President Biden condemned anti-Semitism a day after a swastika was found carved into the wall of an elevator inside the State Department’s main headquarters in Washington, DC.
“Let me be clear: Anti-Semitism has no place in the State Department, in my administration, or anywhere in the world. It’s up to all of us to give hate no safe harbor and stand up to bigotry wherever we find it,” the president said in a tweet late Tuesday.
Earlier Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken also addressed the vandalism on Twitter, where he said the symbol of Nazi hate had been removed.
“As this painfully reminds us, anti-Semitism isn’t a relic of the past. We must be relentless in standing up and rejecting anti-Semitism,” Blinken, the stepson of a Holocaust survivor, wrote.
“We also know from our own history and from the histories of others that anti-Semitism often goes hand in hand with racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and other hatreds. None of these ideologies should have a home in our workplace or our nation,” he added.
The incident is under investigation, Blinken said in his message.
The State Department is working on the nomination of a special envoy to combat anti-Semitism, spokeswoman Jalina Porter said, according to Reuters.
