US President Joe Biden has condemned antisemitism after a swastika was found carved into the wall of a State Department lift on Monday. 

Reacting to coverage of the incident, Mr Biden tweeted on Wednesday that antisemitism had “no place in the State Department, in my Administration or anywhere in the world.”

“It’s up to all of us to give hate no safe harbor and stand up to bigotry wherever we find it,” he wrote.

The incident is being investigated and the etching has been removed, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Tuesday.

Mr Blinken, who is the stepson of a Shoah survivor, said the incident served as a painful reminder that “antisemitism isn't a relic of the past.”

"It's still a force in the world, including close to home. And it's abhorrent. It has no place in the United States, at the State Department or anywhere else. 

“And we must be relentless in standing up and rejecting it,” he said on Twitter.

The total number of antisemitic incidents reported to the Anti-Defamation League across the US last year dipped slightly compared to 2019 but remained high at 2,024.

The figure is the third highest recorded by the ADL since it began tracking incidents in 1979