Obsessing Over ‘Islamophobia’
Joe Biden and his team aren’t nearly as worried about rising anti-Semitism as they are about the response to it.
Hate is not necessarily a bad thing. God hates sin. Good people hate atrocities — and fight back against them. But “hate speech” and “hate crimes” have become overly broad categories that Democrats use to silence conservatives and divide people by Marxist oppressor/oppressed categories. We hate that too.
That’s not to say that there aren’t real hate crimes or hate speech. When Hamas, backed by Iran, attacked Israel and slaughtered innocent people, including even beheading babies and live-streaming the attacks on the social media feeds of the victims, that was fueled by hate. Hamas exists at least in part to annihilate the Jews because Islamic jihadists utterly hate the Jews.
So why do Joe Biden and his mouthpiece, Karine Jean-Pierre, seem so obsessed with the deliberately politicized term “Islamophobia”?
Whoever handles Biden’s X-Twitter account pushed out this bilge yesterday: “As Americans, we must come together and reject Islamophobia and all forms of bigotry and hatred. I have said repeatedly that I will not be silent in the face of hate. We must be unequivocal: There is no place in America for hate against anyone.”
Unless the targets are “MAGA Republicans.” Then Biden suddenly becomes the poster child of hate, and his pal Hillary Clinton can talk about “deprogramming” members of that “cult.”
Or unless the subjects of hate are Jews, if you listen to a lot of leftist college loudmouths or Democrat haters in Congress.
As we mentioned above, Jean-Pierre was little better when asked specifically about Biden’s “level of concern” regarding the alarming rise in anti-Semitism around the nation. Evidently, the reporter should have provided the dictionary definition of anti-Semitism, which Merriam-Webster defines as “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group.”
KJP answered by flipping around in her binder and rambling about … Islamophobia. “But, look,” she said, “Muslim[s] and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks.” The president, she insisted, is working very hard to stop that.
“What is [Biden’s] level of concern right now about a potential rise of antisemitism?”
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 23, 2023
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: “Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks” pic.twitter.com/q1WYkpbKmn
Again, she was asked about anti-Semitism, though maybe she accidentally flipped to the page written by Hamas propagandists. At least she didn’t condemn Israel’s supposed hospital attack.
Citing FBI statistics, the Manhattan Institute’s Charles Fain Lehman responded: “Jews are the second most frequently targeted group for hate crimes in the United States. Muslims are #15.” He added: “It’s of course very bad for either group to be targeted. But there are about 2x as many Jews as Muslims, yet 7x as many attacks.”
It’s worse when given the broader context of recent events. As National Review’s Philip Klein notes, “Just over two weeks removed from the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, with antisemitic incidents on the rise on college campuses and U.S. cities, with synagogues and Jewish schools closing in response to terrorist threats, that the White House has to deflect questions about antisemitism by focusing on threats to Muslims is simply sick.”
Indeed, you could say we hate such moral equivalence and equivocation.
Eventually, Jean-Pierre noted that Biden campaigned for president on a theme of “bringing people together” and “protecting the soul of the nation.” Doing so requires standing up for justice without preference. It requires condemning violence generally as well as that motivated by hate.
Yet President Unity has done anything but. He elevates only certain victim groups so he can score political points. He foments division, which leads to violence. And on the world stage, his weakness has provoked conflicts in Europe and now the Middle East. It’s high time he was replaced with someone who can do a good job.
Update 10/25: Asked later about the incident, Jean-Pierre changed her tune a bit: “Yes, I did mishear the question. As I have footstomped many times from the podium and on the air, antisemitism is an abomination that this President has fought against his entire life; and I feel strongly about that work.”
