The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act needs to be stopped

Towards Ending the Holocaust: A Predictive Story of a White House Speech by Bjorken Biden on the Day of the Holocaust

A dangerous piece of legislation that passed the House overwhelmingly last week is poised to be taken up by the Senate. 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 off such legislation, but that has become harder in the current climate.

The statement disdains the ethos of nonviolence, quoting Black Panther leader Kwame Ture, formerly Stokely Carmichael: “In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States does not have any. I think such rhetoric is a sign of total commitment and rejection of liberal hollow pieties. Outside of it, to the extent that anyone takes this language seriously, it 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 mentioned that the march of white supremacists in Virginia played a significant role in his decision to run for president, but he didn’t recount the story at the bipartisan event on Tuesday.

He said that there were posters and slogans calling for Israel’s destruction as well as efforts by some to deny what happened.

“We know hate never goes away. It hides under the rocks, and emerges when given some oxygen. We know what makes us hate each other.

On Tuesday, he repeated that people are entitled to speak, debate and protest issues about which they feel strongly. He said there was no place on any campus in America for hate speech or threats of violence.

The president remembers how his father lectured the family on the horrors of the Holocaust. The lesson is that silence is not voluntary. Biden took his own children and grandchildren to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany to make sure they learned that same lesson.

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.