U.S. senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders this week offered a genuinely unique proposal. He said the time has come to take some of the military aid that the United States provides to Israel, and give it instead to Hamas-run Gaza.
Afterwards, a Washington Post reporter asked Sanders how he “would weather attacks from Republicans alleging Democrats are weak on Israel or, worse, anti-Semitic. Sanders’ reply was alarmingly candid. “Being Jewish may be helpful in that regard,” Sanders said. “It’s going to be very hard for anybody to call me, whose father’s family was wiped out by Hitler, who spent time in Israel, an anti-Semite.”
Until very recently, Senator Sanders was notoriously reluctant to speak about his Jewish identity. He went so far as to describe his parents as “Polish immigrants,” without any hint that they were Jews. But now, it seems, Sanders has found his Jewishness—as a weapon to give him cover so that he can call for taking the aid that Israel needs for self-defense and giving it to a genocidal regime that is sworn to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
In one sense, Sanders is right, technically. It will be “hard” to call him an anti-Semite. So instead, let’s call him what he clearly is: the kind of Jew whom anti-Semites love. A few days ago, two of America’s most prominent anti-Semites heartily endorsed Sanders. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who has said that American Jews bribe members of Congress with “Benjamins” (dollar bills), and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who has said that Jewish and other pro-Israel members of Congress “forgot what country they represent,” have decided that Sen. Sanders is the kind of Jew they can get support. And that says a lot.
