Biden: Antisemitism in Charlottesville compelled me to run for president
“One of the things that got me involved in this race.. was when those folks came out of the fields down in Charlottesville chanting,” Biden recalled.
By TOVAH LAZAROFFJoe Biden accepts the Democratic presidential nomination in Wilmington, Delaware(photo credit: REUTERS)
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden told Jewish voters that the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville was one of the moments that compelled him to make a run for the White House, so he could help heal the nation.“I had not planned on running,” Biden said a virtual campaign event in advance of the Jewish New Year.“One of the things that got me involved in this race.. was when those folks came out of the fields down in Charlottesville chanting,” Biden recalled. “They were carrying torches, their veins bulging” and they were “chanting the same antisemitic bile that was heard in the streets of Germany in the 1930s,” said Biden.He described the Nazi flags and the white supremacists in the violence rally, during which one of the protesters against the rally, Heather Heyer, 32, was killed.In response US President Donald Trump said of the event, ‘there are very fine people on both sides,’" Biden recalled.“That is not who we are,” he added.“Together we can stamp out bigotry and antisemitism,” said Biden. He pledged to pursue peace and in the world and remain a “steadfast ally of Israel.” As a child he learned from his father that “silence is complicity" and that one had to “step up and step out.”To that end, Biden said, he had taken his children and grandchildren to visit concentration camps in Europe, so they could view first hand the consequence of inaction.
In his brief speech that lasted less than ten minutes, he linked the internal spiritual questions of the Jewish holiday, with the national dilemmas that face the United States."These are the days of awe that give us the chance to restart and speak up,” to “ask ourselves the most important questions, question about what kind of people we wish to be,” he said.“Both of our faiths, yours and mine, instruct us that we can’t ignore what is happening around us,” Biden said. He listed the issues: “a deadly pandemic, a devastating economic crisis, a moral reckoning on racial justice” and "declining faith in a bright American future.”The common thread between those issues is a president who makes things worse, Biden said as he attacked Trump. This is a president “who appeals to the dark side of us, who talks about division, a person who does not focus on unity, a president who by his own admission downplayed the threat of the virus, leaving a staggering number of Americans to die,” Biden said.“Many of you have gotten to know me over the years, you know that my priority is to bring people together around the values that unite us,” Biden said.He explained that he had “faith that together we can begin to repair this nation, together we can work toward racial justice, [against] economic injustice, climate change, together we can restore America’s mandate to be a nation of immigrants."“I look forward to doing that work with you. It is part of how I was raised. I hope you will join me and put the future within our reach,” Biden said."Whatever state of life you are in, you can make a difference... Remember your power and make this year the year of justice and progress."
