Bernie Sanders says he is a proud Jew, but he is not good for Israel

The “Bernie Sanders proud Jew” phenomenon does not portend well for the Jewish future, certainly with regard to US Jews and their relationship to Israel.

By MICAH D. HALPERN
SUPPORTERS OF DEMOCRATIC 2020 US presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders wave signs during a campaign rally in Los Angeles, Sunday. (photo credit: KYLE GRILLOT/REUTERS)
SUPPORTERS OF DEMOCRATIC 2020 US presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders wave signs during a campaign rally in Los Angeles, Sunday.
(photo credit: KYLE GRILLOT/REUTERS)
The leading Democratic contender for the party’s nomination is Bernie Sanders, a Jew from Brooklyn. He declares, in a newly released campaign video, that he is a proud Jew. To quote Bernie: “I’m very proud to be Jewish and look forward to becoming the first Jewish president in the history of this country.”
The video, which was released on Sanders’s Twitter feed on February 17, is narrated by Joel Rubin, head of Jewish Outreach for the Sanders for President Campaign. Rubin also happens to be the cofounder of J Street. The video intersperses Bernie’s speeches and images with Rubin’s narration and file clips of hate groups. Included in those hate groups are Nazis.
The video takes it a step further, actually, a step too far. In his “proud to be a Jew” video, Rubin explicitly claims that the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, is “a white nationalist.” I couldn’t make that up but apparently the Bernie campaign can. The exact quote is, “We have a white nationalist sitting in the White House.”
In an interview with The New York Times editorial board Sanders explained his position on being Jewish and referred to the op-ed essay on how to fight antisemitism. Sanders published the column in The Jewish Currents, a Jewish communist paper.
The Jewish Currents published the op-ed in November, and since then, the candidate has often referenced the very long piece as if it was his Jewish manifesto. The Times interview actually links to The Jewish Currents column.
This “Jewish” Bernie is a newly re-invented and re-configured Bernie. Despite his very obvious Jewishness, from his name to his accent, for the longest time Sanders stayed far away from stepping into issues that touched on anything that smacked of being Jewish.
The change we are now privy to was constructed to modulate Sanders’s oft-voiced rhetoric, which has become increasingly critical of Israel and the Jewish community. In a recent debate on live national TV, Sanders called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a racist.”
As the chances of actually receiving his party’s nomination move from pipe dream to definite possibility, Sanders needs to buttress Jewish criticism against him and try to prevent Jews from leaving him and the Democratic Party. He is also hoping to continue to get Jewish-contributor dollars.
ALMOST EVERY major Jewish organization has raised serious questions about Sanders and his supporters’ priorities and their support of Israel. The very backbone of the established Jewish community has expressed concern about Sanders’s view of Israel. That’s not what he needs. He needs voters, hundreds of thousands of voters, to think that being Jewish is encapsulated in his ideology. What he has is a support base built of the Jewish young adult community, most of them under 35 years old.
These Jews find it refreshing that someone – aka Bernie – is challenging the Jewish establishment and challenging Israel. Sanders is very popular among the Jewish young adult community exactly because he is not toeing the establishment line.
The most recent example of flaunting long-held US-Jewish political tradition is a tweet from Sanders in which he writes that he will not be attending the annual AIPAC Conference in Washington, DC. Why? Because, he wrote, AIPAC promotes bigotry and is anti-Palestinian.
Sanders explained, “The Israeli people have the right to live in peace and security. So do the Palestinian people. I remain concerned about the platform of AIPAC that provides for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights. For that reason I will not attend their conference.”
He continued, “As president, I will support the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians and do everything possible to bring peace and security to the region.”
The “Bernie Sanders proud Jew” phenomenon does not portend well for the Jewish future, certainly with regard to US Jews and their relationship to Israel. The special relationship between Israel and the United States is simply not there with Sanders.
If anything, he tries much harder than his fellow presidential contenders to accommodate the Palestinians.
Bernie, a true socialist, wants to make everyone equal. He wants to even the playing field. The people most injured when the playing field is evened are your special friends. When the other side is raised, the special-friend side is lowered.
Bernie Sanders may have spent several months living on a kibbutz in Israel, as he likes to remind the Jewish world, but his heart is not with Jerusalem. As he made clear when the subject of Israel came up in one of the last Democratic presidential debates, if Bernie Sanders does become the first Jewish president of the United States, the US Embassy my not stay in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is not in his heart.
The author is a political commentator. He hosts the TV show Thinking Out Loud on JBS TV. Follow him on Twitter @MicahHalpern.


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