Prominent liberals keep having to clean up their bad comments about antisemitism
Zachary Faria
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Why is it that so many prominent liberals cannot find it in themselves to condemn antisemitism clearly and plainly instead of relying on public relations department statements on social media released after their wishy-washy comments?
The presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University are the latest examples of this. Both sat before Congress and declared that calling for a genocide of all Jews was only maybe a violation of the student code of conduct at their universities depending on the “context.” For additional context, Harvard did threaten to punish students for using the “wrong pronouns” to address someone, but calling for a genocide of Jews may be OK sometimes, according to its president.
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Harvard President Claudine Gay then used the university’s X (formerly Twitter) account to say calling for genocide was actually bad and unacceptable, contradicting her testimony to Congress. Penn President Liz Magill read a prepared statement on video to try to clean up her comments as well. Yet neither could make it clear in front of Congress that calling for genocide was unacceptable, relying on their PR teams to throw some slop “apologies” on social media and consider the issue settled.
They are not the only ones to do this. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre redirected a question about the rise in antisemitism after terrorist attacks against Israel to talk about “Islamophobia,” dismissing the antisemitism concern altogether. She also threw a PR-conscious statement on X, saying, “To be clear,” she condemns antisemitism, something she couldn’t be clear about at the White House podium.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) was the worst offender, being unable to unequivocally condemn Hamas terrorists raping Jewish women without throwing in a condemnation of Israel. As Gay and Jean-Pierre did, Jayapal wanted to be “completely clear” that she did condemn these things, but not on television when she was asked. No, she threw a crisis communications-crafted statement on social media and called it a day.
No amount of “let me be clear” throat clearing resigned to social media posts can change the reality that Gay and Magill said calls for genocide were sometimes acceptable, Jean-Pierre dismissed antisemitism concerns outright, and Jayapal couldn’t unequivocally condemn rape. They expressed their real thoughts verbally, in the moment, on camera, and then were forced to try and sanitize them on social media in prepared statements after the fact. They should not receive the benefit of the doubt, especially when this keeps continuing to happen any time concerns about antisemitism are raised.