The words were forceful enough on Tuesday when President Joe Biden rightly condemned the current 'ferocious surge of anti-Semitism in America and around the world.'

He was speaking, appropriately enough, at a Holocaust memorial ceremony in the US Capitol on May 7 - seven months to the day of Hamas's unprovoked and barbarous attack on Israel.

Biden was even explicit about Hamas's crimes and its responsibility for the war that inevitably followed October 7. 

'I have not forgotten,' averred the President.

But the most remarkable feature of his speech was how little his words seemed to matter. They disappeared in the wind almost as soon as they were uttered.

There was a time when America — indeed the world — took serious notice of what a US president said. Biden, it appears, can be safely ignored.

Certainly few seem to heed his warnings these days. 

He told Iran 'don't' when it threatened to retaliate for Israel's fatal attack on its Revolutionary Guard HQ in Damascus, Syria. Tehran proceeded to launch over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, nearly all of them thankfully taken out before reaching their targets.

He informed Israel that rooting out what's left of Hamas in the southern Gaza city of Rafah was a 'red line' the Jewish State must not cross because of the potential for more civilian casualties. This week Israel started rooting out Hamas in Rafah.

On Tuesday, he addressed the poisonous anti-Semitism now rampant on university campuses.

He highlighted 'vicious propaganda on social media … Jews forced to hide kippahs under baseball caps, tuck Jewish stars into their shirts … Jewish students blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class .. antisemitic posters, slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel … too many people denying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and October 7th … it's absolutely despicable — and it must stop.'