US President Joe Biden on Thursday released a long-awaited strategy to combat anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hatred since the start of the Israel-Gaza war, calling for continuing urgent work to reduce discrimination and bias. evoked set.
The 64-page document comes just weeks before the inauguration of former President Donald Trump, who during his first term imposed a travel ban on people from some majority Muslim countries that Biden rescinded on his first day in office.
It reflects a broader strategy to fight anti-Semitism released by the White House in September 2023, and comes more than a year after the death of six-year-old boy Wadia al-Fayoum, who was stabbed by a man , which targeted him and his mother because they were Palestinian-Americans.
In the strategy’s introduction, Biden called the attacks on the Chicago boy and his mother “heinous acts” and noted the rise in anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate crimes, discrimination and bullying, which he called wrong and unacceptable.
“Muslims and Arabs deserve to live with dignity and fully enjoy every right along with all their fellow Americans,” Biden wrote. “Policies that result in discrimination against entire communities are wrong and fail to keep us safe.”
The Council on American Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group, called the strategy “too little, too late” and blamed the White House for not ending the federal watch list and “no-fly” list, which includes several Arabs. And Muslim Americans are included.
The Trump transition team had no immediate comment on the strategy or whether it would support it.
Trump, who has won support from some Muslim voters angry over Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, has said he would ban entry into the US to anyone who questions Israel’s right to exist. and would revoke the visas of foreign students who are “anti-Semitic.”
Tensions between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups on some US campuses increased after Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, with human rights advocates warning of rising anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and anti-Arab hatred.
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