Biden blames Trump for Jersey City kosher market shooting

Biden claims that Trump’s ambivalent response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017 set a precedent for hate groups.

By World Israel News Staff

Democratic Presidential hopeful Joe Biden has blamed President Donald Trump for inspiring the deadly shooting at a Jersey City kosher market last week and blamed him for fueling the rise of anti-Semitism in America.

“This tide of hatred fueled last week’s horrific act of domestic terrorism that took the lives of a police officer and three people at JC Kosher Supermarket in New Jersey,” Biden wrote in a piece published by the Medium on Thursday.

“It’s the same hatred that unleashed the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in U.S. history last year at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. That led a gunman armed with an AR-15 style gun to storm the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in California earlier this year on the last day of Passover.”

Biden claims that Trump’s ambivalent response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017 set a precedent for hate groups.

“After Charlottesville, instead of condemning a naked display of hatred, Trump assigned a moral equivalence between those streaming through the night with torches, chanting anti-Semitic bile — and the courageous neighbors and activists who stood against them. He gave license and safe harbor to white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and the KKK,” the former vice-president said.

“As I said after Charlottesville, we are in a battle for the soul of this nation. And, it’s why I am running for president,” he added.

Biden’s comments come just a week after Trump signed an executive order targeting anti-Semitism on college campuses.

The executive order calls on government departments enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect against anti-Semitic discrimination based on race, color, or national origin.

It also calls for Title VI enforcement agencies to consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism and its supporting examples, which is already used by the U.S. State Department.