Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday separately met US leaders from the Jewish as well as Arab and Palestinian-American communities amid war in the Middle East between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, the State Department said.
Blinken’s community outreach comes amid fears and warnings of a rise in Islamophobia, antisemitism and anti-Palestinian threats and hate speech in the United States due to the war in the Middle East.
President Joe Biden called on Americans to denounce such sentiments in an Oval Office address Thursday night.
Blinken on Monday “strongly condemned racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, and anti-Palestinian incidents,” and “underscored that hate has no place in America or anywhere else,” the State Department said.
In the meetings, Blinken condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel that left 1,400 people dead and reaffirmed the United States’ “ironclad commitment” to Israel’s security, the State Department said. Meanwhile, in rare comments on an active foreign policy crisis, former US president Barack Obama said some of Israel’s actions in its war against Hamas, like cutting off food and water for Gaza, could “harden Palestinian attitudes for generations” and weaken international support for Israel.
Obama said any Israeli military strategy that ignores the human costs of the war “could ultimately backfire.”
“The Israeli government’s decision to cut off food, water and electricity to a captive civilian population (in Gaza) threatens not only to worsen a growing humanitarian crisis; it could further harden.
