REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
U.S. President Donald Trump and Ben Carson (C), his nominee to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), joined by Carson's wife, Candy Carson, look at the exhibit dedicated to Carson's distinguished career as a neurosurgeon during a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, U.S., February 21, 2017.
The director of the Anne Frank Center rebuked President Donald Trump's statement denouncing a spate of anti-Semitic crimes, calling it a 'Band-Aid on the cancer of Antisemitism.'
"The president's sudden acknowledgement is a Band-Aid on the cancer of Antisemitism that has infected his own administration," Steven Goldstein, the executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect in New York, said on Tuesday in a statement.
"His statement today is a pathetic asterisk of condescension after weeks in which he and his staff have committed grotesque acts and omissions reflecting Antisemitism, yet day after day have refused to apologize and correct the public record," Goldstein said.
Goldstein was responding to Trump's comments in an interview with NBC News that aired on Tuesday, in which the president called anti-Semitism "horrible," and that it "has to stop."
Eleven Jewish community centers around the US received bomb threats on Monday, prompting the FBI and the Justice Department to investigate the incidents.
Trump reiterated his comments at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture on Tuesday.
"Anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish communities and our Jewish community centers are horrible and are painful," Trump said, adding that "it is going to stop."
Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter and a convert to Judaism, denounced the threats as well.
"America is a nation built on the principle of religious tolerance. We must protect our houses of worship & religious centers. #JCC," Ivanka Trump tweeted on Monday.
The Holocaust Memorial condemned the Trump administration in January after omitting Jews from the White House's statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.