{"id":1761,"date":"2019-12-18T11:02:04","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T10:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=1761"},"modified":"2019-12-18T11:04:41","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T10:04:41","slug":"sanders-corbyn-and-anti-semitism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/sanders-corbyn-and-anti-semitism\/","title":{"rendered":"Sanders, Corbyn and Anti-Semitism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity<\/em>. Click here to download as a PDF<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernie Sanders has a proud record both of supporting Israel and of being critical of its government. <\/strong> He summed up his views in a recent article for the magazine Jewish Currents<\/em>, in which he wrote \u201cI think it is very important for everyone, but particularly for progressives, to acknowledge the enormous achievement of establishing a democratic homeland for the Jewish people after centuries of displacement and persecution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nchoice of the phrase \u201cin particular for progressives\u201d is\ndeliberate. Because people on the Left, in recent years, have not\nacknowledged that the creation of Israel was, as Sanders put it, an\n\u201cenormous achievement.\u201d To the contrary, many view it as a\ntragedy \u2013 or worse, a crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nin a sentence that could have been directed at Jeremy Corbyn, he\nadded: \u201cIt is true that some criticism of Israel can cross the line\ninto antisemitism, especially when it denies the right of\nself-determination to Jews, or when it plays into conspiracy theories\nabout outsized Jewish power.\u201d \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanders\nhas been outspoken about not only Israel\u2019s theoretical<\/em>\nright to exist, but also its actual\n<\/em>right\nto defend itself when under attack, most recently by missiles from\nGaza. He has voted in Congress for American military aid to Israel. \nHe has been outspoken in his opposition to the campaign for boycotts,\ndivestments and sanctions (BDS) targetting the Jewish state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His\npersonal story would seem to ensure that he, unlike other\npoliticians, could never be accused of being anti-Israel. He\nfamously spent several months living on a kibbutz in Israel, and\npointed to his experience there as one of the things that turned him\ninto a socialist. He has visited the country, and has family there. \nHe self-identifies as a Jew, and has spoken about family members who\nwere murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nyet there are some right-wingers who are keen to pin the label of\n\u201canti-Israel\u201d (or worse) on the Vermont Senator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\nare some of the arguments they are making:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

–\nThough Sanders has always supported U.S. aid to Israel, he has more\nrecently indicated that he\u2019d be prepared to leverage that aid as a\nway of pressuring the Israeli government to negotiate a peace deal\nwith the Palestinians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

–\nDespite his well-known opposition to BDS, Sanders has been reluctant\nto support proposed legislation to criminalise advocacy of\nanti-Israel boycotts. He does this in part because of his strong\ncommitment to free speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

–\nAnd finally, even though Sanders himself rarely says things that are\ninsensitive toward Israel and the Jewish community, some of his\nsupporters have made remarks that clearly cross the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comparisons\nbetween Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn on these issues reveal just\nhow far apart the two men\u2019s views are. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nLabour Party under Corbyn, for example, called for an arms embargo\ntargetting the Jewish state; Sanders supports continued arms sales to\nIsrael. Sanders opposes BDS, while the Palestine Solidarity Campaign\n\u2013 which Jeremy Corbyn fully supports \u2013 advocates for it. And\nwhile a handful of prominent Sanders supporters have expressed views\nabout Israel that the Senator clearly doesn\u2019t share, the ranks of\nCorbyn supporters included a large number of people whose opposition\nto Israel went far beyond a criticism of the Netanyahu government\u2019s\npolicies. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Corbyn\u2019s\nhostility toward Israel led some anti-Semites, including former KKK\nleader David Duke and ex-BNP leader Nick Griffin, to praise him. The\nsame David Duke, on the other hand, cannot stand Sanders. As he once\ntweeted, \u201cBernie Sanders isn\u2019t White, he\u2019s Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nshould be clear that the arguments made against Jeremy Corbyn \u2013\nthat he was at the very least insensitive to Jewish issues, and at\nworst, was an actual anti-Semite \u2013 cannot be made against Bernie\nSanders. And yet \u2013 they will be. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nslanders have already begun. The right-wing Washington\nExaminer<\/em>\njust wrote that \u201cBernie Sanders may be ethnically Jewish, but his\ncampaign is rapidly turning out to be the most anti-Semitic in\ndecades.\u201d Another right-wing columnist asked, \u201cWhy is Bernie\nSanders, an alleged social justice warrior, so comfortable with\nopenly anti-Semitic activists \u2026 on his team?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanders\nneeds to face down these statements by deeds, not words. He\u2019s made\nsome good decisions in recent days, including the quick withdrawal of\nhis endorsement for Cenk Uygur (of \u201cYoung Turks\u201d fame), who is\nrunning for Congress. Among other things, including charges of sexism\nand homophobia, Uygur onxw invited David Duke onto his show to talk\nabout Jews. The speed with which Sanders withdrew his support from\nUygur is a good sign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nwould also help if the candidate would swiftly respond when his\nspokespeople, including Linda Sarsour and Ilhan Omar, make statements\nabout Israel with which he does not agree. Sanders has not done so,\nand this provides an opening to his critics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernie Sanders today has a very good chance to be elected as America\u2019s first Jewish president. But to succeed in doing so, ironically, he has to be far more forceful in fighting against anti-Semitism than any of the other candidates.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity. Click here to download as a PDF. Bernie Sanders has a proud record both of supporting Israel and of being critical of its government. He summed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solidarity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1761"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1763,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761\/revisions\/1763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}