Biden to address US Holocaust memorial ceremony with speech on antisemitism
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President Joe Biden will deliver a speech next week at the Holocaust memorial ceremony at the U.S. Capitol to address the spike of antisemitism, White House aides confirmed.
The speech will represent a rare high-profile foray by the president into an issue that has roiled college campuses and U.S. politics in recent weeks.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden "will discuss the moral duty to combat the rising scourge of antisemitism" and the administration’s work on the issue. The U.S. Holocaust Museum has hosted the memorial annually since the Jimmy Carter administration.
Biden gave impassioned remarks about antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks against Israel. And he has denounced the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses that have, on occasion, turned threatening towards Jewish students.
But many of the recent condemnations around campus activities have come from White House aides, sparking backlash from Republicans who have accused the president of ducking a public accounting of the matter.
Biden has talked repeatedly about combating antisemitism throughout his presidency. He frequently said he decided to run for president in 2020 because of former President Donald Trump’s response to the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that included self-identified white supremacists. Trump said there was “blame on both sides” when a man plowed his car into a group of counter protesters, killing a woman, Heather Heyer.
Biden called the forthcoming election the “battle for the soul of the nation.”
The U.S. Holocaust Museum has hosted the memorial annually since the Jimmy Carter administration. News of Biden’s forthcoming speech, which will take place on May 7,was first reported by Haaretz.
Every president has delivered a keynote address at the Days of Remembrance ceremony since the Holocaust museum opened in 1993, according to the museum. Trump gave it in 2017. This year will mark Biden’s first.
