Bernie Sanders decided to campaign in New York by repeatedly attacking Israel. Then he appointed Simone Zimmerman, a radical anti-Israel activist from the hate group If Not Now, as his director of Jewish Outreach, and then had to suspend her. Left-wing media outlets like the Forward are busy trying to spin the resulting disaster, but it's clear that Bernie Sanders badly lost the Jewish vote.
Jewish voters made up between ten to twelve percent of the electorate, according to exit polls. In the 10th congressional district – the largest Jewish district in the nation represented by Congressman Jerry Nadler – Clinton beat Sanders by a 66-34 percentage point margin.
“Many Orthodox Jewish Democrats were previously indifferent or even negative towards Hillary Clinton. After weeks that saw misinformed anti-Israel comments by Sanders, the hiring of a radical leftist as the campaign’s Jewish outreach director, and the doubling down on Israel at the debate in Brooklyn, we felt that it was imperative to go out and inform voters that a vote for Bernie Sanders was a dangerous mistake,” said Chaskel Bennett, a community activist and board member of Agudath Israel of America. “With the help of a few activists, our local elected officials, and the non-stop criticism of Israel by Sanders himself, our ‘Stop the Bern’ effort did its part to send Sanders away with a resounding defeat.”
If nothing else, Bernie Sanders managed to turn out the Jewish vote. Against him.
The Sanders defeat in Nadler's district also has potentially explosive implications for the congressman who has been under fire since backing the Iran deal sellout. He is expected to face Dr. Philip J Rosenthal, a physicist and opponent of the sellout. Privately, Nadler has to be feeling pretty unhappy at those numbers.
Meanwhile Simone Zimmerman's hate group, If Not Now, is back to its usual nastiness trying to run Pesach/Passover for Jews by harassing Jewish organizations and institutions. The anti-Israel group If Not Now describes this harassment of Jewish institutions as “liberation Passover Seders” in a typical appropriation of Jewish culture for anti-Jewish radical left-wing agendas. Similar tactics have been utilized by the anti-Israel hate group JVP and questions remain about the interconnections between both hate groups.
Members of the If Not Now hate group in Boston shrieked that they were being called (accurately) self-hating Jews and denounced the "Ashkenazi leadership" and ranted about Gaza "crumbling" under Israeli bombs.
The question is will Bernie Sanders bring back a member of an anti-Israel hate group harassing Jewish organizations to head his Jewish outreach? And how many defeats will it take until Democrats learn the lesson that attacking Israel this blatantly will wake up even apathetic members of the Jewish community.