Blinken ‘All Lives Matters’ the 1994 Hezbollah Bombing of Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center

Secretary of State Antony Blinken released a statement on Thursday marking the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AIMA), a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

A Hezbollah operative, directed by Iran, drove a car bomb into the building, killing 85 and injuring more than 300.

Blinken appeared to think that a statement in remembrance of what was, as he noted, “the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust” until October 7, was a good place to stake out a position against what Commentary‘s Seth Mandel has dubbed “antisemitismandislamophobia”:

Today’s somber commemoration comes in the midst of an alarming surge of global antisemitism. Since the October 7 attack, we have seen a dramatic increase in violence incidents and hateful discourse against Jews and Jewish communal institutions and businesses in many countries, including in the United States, just as we have seen a dramatic increase in hate crimes against Muslims. We condemn all manifestations of antisemitism and other forms of hatred and urge all governments to unequivocally do so as well.

Questions about whether an uptick in Islamophobia has occurred to a meaningful extent notwithstanding, elected Democrats’ inability to discuss hatred against Jews on its own terms without lumping it into broader “All Lives Matter”–style pablum — the kind that was unacceptable in the summer of 2020 — is nothing new.

In response to the surge in support for Islamist terror groups in higher education after Hamas attacked Israel, the Biden administration House took action against “antisemitic and Islamophobic events at schools and college campuses.”

When a reporter asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the potential for an increase in antisemitism in late October, she said President Joe Biden and his team had “not seen any credible threat” against Jews but that “Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks.”

In his statement on the five-year anniversary of the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue shooting that took the lives of eleven Jewish congregants, Biden called on Americans to “commit to speaking out against bigotry and hate in all its forms, whether it is racism, Antisemitism, or Islamophobia.”

And as Phil Klein noted in October, this never goes the other way. When the president discusses Islamophobia, he discusses Islamophobia. When he discusses antisemitism, he discusses all forms of hate.

Back in 2019, when Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) shot off a series of tweets accusing pro-Israel groups of buying off American lawmakers, and American Jews of being insufficiently loyal to the United States, House Democrats responded with a resolution condemning antisemitism alongside “anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry against all minorities.”

Blinken, and the Democratic officials who’ve made similar statements about Islamophobia when confronted with either support for Islamist terrorism or blatantly antisemitic rhetoric, must know that the Hezbollah bomber wasn’t expressing his hatred for Muslims when he blew up a Jewish community center.