Joe Biden has apologized for using an anti-Semitic slur that has long stereotyped Jews as usurers, adding another gaffe to a long list of offensive statements he's made about minorities in America.
In a Tuesday speech to the Legal Services Corporation, which helps those who can't afford a lawyer obtain one, Biden spoke of his son, who served in Iraq.
"That's one of the things that he finds was most in need when he was over there in Iraq for a year," Biden said to the group,
according to Yahoo News.
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"People would come to him and talk about what was happening to them at home in terms of foreclosures, in terms of bad loans that were being — I mean, these Shylocks who took advantage of these women and men while overseas."
Shylock is a character from William Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" who demands a pound of flesh as repayment for a loan. Along with malicious hoaxes like the blood libel, Shylock is a blatant example of anti-Semitism that clearly survives to this day.
Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman condemned Biden's remarks outright.
"Shylock represents the medieval stereotype about Jews and remains an offensive characterization to this day. The Vice President should have been more careful," he said.
"When someone as friendly to the Jewish community and open and tolerant an individual as is Vice President Joe Biden uses the term 'Shylocked' to describe unscrupulous moneylenders dealing with service men and women, we see once again how deeply embedded this stereotype about Jews is in society."
A day after the story broke, a political reporter for The New York Times, Michael Barbaro, implied he'd never heard of the Shylock smear.
As the
Washington Free Beacon reported, his remark drew exasperation and sadness from a number of political commentators — some of who noted The New York Times' increasingly anti-Israel position.
A new book released this summer by Joshua Muravchik, "Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel," details how "a prevalent new paradigm of leftist orthodoxy" has allowed many to forget the history of persecution against the Jewish people and enabled them to turn against Israel.
Biden eventually apologized for his comments, writing in a statement, "Abe Foxman has been a friend and advisor of mine for a long time. He’s correct, it was a poor choice of words."
Soon after, he made another gaffe by referring to Asia as "The Orient."
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