WASHINGTON (AP) — Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, will host Jewish leaders this week to discuss a rise in antisemitism and efforts to fight hate in the United States.
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The White House roundtable on Wednesday follows a surge in anti-Jewish vitriol spread by a famous rapper, an NBA star and other prominent people.
Emhoff is the first Jewish person among the top four officials — the president, vice president and their spouses — in the executive branch of government, and he has become increasingly outspoken about growing bias toward adherents of the Jewish faith, and hate at large, in the U.S.
“It’s painful, it hurts,” Emhoff said Friday after he was asked about rising antisemitism during an appearance at the NewDEAL Leaders conference of state and local officials in Washington.
Former President Donald Trump recently hosted Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust-denying white supremacist, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. The rapper Ye — formerly known as Kanye West — expressed love for Adolf Hitler in an interview. Basketball star Kyrie Irving appeared to promote an antisemitic film on social media. Neo-Nazi trolls are clamoring to return to Twitter as new CEO Elon Musk grants “amnesty” to suspended accounts.
Emhoff, in his response at the conference, said he did not want this type of sentiment to “feel normal.”
“I don’t want people to think, ‘Well, it’s just words,’” he said. “We have to all step up and speak out about this as leaders in your communities. So as long as I have this microphone, I’m going to keep speaking up, speaking out, and again, not just about antisemitism but about hatred and bringing everyone else together.”
“This is not OK. It’s not OK,” Emhoff continued. “We cannot be silent. We gotta push back. We gotta speak up. And we cannot make this normal. We cannot.”
The White House did not announce on Monday which Jewish leaders will participate in the roundtable.
White House officials, including senior presidential advisers Susan Rice and Keisha Lance Bottoms, and Deborah Lipstadt, special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, were slated to join.
Why hasn’t the Intermarried Emhoff made any comment on Ilhan Omer and Rashida Tlaib’s anti semitic comments???
I bet J Street will be there. This is just another empty, performative gesture by a White House full of Jews who only use the term Jewish to describe their ethnicity.
They will focus exclusively on the 5% of hate which is coming from the right and ignore the 95% of hate which of coming from the left. Guaranteed.
Will he condemn the black fraternity that is wife praised just 2 weeks ago that celebrates holocaust denier and Jew hater Farrakhan?
Let me guess Ezra friedlander. Chaskel bennett etc
This is like Stevie Wonder teaching me to drive.
Extremely poor choice of ” Jewish expert”….
Actually, First Man looks like a pretty nice guy.
Hope looks are not deceiving
A strong statement and orders to federal
Law enforcement would do a better job then the snow job we are about to have And if Biden’s underlines would stop their attacks on isreal it would go along was as well
Is he for it or against it?
That’s like asking Lavrentiy Beria to host a seminar on figuring out how anti semitism is being caused.
Hot air. Let see if he discusses the Jersey city shooting, monsey stabbing, the hate crimes in NYC etc. One sided and just anti republcian nonsense
well, the biggest cause of anti semitism is intermarriage, and yidden wanting to be like the goyim, so it makes total sense that the chutzpadik and gaavadik left are the ones to have a panel to discuss anti semitism.
This is clown world/Purim world.
The worst antisemites are those who marry Jews. They are saying they hate their Jewish soul.