Employees found a swastika carved into the wall of an elevator in the State Department on Monday.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the carving, which has since been removed, is evidence that “anti-Semitism isn’t a relic of the past” in a memo to the entire department.
Antisemitism is “still a force in the world, including close to home. And it’s abhorrent. It has no place in the United States, at the State Department or anywhere else. And we must be relentless in standing up and rejecting it,” he added. “To our Jewish colleagues: please know how grateful we are for your service and how proud we are to be your colleagues.”
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Antisemitic crimes have been on the rise in the United States this year and in recent years. The Anti-Defamation League found that the number of “antisemitic incidents” in the U.S. decreased by 4% from 2019 to 2020, though the total in 2020 was still the third-highest year recorded since the organization began tracking such incidents in 1979.
“We also know from our own history and from the histories of other nations 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,” Blinken, who is Jewish, wrote.
President Joe Biden condemned the incident late Tuesday night.
“Let me be clear: Anti-Semitism has no place in the State Department, in my Administration, or anywhere in the world,” he said. “It’s up to all of us to give hate no safe harbor and stand up to bigotry wherever we find it.”
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Diplomatic Security, the federal law enforcement branch of the State Department, is investigating the incident, according to CNN.
“The swastika etched in the State Department is a serious incident of antisemitic vandalism, which once again shows that antisemitism does not distinguish between Jews in Israel and Jews in America, and harms not only Israel but the entire world,” Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. and U.N. Gilad Erdan said in a statement. “We must fight together resolutely against antisemitism of any kind and bring to justice anyone who acts out of hatred for the Jewish.”
