(New York Jewish Week) – 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, May 26. “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 spoke 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. There was also a rise across the nation, with 2,717 antisemitic incidents across the United States, including 88 assaults, an increase of 167 percent from the year before. During her speech, Lipstadt described antisemitism as “ubiquitous, free-flowing and moving in and coming from all directions.” “We must never delude ourselves that antisemitism comes from only one political, social, ethnic or religious direction,” she said.  

Lipstadt, 75, grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens, and went on to become an influential figure in Holocaust education around the world. In 1996, she was sued by British author and Holocaust denier David Irving for writing about him in her book Denying The Holocaust. Lipstadt won the case. When she was first nominated as an ambassador in July 2021, her appointment was delayed because she criticized Republican Senator Ron Johnson, whom Lipstadt said was advocating for white supremacy.

During her remarks, Lipstadt discussed the ways that antisemitism is linked to other hate speech, citing the May 14 Buffalo shooting in which 10 Black people were murdered.

Main Photo: Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt speaks at a conference arranged by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on Thursday in Manhattan. (via JTA/Shahar Azran)