While Bernie Sanders is of Jewish ancestry, he lost the Jewish vote because of his rabid hatred for the Jewish state (he at one point falsely accused Israel of killing 10,000 people) and his association with anti-Semites.
Even though Jews were disgusted by Jesse Jackson's anti-Semitic slurs, Bernie Sanders backed his presidential campaign. As with Keith Ellison, the latest anti-Semitic candidate who had his support, even trafficking with Farrakhan did not bother Bernie Sanders.
Here's a little bit of the ugly history of Bernie Sanders' flirtation with the anti-Semitic left...
In 1971, he told an audience, “no guns for Israel.” Two years later, the Yom Kippur War brought Israel to the brink of destruction and shipments of American arms made the difference. But Bernie Sanders did not care and in 1988 still insisted that, “It is wrong that the United States provides arms to Israel.”
In 1990, he called for America to “put more pressure on Israel”.
Bernie Sanders sneeringly condemns what he calls Republican bigotry, but he endorsed Jesse Jackson despite his racist “Hymietown” slur. Before a joint appearance with Jackson, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan had warned Jews, "If you harm this brother, I warn you in the name of Allah this will be the last one you harm.” Despite that, Jesse Jackson refused to cut his ties with Farrakhan.
Jackson had told a Washington Post reporter, “That's all Hymie wants to talk about, is Israel; every time you go to Hymietown, that's all they want to talk about”. Bernie Sanders however tried to prove he was a good “Hymie” (or a good Non-Hymie Hymie) by defending Jackson’s hostility to the Jewish state.
Bernie Sanders brags about his endorsement from Congressman Keith Ellison despite his past support for the Nation of Islam and his appearance with Khalid Abdul Muhammad who had called Jews “bloodsuckers” and had said, “If you're a Jew, I'm against you.” Nation of Islam leader Farrakhan, who calls Jews “false Jews”, praised Bernie Sanders as a “real Jew, not a so-called Jew”. The very thing that makes Bernie Sanders seem suspect to Jews makes him more appealing to anti-Semitic hate groups.
Sanders met with Al Sharpton despite his anti-Semitic remarks and the horror of the Crown Heights Pogrom in which an entire Jewish community was besieged by racist mobs chanting, “Death to the Jews”. The former Democratic presidential candidate had taunted, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” Not a problem for Bernie Sanders.
While Bernie Sanders is quick to call Republicans bigots, he not only fails to stand up against anti-Semitism from the left, but he has supported and collaborated with anti-Semites.
When Bernie Sanders reached out for perspective on the Middle East during his campaign, he contacted James Zogby, who defended Hamas and Hezbollah, and Lawrence Wilkerson, who had accused Jewish officials of dual loyalty and suggested that Israel was behind Assad’s chemical weapons attacks.
Bernie Sanders cheered the Sandanista regime whose mobs chanted "Death to the Jews,""Jewish Pigs" and "What Hitler started we will finish." He did not invoke the Holocaust when a synagogue was firebombed and in an echo of Hitler’s Germany, its president was forced to scrub the streets.
All this makes it even more obscene that an extremist who spent much of his career collaborating with anti-Semites is now trying to shamelessly play that card.
Sanders said since Trump's election there has been “a significant outbreak of anti-Semitism in our country,”
...and you'll never guess where Sanders said it.
“These attacks must be condemned at the highest levels of government,” Sanders said during his address to J Street
J Street is a radical anti-Israel hate group that has attacked the right of Jews to defend themselves against bombings and hosted BDS bigots.
But Bernie Sanders is still committed to supporting the murder of Jews. And we look forward to him condemning the anti-Semitic attacks by his Sandanista allies and his Islamic allies.