Biden to deliver speech on antisemitism at Holocaust memorial ceremony

President Biden will deliver a speech next week at a Holocaust memorial ceremony on Capitol Hill, the White House announced Wednesday.

The speech comes as chaotic anti-Israel protests roil college campuses and U.S. politics. It also marks a rare moment for Mr. Biden to enter the fray, given that he has been relatively silent on the growing anti-Israel demonstrations.

Mr. Biden will deliver the keynote address at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual Days of Remembrance, said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

The president will talk about “our moral duty to combat the rising scourge of antisemitism,” as well as initiatives his administration has implemented to combat hate crimes against Jewish people, she said.

Mr. Biden gave strong remarks condemning antisemitism after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel but has been relatively silent about the anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses.

Last week, he deemed the actions of some protesters as “antisemitic” but also urged sympathy for their side by decrying the humanitarian crisis in Gaza following Israel’s military onslaught.

As the campus protests have escalated with violence at UCLA and demonstrators at Columbia University forcibly taking control of a building, Mr. Biden remained mum.

Since Hamas’s terror attack on Israel, the anti-Defamation League has reported a massive increase in antisemitic incidents. The Biden administration has taken several steps to counter antisemitism, including tracking hate-related threats on college campuses.

When pressed by reporters Tuesday about Mr. Biden’s silence on the anti-Israel protests on college campuses, Ms. Jean-Pierre pivoted to discuss the president’s efforts to combat antisemitism. 

“The president has not been silent on this issue when it comes to antisemitism,” she said. “We’ve been clear —taking more than a hundred actions to deal with antisemitism — no one has ever done that before. Not any other administration.” 

She later added that it was important that students and communities “feel safe” and that the administration was “going to be really forceful and underscore antisemitism is hateful speech.” 

Ms. Jean-Pierre said Mr. Biden has been “kept regularly updated” on the campus protests and that he and his team were monitoring the situation.