By Larry Gordon
Senator Bernie Sanders
and Secretary Hillary Clinton
At the moment, it looks like we are being bamboozled and might have already been checkmated by Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders. No legitimate candidate for the highest office in the land would be able to escape politically unscathed from expressing a vision of U.S. relations with Israel that calls into question the veracity of that otherwise unshakable bond.
But Sanders is able to do what he does with impunity because he is Jewish and we are Jews and Israel is the Jewish state. So, in effect, criticism of him is neutralized and Bernie can speak about Israel in terms that no one else on the political landscape would be able to. Sanders gets a free pass for his virulent anti-Israel stance solely because he is Jewish. After all, the theory goes, you cannot be accused of anti-Semitism for railing against and criticizing Jews if you are Jewish.
But at this point in our history, it is important to sober up and realize that such an assumption was never true or, if it once was, is no longer.
Let’s consider for a moment what this campaign would have been like for Senator Sanders if, like most other candidates with a Jewish background, he would harbor this natural affinity for Israel and passionately exhibit an identity that is attached to the struggle that is the history of the Jewish people.
The only other similar circumstance we can point to is that of former senator Joe Lieberman, who was Al Gore’s vice-presidential candidate in the 2000 race against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Segments of the Jewish community were beside themselves as they considered the possibility of a Jewish vice-president (and the possibility, though remote, of his ascending to the presidency). People were concerned to an almost unimaginable extent about how American Jews would be perceived if there were a Jew in the White House and that person were involved in decisions that favored Israel.
Well, that’s one thing we do not have to worry about—at least not yet—with the possibility of Bernie at the helm. If you asked Hillary Clinton two years ago who she thought might be her most formidable competitors for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, Bernie Sanders would not have made her list of the top 1,000.
Yet Mr. Sanders is not just competition for Mrs. Clinton, he has become her nemesis, forcing her to redefine her stances on numerous issues so as to illustrate some contrast between them. Whereas Hillary would ordinarily be expected—if she becomes the next president—to continue the Obama administration’s type of pressure on Israel to not build in Judea and Samaria and to at least consider giving up land for a two-state solution, she has instead been forced to the middle on these issues. In her debates with Bernie, she was coaxed and cajoled by virtue of Sanders’s pro-Palestinian stance to speak about Israel’s strategic value to the U.S. and Israel’s clear right to defend itself militarily.
With all this going on, we cannot lose sight of a central—albeit mostly unmentioned—issue here, and that is Bernie’s Jewishness. One of the many oddities in this year’s race is that the grandchildren of the Jewish candidate, Sanders, whose son married a non-Jew, are not Jewish according to halachah, while the grandchildren of Donald Trump are Jews by virtue of his daughter Ivanka’s halachic conversion to Judaism.
So despite Bernie’s subscription to a minimal type of Judaism (in public anyway), the media and the public are, for the time being, rather mum on the matter. Yet there is also a sense that they are ready to pounce should Sanders say anything that might be perceived as a betrayal of his rather cool relationship with his Judaism.
So his warming up to or displaying any type of sensitivity to the rightness of Israel’s plight is unlikely to occur anytime soon. And when he’s challenged about his tough positions on Israel, he usually blurts out that he has lived in Israel and that he has relatives in Israel—as though that absolves him of his wrongheadedness. Does that fact alone give him permission to advocate for a policy that endangers Israel? The answer is clear—he is misguided and wrong.
That so many in places like the United Nations and the European Union harbor cold spots in their hearts for Jews does not justify any of their positions. Bernie Sanders’s Jewishness does not mean that he does not have that same cold spot in what might otherwise be a warm and even understanding heart.
Bernie Sanders and the way of life that makes the United States the greatest country in the world are simply not a good fit for one another. It is kind of what Tevye said in Fiddler on the Roof when one of his daughters wanted to marry a non-Jew. He said, “A bird may love a fish, but where would they build a home together?”
And it’s not as though the Sanders philosophy is somehow accidental. As most of our readers are aware, Bernie’s brand of Judaism and his alleged support of Israel do not come from a good place in either his heart or soul. That he is an agent of Hillary’s possible political demise is the only saving grace of his presence at this late date in the race to become the Democratic nominee.
I might have suggested taking into consideration where Bernie comes from and his poor Jewish background, but then he appoints straight-out Jew-haters like Professor Cornell West and James Zogby as his representatives charged with patching together the political platform of the Democratic Party to be presented at the convention in July. Their job is basically to drive a wedge and manufacture greater distance between the U.S. and Israel as perceived by the future Democratic Party. West and Zogby are there essentially to promote the Obama agenda further. Upon their recent appointment and the platform they are attempting to develop for Mr. Sanders, West said, as reported in the New York Times, that while he recognizes the necessity to provide for the security of the Jews, who for thousands of years have been a hated people, he thought that the platform needed to bring more balance to “the plight of an occupied people.”
So to Professor Cornell West, the role and function of the Jewish people is to be “hated.” He accepts that as it is and fails to realize that his characterization is an indulgence in the most base form of anti-Semitism and outright Jew-hatred. Were we, the Jews, born and brought into this world so that the nations of the world would have a target for their innate hate? Or rather does the irrational hatred that people like West and Zogby harbor for Jews say more about what it is like to be more committed to the idea of hating than concerned about those who are the object of their hatefulness?
And then there is the matter of this Jew from Kings Highway in Brooklyn who brought them on board to represent him about his ideas on Israel and the future of U.S.–Israel relations. Sanders has led a wholly secular life and is the kind of Jew that has perfected a special brand of Jewishness here in America. That is, a Jewishness devoid of faith or religion. It’s a long and complicated story, but that is what it is—and that is just one of the many reasons why Bernie Sanders is so uncomfortable with Jews living free in their own sovereign state of Israel.
And for those reasons, plus his socialism, his backward thinking on the economy, his outrageous tax plan, and more, Sanders would be a danger to the U.S. as we know it, as well as to Israel. His success to date is an oddity and a quirk. Just the other day he was saying that he was a friend of Israel and had her best interest at heart, but you can be assured of one appropriate adage in this case: “With friends like that . . .” v
Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com.