WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden unveiled a broad strategy last week to combat anti-Semitism in the US, from basketball courts to farming communities, from college campuses to police departments.
“We must say clearly and forcefully that anti-Semitism and all forms of hate and violence have no place in America,” Biden said in a video. “Silence is complicity.”
The 60-page document and its list of more than 100 recommendations requires reforms in virtually every sector of the executive branch within a year.
It was formulated after consultations with over a thousand experts, and covers a range of tactics, from increased security funding to educational efforts.
The plan has been in the works since December, and the White House has consulted with large Jewish organizations throughout the process.
The finished document embraces proposals that Jewish organizations have long advocated, as well as initiatives that pleasantly surprised Jewish organizational leaders.
Among the proposals that Jewish leaders called for were the streamlining of the reporting of hate crimes across local, state and federal law enforcement agencies; and Congress doubling funds for nonprofits for security measures, from $180 million to $360 million.
One proposal that, if enacted, could be particularly far-reaching — and controversial — is a call for Congress to pass “fundamental reforms” to a provision that shields social media platforms from liability for the content users post on their sites.
The plan says social media companies should have a “zero tolerance policy for hate speech on their platforms.”
The plan says that the government will work with professional sports leagues to educate fans about anti-Semitism and hold athletes accountable for it, following instances of anti-Semitic speech by figures such as NBA star Kyrie Irving and NFL player DeSean Jackson.
The government will also partner with rural museums and libraries to educate their visitors about Jewish heritage and anti-Semitism.
The plan includes actions to be taken by cabinet departments, from the Dept. of Veterans Affairs to the USDA.
“It’s really producing a whole-of-government approach [including] more resources for the Justice Dept. and the FBI,” said Nathan Diament, the Washington director of the Orthodox Union.
But it also includes recommendations for the Dept. of Labor, the SBA, the National Endowment of the Humanities and the President’s Council on Sports and Fitness.
Most Jewish organizations welcomed the plan. A handful criticized it, saying that its definition of anti-Semitism diluted the term.
Elements of the strategy that may stoke controversy: Among an array of partner groups named in the plan is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has harshly criticized Israel. The call to place limits on social media platforms may upset free speech advocates.
“Repeated episodes of hate — including numerous attacks on Jewish Americans — have since followed Charlottesville, shaking our moral conscience as Americans and challenging the values for which we stand as a Nation,” Biden wrote in an introduction to the report.
The administration launched the initiative last December, after years during which Jewish groups and the FBI reported sharp spikes in anti-Semitic incidents.
Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) praised the breadth of the plan.
Some of the initiatives in the plan focus less on directly confronting anti-Semitism and more on promoting tolerance of and education about Jews. The Biden Administration said it will seek to ensure accommodations for Jewish religious observance, and “the Dept. of Agriculture will work to ensure equal access to all USDA feeding programs for USDA customers with religious dietary needs, including kosher and halal dietary needs.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL CEO who was closely consulted on the strategy, said promoting inclusion was as critical as fighting anti-Semitism.
In the months since Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish, convened a roundtable to launch the initiative, the Biden administration has focused on the threat of anti-Semitism from the far-right as well as its manifestation in other spheres — including anti-Israel activism on campuses and the targeting of visibly religious Jews in the northeast.
“Some traditionally observant Jews, especially traditional Orthodox Jews, are victimized while walking down the street,” the anti-Semitism strategy said in its introduction. “Jewish students and educators are targeted for derision and exclusion on college campuses, often because of their real or perceived views about the State of Israel.”
The proposal that may provoke controversy beyond American Jewry is the Biden Administration’s calls to reform the tech sector, which echo bipartisan recommendations to change Section 230, a provision of US law that grants platforms immunity from being liable for the content users post.
“Tech companies have a critical role to play and for that reason the strategy contains 10 separate calls to tech companies to establish a zero tolerance policy for hate speech on their platforms, to ensure that their algorithms do not pass along hate speech and extreme content to users and to listen more closely to Jewish groups to better understand how anti-Semitism manifests itself on their platforms,” said Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Biden’s top Homeland Security adviser, during a 30-minute briefing on the strategy on May 25.
“The president has also called on Congress to remove the special immunity for online platforms and to impose stronger transparency requirements in order to ensure that tech companies are removing content that violates their terms of service.”
In the weeks before the rollout, a debate online and behind the scenes amid Jewish organizations addressed the definition of anti-Semitism. Some pushed for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition.
Among its examples of anti-Jewish bigotry are those focusing on when Israel criticism is anti-Semitic, including when “double standards” applied to Israel are anti-Semitic.
Others said those clauses turn legitimate criticism of Israel into hate speech; instead, they pushed to include references to the Nexus Document, a definition authored by academics that recognizes IHRA but elucidates how anti-Israel expression may be anti-Semitic in some instances, and not in others.
Others sought to include the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism, which rejects IHRA’s Israel-related examples.
In the end, the Biden strategy said the US government recognizes the IHRA definition as the “most prominent” and “appreciates the Nexus Document and notes other such efforts.”
Some pressed for exclusive reference to IHRA, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Those groups praised the strategy and focused only on its embrace of IHRA. So did the Israeli ambassador to Washington, Michael Herzog.
“I would like to congratulate the Biden administration for publishing the first ever national strategy to combat anti-Semitism,” Herzog wrote on Twitter.
“Thank you, @POTUS, for prioritizing the need to confront anti-Semitism in all its forms. We welcome the re-embracing of @TheIHRA definition which is the gold standard definition of anti-Semitism.”
B’nai Brith International, StandWithUs and the World Jewish Congress praised the strategy while expressing regret at the inclusion of Nexus.
The Republican Jewish Coalition and Christians United for Israel condemned the rollout.
RJC said Biden “blew it” by not exclusively using the IHRA definition. The Brandeis Center, which defends pro-Israel groups and students on campus, said the “substance doesn’t measure up.”
The ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt said that IHRA was now US policy.
“This document elevates and advances IHRA as the way that US policy will be formulated going forward and across all of the agencies,” Greenblatt said. “That is a win.”
