(Jewish Group) Opinion: President Biden has taken a vital step to counter antisemitism in America

[Behind the Aegis]

Last week, the White House announced its National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. This first-of-its-kind initiative could not come at a more opportune time. There were a record number of antisemitic incidents worldwide in 2021, according to an annual survey conducted by Tel Aviv University’s Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the US-based Anti-Defamation League. Results of the latest survey, released last month, showed that the problem not only persisted, but intensified in the US in 2022.

This is not an abstract issue for me. When the Nazis occupied Hungary, it resulted in the murder of more than half a million Hungarian Jews. My grandfather, seeing what was happening and seeing fellow Jews being rounded up and deported, helped as much of his family and as many as he could to use false papers to conceal their Jewish identity and avoid being liquidated. My father, George Soros, lost family members in the Holocaust. And for him, those experiences — of being “the other,” of being hated for something that he couldn’t control — helped fuel his philanthropic career, and his dedication to help others fight for a life free from fear. The stain of antisemitism helped influence my own philanthropic work as a founding member of the board of Bend the Arc Jewish Action, the first-ever national Jewish political action committee with an exclusive focus on domestic issues.

My father’s fight for democracy and human rights has made him a target of unspeakable attacks, in the US and around the world. Former President Donald Trump closed his 2016 campaign with an ad featuring my father and several other high-profile American Jewish figures, using well-worn dog-whistle language about “global special interests.” In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban launched a poster campaign in 2018 falsely accusing my father of wanting to flood the country with migrants, drawing on imagery from the 1930s.

more...