Six months after the worst day in Jewish history in nearly 80 years, the moral backbone of the American government is collapsing.
According to Joe Biden, the reason he launched his campaign for the 2020 presidential elections was his horror at the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 and then-President Donald Trump’s response to the hatred displayed at the march.
Neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members displayed their antisemitism during the march when they chanted “Jews will not replace us.” A counter-protester was murdered when she was run over by one of the white supremacists. It was truly a display of the worst of America.
Trump, while condemning the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists at the rally, drew criticism for his bizarre statement that there were "very fine people on both sides."
The importance these events had to Joe Biden can be seen in the fact that the first two words of his campaign launch video two years later were “Charlottesville, Virginia.”
"When those folks came out of the fields carrying those torches, chanting the anti-Semitic bile and their veins bulging, accompanied by the Ku Klux Klan, with such ugliness,” Biden said at a campaign rally in 2019. “I never thought I'd see something like that again in my life. That's when I decided."
He again reiterated that Charlottesville was the impetus for his decision to run in unveiling his administration’s plan to combat antisemitism last May. “We have to be clear,” he said then. “Silence is complicity.”
So why is Biden now pandering to genocidal antisemites and Islamist supremacists?
Apparently fearing losing his rematch against Trump this year through alienating the Muslim vote in Michigan, Biden and his administration have adopted increasingly hostile rhetoric against Israel and have been publicly demanding the Jewish state adopt policies that would effectively hand Hamas a victory and invite more October 7s, not just from Hamas but from Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies.
The nature of the people whose votes Biden is attempting to secure was on full display in Dearborn, Michigan on Friday, where an Islamist supremacist Al Quds Day rally was held.
At this rally, not only were chants of “death to Israel” heard, but chants of “death to America” as well.
Activist Tarek Bazzi told his enthusiastic audience, "When these fools ask us if Israel has the right to exist, the chant 'death to Israel' has become the most logical chant shouted across the world today!"
An Imam at the rally called Israel a “cancer,” and the demonstrators repeated the now-classic genocidal chant, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Bazzi openly spoke about why this and other pro-Hamas protests have been “so anti-America” in addition to anti-Israel, saying that former Iranian Supreme Leader “Imam Khomeini, who declared International Al Quds Day, this is why he would say to pour all of your chants and all of your shouts upon the head of America."
This was not a one-time rally. This is the true face of the anti-Israel movement in America and around the world: A pro-Iran, pro-Hamas, antisemitic, anti-America, anti-democracy, and anti-freedom movement.
But don’t expect any condemnations from Biden. The man who says he ran for president because of Trump’s response to an antisemitic rally will not condemn the antisemitism of Islamist supremacists the way he condemns that of white supremacists. And any condemnation of antisemitism from the administration will be robbed of all meaning and worth by the mandatory inclusion of condemnations of Islamophobia in the same breath.
In late March, just a few weeks ago, an anti-Israel mob interrupted a speech by Biden in Raleigh, North Carolina, accusing the president of “complicity in genocide” for supporting Israel’s attempt to defend itself from genocide.
Rather than condemn these people as they deserved, Biden responded that “they have a point” and said that more aid needed to go to Gaza.
So much for “silence is complicity.”
By giving these people any legitimacy, Biden repeated the mistake he accused Trump of making in Charlottesville in 2017. He endorsed the position of genocidal antisemites, of people who consider themselves enemies of not only Israel but of the free world.
The movement the Biden Administration is pandering to is the same movement that decided to target children undergoing treatment at a cancer hospital in New York City, the same movement that turned violent attacked Jews attempting to attend an event with an Israeli speaker at UC Berkley, the same movement that targeted two synagogues in Teaneck, New Jersey, in recent weeks. This movement is the driving force behind the over 300% rise in antisemitic incidents in the US after October 7 and the growing insecurity of Jews around the world.
Those who accuse Israel of genocide often are the ones who have the most genocidal of intentions. Biden and his administration should know this, but they continue to praise their hate as understandable concern.
The result of this pandering to the worst of the Democratic base is that with its words, the Biden Administration has made it more difficult to free the hostages still held in Gaza and is prolonging the war and the suffering on both sides. Hamas is constantly encouraged to become more and more intransigent in the hostage and ceasefire negotiations, and the six American citizens still held hostage in Gaza have been all-but forgotten.
Last week, following the tragic accidental strike that killed seven employees of the World Central Kitchen organization, Biden, apparently forgetting his own military’s accidental killing of 10 civilians, including an aid worker and seven children, in Afghanistan in 2021, and five by food aid dropped from a plane over Gaza, actually threatened to change America’s policy of supporting Israel if the Jewish State did not bow to his demands. He appears set to oppose any operation in Rafah no matter what, ensuring that Hamas will survive to commit genocide another day if Israel listens to him.
All this to appease those whose hatred cannot ever be appeased. The more Biden turns on Israel, the more the sharks smell blood in the water and the pressure on him to fully betray America’s only democratic ally in the Middle East increases. No matter how hard Biden tries, he cannot make these people happy unless he brings about the destruction of the State of Israel and all of its Jewish inhabitants.
By chasing political expediency over what’s right, Biden is failing to prove that he is a viable and preferable alternative to the volatile Donald Trump. Were he willing to stand up to the hate and the absolute worst in the Democratic base, were he willing to call out the antisemitism of the movement seeking Israel’s destruction, were he willing to take action that he feels would jeopardize his reelection chances because it is the right thing to do, he would prove himself a leader worthy of the presidency.
If he stood strong, if he demonstrated presidential character, if he supported Israel through a decisive and final victory against Hamas, he would increase his chances of reelection among the vast majority of Americans who do not hate Jews and the country they live in.
By failing to do so, by failing to show the courage to stand up to hate, by pandering to the “death to Israel” and the “death to America” crowd, Biden is showing that he did not learn the lessons of Charlottsville.
Gary Willig is a member of the Arutz Sheva news staff.