(Jewish Group) Antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt talks Buffalo shooting in first NY speech
President Joe Biden’s antisemitism monitor, Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, said the recent Buffalo mass shooting was a demonstration of a pervasive antisemitic ideology in her first-ever keynote address in New York on Thursday morning.
“Many people were shown the horrific impact of the Great Replacement Theory in the Buffalo shooting,” she said, referencing a racist and antisemitic conspiracy theory the Buffalo shooter had shared in an online manifesto. She said the shooter’s “first objective was to kill Blacks, but the Jews would be dealt with in time.”
Lipstadt delivered the speech at a one-day conference arranged by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the foreign policy umbrella for Jewish groups, held Thursday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park. Its purpose was to address the rise in antisemitism across the United States.
In New York, antisemitic incidents increased by 24 percent last year to the highest level in decades, according to an annual report released by the Anti-Defamation League. The report counted 416 antisemitic incidents across the state, including 51 assaults, the most physical attacks since it began compiling data in 1979.
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