Fmr. Biden Envoy: ‘Free Palestine’ ‘Has Become a Call for Violence’

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Inside Politics,” Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, who served as Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism under President Joe Biden, stated that the “Free Palestine” slogan “has become a call for violence” against Jews, regardless of whatever its initial intent was.

Host Dana Bash asked, “[Y]ou just heard the alleged killer saying, ‘Free Palestine.’ We hear that on the streets. We hear that on college campuses. And there are a lot of people who feel, who have been worried that that has been turned into a call to arms and a call to action and violence. Others claim that it’s not. What do you think now that we have seen this?”

Lipstadt responded, “I think there’s no question, whatever its initial intent and whatever people were saying initially or meant it, it has become a call for violence, and not violence against Israelis — which is wrong — but violence against Jews. And anybody who tries to separate the two and try to say, oh, I’m just against Israel’s policies in Palestine or in Gaza and I’m not antisemitic, this was antisemitism pure and simple, that he happened to have killed two Israeli staff [members], didn’t matter. It was a Jewish event, they were targets.”

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