President Donald Trump shocked America with his moral equivalence when, against the backdrop of a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville and the murder of a counterprotester, he declared, there were “very fine people on both sides.” His remarks were enough for Trump’s opponents to brand him a racist. After all, even if many at the “Unite the Right” rally did not subscribe to the neo-Nazi vision of some participants and merely wanted to protest the erasure of Confederate history from public spaces, the fact that Trump appeared to legitimize their gathering was enough to confirm guilt.
After winning the presidency, President Joe Biden used the Charlottesville march to draw a sharp distinction between himself and his predecessor. “The forces of hate and violence were summoned from the shadows as Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists descended on a historic American city. With torches in their hands and veins bulging from their necks, they spewed the same antisemitic bile that was heard in Germany,” he declared.
How sad, then, just three years later, that he might still transform the White House Rose Garden into a platform for hate. While Biden has postponed Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to the White House, he refuses to pull the plug entirely.
The White House and State Department say they will reschedule, despite Erdogan’s full-throated embrace of Hamas. Consider: Erdogan not only gave Hamas terrorist leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashal a state welcome on April 20 and April 21, but also offered to host the Hamas leadership should current sponsor Qatar cut ties.
Erdogan’s reference to Haniyeh as “leader of the Palestinian struggle” is an implicit rejection of the Oslo Accords that tied the legitimacy of any recognized Palestinian leader to terrorism rejection. That said, Erdogan lives in a universe where suicide bombing and baby beheading are acceptable so long as the victims are Jews. This is why he used his meeting with Hamas leaders to deny once again that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Israel, however, to Erdogan is worse than Nazi Germany. When Erdogan speaks in parliament, his party members chant “Death to Israel” as their refrain.
The problem is not simply rhetoric. Both immediately before and after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Israeli customs authorities intercepted explosive precursors and weaponry that Turkey sought to smuggle to Hamas in Gaza. Erdogan now declares his intention to bypass Cyprus-based inspections of goods into Gaza by dispatching a new flotilla.
Erdogan may be the dictator of a country with which the United States seeks to partner, but Biden is under no obligation to give him a platform or the honor of such a high-profile visit. Perhaps Biden, like Trump in Charlottesville, believes short-term exigencies excuse legitimization of hate.
Certainly, Secretary of State Antony Blinken does. After all, why else would he send his counterterrorism coordinator Elizabeth Richard, formerly an ambassador to Lebanon, to negotiate counterterrorism in Ankara without mentioning Hamas? Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf, meanwhile, briefed the press about the state of play in Gaza on Wednesday, but neglected to mention the American and Israeli hostages the terrorist group holds.
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Make no mistake. What Biden, Blinken, Richard, and Leaf now do is different from Trump declaring there are “very fine people on both sides” only in that they not only compromise morally, but they also invite the chief apologist for terrorism to the White House. Trump might plead ignorance; Biden has no excuse. He cannot have it both ways on antisemitism.
President Joe Biden, Secretary Blinken: If you have an ounce of sincerity to your condemnation of antisemitism, do not let Erdogan near the White House. Cancel the visit unequivocally. Do not transform the people’s house into a platform for a foreign leader to endorse terrorism and endanger America’s 7.5 million Jews.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.