jewish state or Israel’s singles and adopt double standards compared to other countries, criticism becomes anti-Semitic.
Now, people are either openly anti-Semitism while claiming they are just criticizing Israeli policies or criticizing Israeli anti-Semitism.
“Both are illegal,” Dr. Lipstadt said.
She said she believes the genocide case in The Hague is anti-Semitic.
A special UN committee concluded last year that Israel’s military movement in Gaza “is consistent with the characteristics of genocide”, citing high death toll and allegations against Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war. Amnesty International also concluded that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Several countries, including Belgium, Ireland, Mexico and Spain, have joined South Africa's genocide case against Israel and launched it in the global Supreme Court.
Dr. Lipstadt said there was no debate that the suffering of civilians in Gaza and the extent of destruction there was horrifying.
“But is it a genocide?” she said. “It doesn’t fit the definition of genocide,” she added. “I mean, it’s necessary to be planned to eliminate culture or people.”
