An anti-Semitism watchdog has called on US President Joe Biden to fire a recently promoted staffer after his anti-Israel social media posts resurfaced amid the war in Gaza.
Tyler Cherry, who was named associate communications director at the White House earlier this month, has deleted nearly 2,500 posts on X (formerly Twitter), Fox News reported on Monday, citing data from the Social Blade analytics website. Before his promotion, the openly gay LGBTQ activist held a similar position in the Department of the Interior.
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Israel-based analyst Eitan Fischberger noted that Cherry had used the hashtag #FreePalestine in the past and criticized the US government for selling weapons to Israel in old posts. “Cheersing in bars to ending the occupation of Palestine – no shame and f**k your glares,” Cherry wrote in 2014, according to a screenshot shared by Fischberger. The Biden staffer also reportedly praised activist Linda Sarsour, who herself had been repeatedly accused of anti-Semitism.
Stop Anti semitism, a US-based NGO that tracks hatred against Jews and the state of Israel, urged Biden “to immediately reverse course on the hiring of Tyler Cherry and do a better job vetting the personnel he brings into his orbit.” The group argued that the Biden administration has a history of “embracing of anti-Semites.”
Cherry was also criticized for now-deleted posts on other issues. According to screenshots circulating on social media, in 2015 he claimed that “the modern-day police system is a direct evolution of slave patrols and lynch mobs,” and called in 2018 for the abolition of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
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Cherry responded to the backlash by denouncing his past posts. “Past social media posts from when I was younger do not reflect my current views. Period,” he wrote on X, adding that he supports “this administration’s agenda.”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has reported a 360% increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the US since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which triggered the ongoing war in Gaza. Biden condemned the surge of anti-Semitism in the wake of pro-Palestine protests on college campuses, where some Jewish students said they were harassed and threatened. “Too many people [are] denying, downplaying, rationalizing and ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and October 7,” the president said in a statement last month.
At the same time, pro-Palestinian protesters have accused Biden of not pressuring Israel to agree to a ceasefire and end the war, which has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians since October.