The fact that Bernie Sanders marched through the era of conformity, anti-Communism, and materialism to maintain an identity as a democratic socialist without the fear of anti-Communist stigmatization or need to belong to a more respectable form of Jewish identity is one of the extraordinary features of his character.
In the Village Voice, Jesse Alexander Myerson says Bernie Sanders is in an anti-Zionist Jewish tradition, but that Zionism’s militant nationalism became “the most salient and powerful political philosophy for American Jews” in the last 2 generations.
As attention turns to the NY primary, the Democratic candidates are beginning to separate on the Israel issue.
Last night Tamara Cofman Wittes, a senior adviser on the Middle East to Hillary Clinton,…
Wilson Dizard reports from the 2016 AIPAC Policy Conference, where a protest by rabbis opposed to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump failed to materialize. Instead, Dizard found AIPAC supporters who were interested in what Trump had to say.
AIPAC still hasn’t apologized for pushing the Iraq war and for trying to undermine the Iran deal, both of which hurt American interests, but it does apologize when Trump slams President Obama, lest the comments will undermine its influence.
Unlike the other four presidential candidates, Democrat Bernie Sanders declined the invitation to speak at the AIPAC– American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference– in Washington on Monday, and instead delivered a foreign policy address in Utah. The speech has gotten wide circulation because of its affirmations of Palestinian human rights. Katie Miranda imagines what would have happened If Bernie Sanders had delivered his Israel speech at AIPAC instead.
Yesterday the Bernie Sanders campaign released the speech Sanders would have given to AIPAC had the presidential hopeful been allowed to show a pre-recorded message at the pro-Israel lobby’s annual policy conference. The speech includes harsh words for Israel on settlements, Gaza and occupation.
Writing in 1967 on resistance to the Vietnam War, Noam Chomsky said, “It is axiomatic that no army ever loses a war, its brave soldiers and all-knowing generals are stabbed in the back by treacherous civilians. American withdrawal is likely, then, to bring to the surface the worst features of American culture.” Chomsky’s prognosis has relevance today as we confront the causes and meaning of the Donald Trump phenomenon. Trump’s popularity is commonly understood with reference to domestic factors, but the candidate himself tells a slightly different story, and close attention to his rhetoric and positions suggests that Trump’s appeal has a significant foreign policy component. Specifically, he has found a way to resolve the failure of the Iraq War.
America can’t have a president “who is neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who knows what on Wednesday, because everything is negotiable,” Hillary Clinton said at AIPAC this morning, in a clear sign that she is running to the right of Donald Trump on Israel.