led to relations with centrist Jewish organizations
that are fraught at best. The call to place limits on
social media platforms may also upset free speech
advocates. Biden recalled, as he often does, that he decided
to run for president after President Donald Trump
equivocated while condemning the neo-Nazis who
organized a deadly march in Charlottesville, Virginia,
in 2017.

“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 antisemitic
incidents. The strategy was originally
planned for release at its Jewish
American Heritage Month celebration last
week but was delayed, in part because
of last-minute internal squabbling over
whether it would accept a definition
of antisemitism that some on the left
said chilled free speech on Israel. Some right-wing
groups were deeply critical of the new strategy
for not accepting that definition to the exclusion
of others.

Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president
of the Washington-based American Friends of
Lubavitch (Chabad), praised the breadth of the plan
and said the delay seemed to produce results.

“The White House has taken this very seriously.

The phrase that something is still being worked on
can often be a euphemism for a lack of concern,”
he said. “In this case, it seems to have resulted in
an even more comprehensive and hopefully more
effective result.”
Some of the initiatives in the plan focus less
on directly confronting antisemitism and more
on promoting tolerance of and education about
Jews. The Biden Administration will seek to ensure
accommodations for Jewish religious observance, the
accompanying fact sheet said, and “the Department
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 Anti-Defamation League
CEO who was closely consulted on the strategy,
said promoting inclusion was as critical as fighting
antisemitism. “Is FEMA giving kosher provisions after
disasters going to solve antisemitism?” he said in an
interview. “No, but… it’s an acknowledgment of the
plurality of communities and the need to treat Jewish
people like you would any other minority community,
and I think I’m very pleased to see that.”
In the months since Second Gentleman Doug
Emhoff, who is Jewish, convened a roundtable to
launch the initiative, the Biden administration has
pivoted from focusing on the threat of antisemitism
from the far-right to also highlighting its manifestation
in other spheres — including amid anti-Israel activism
on campuses and the targeting of visibly religious
Jews in the northeast. Those factors were evident in
the strategy.

“Some traditionally observant Jews, especially
traditional Orthodox Jews, are victimized while
walking down the street,” the strategy said in its
introduction. “Jewish students and educators are
targeted for derision and exclusion on college
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working
definition. Among its examples of anti-Jewish bigotry
are those focusing on when criticism of Israel is
antisemitic, including when “double standards”
applied to Israel are antisemitic.

Advocates on the left say 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 seeks to complement it by
further elucidating how anti-Israel expression may
be antisemitic in some instances, and not in others.

Others sought to include the Jerusalem Declaration
on Antisemitism, which rejects IHRA’s
Israel-related examples.

In the end, the strategy said the
U.S. government recognizes the IHRA
definition as the “most prominent” and
“appreciates the Nexus Document and
notes other such efforts.”
A number of the centrist groups 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 antisemitism,” Herzog wrote on Twitter.

“Thank you, @POTUS, for prioritizing the need to
confront antisemitism in all its forms. We welcome
the re-embracing of @TheIHRA definition which is
the gold standard definition of antisemitism.”
Some center-right groups like B’nai Brith
International, StandWithUs and the World Jewish
Congress, praised the strategy while expressing
regret at the inclusion of Nexus. Right-wing groups,
such as 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.”
Groups on the left, however, broadly praised the
strategy. “We call on our Jewish communities to
seize this historic moment and build on this new
strategy to ensure that the fight for Jewish safety is
a fight for a better and safer America for all,” said a
statement from six left-leaning groups spearheaded
by Jews For Racial & Economic Justice.

Greenblatt said it was predictable that groups on
the left would take the win and that groups on the
right would grumble — but that it was also beside the
point. IHRA, he said, was now U.S. policy.

“This document elevates and advances IHRA as
the way that U.S. policy will be formulated going
forward and across all of the agencies,” Greenblatt
said. “That is a win.” ■
Biden recalled, as he often does, that
he decided to run for president after
President Donald Trump equivocated
while condemning the neo-Nazis who
organized a deadly march in
Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

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 U.S. law that grants platforms immunity from
being liable for the content users post. Free speech
advocates and the companies themselves say that
if the government were to police online speech, it
would veer into censorship.

“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
antisemitism manifests itself on their platforms,”
Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Biden’s top Homeland
Security adviser, said during a 30-minute briefing
on the strategy on Thursday. “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.”
How to define antisemitism?
In the weeks before the rollout, a debate raged
online and behind the scenes among Jewish
organizations and activists about how the plan would
define antisemitism. Centrist and right-wing groups
pushed for the plan to embrace the International
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