President Barack Obama addresses the Adas Israel Congregation in Washington DC. Photo: Screenshot

President Barack Obama declared that the “deeply disturbing rise in antisemitism” around the world was no “passing fad,”  during an address to a Washington DC synagogue on Friday’s “Solidarity Shabbat.”

“In recent years we’ve seen a deeply disturbing rise in antisemitism in parts of the world where it would have seemed unthinkable just a few years or a few decades ago,” the president told the Conservative movement Adas Israel synagogue in DC’s Cleveland Park neighborhood.

“This is not some passing fad,” he said. “These are not isolated phenomenon and we know from history they cannot be ignored.”

“Antisemitism is and always will be a threat to broader human values to which we all must aspire,” he said.

Obama’s address at Adas came a day after an extensive interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffery Goldberg, who is a member of the DC synagogue, which discussed the pending Iranian nuclear deal and the disabled peace process with the Palestinians.

The U.S. president continued to press home on Friday his commitment to pursuing what he called a “good deal” with the Iranians that would ensure security in “one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods.”

Obama said he could not “guarantee a deal would be reached.”

The U.S. president said that if Iran is caught cheating on a nuclear deal, “we’ll immediately know about it and sanctions will snap back.”

Obama also called for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, though he noted that the “Palestinians are not the easiest of partners.”