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Why Does Bernie Sanders Feed Antisemitic Stereotypes?
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are seen before a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on March 21, 2024. Photo: Craig Hudson/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Shortly after the presidential election, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders released a scathing statement blaming the Democrats for Trump’s victory.
Alongside a slew of criticisms of Democratic policies on healthcare and labor, Sanders tore into the party for their stance on the Israel-Hamas war, writing that “despite strong opposition from a majority of Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government’s all-out war against the Palestinian people which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children.”
As usual, Sanders’ statement is deeply off base — both about the situation in Israel, and about the impact of the war on the 2024 election.
Exit polls and voter surveys have painted a clear picture of American priorities in the 2024 election, and the war in Gaza was nowhere near the top of the list.
Instead, the leading issues were the state of democracy, which 34% of voters cited as their main concern, followed by 31% for the economy, abortion for 14%, and immigration at 11%. By contrast, only 4% of voters were most concerned with foreign policy.
Americans also reported notably deep concerns about their leading priorities, with 3 in 4 people saying that they think democracy is threatened and 2 in 3 voters saying that they think the economy is either not good or poor. And nearly half of voters said that they are financially worse off now than they were four years ago — a rate of dissatisfaction higher than any presidential election since 2008.
In other words, American motives for voting the way they did this year are incredibly clear, and they center around the issues that have always mattered the most to everyday citizens. To quote Bill Clinton’s former adviser James Carville: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Americans had deep, pervasive worries about their financial and domestic standing this year, and many of them felt alienated by a Democratic Party that spent the last few years more worried about “woke” political issues — and championing terror supporters like Hamas instead of our allies like Israel — than the well-being and financial stability of hardworking American citizens.
This is why Trump beat Harris in every swing state, not just states like Michigan with a high population of Muslim voters. While it may be possible Harris did worse in Dearborn, Michigan, thanks to protest voters from Arab Americans, her underperformance among many other traditionally blue constituencies, like Latinos and Black men, suggest a much wider policy failure from the Democratic Party.
Furthermore, even though Harris was decisively beaten in the state, Michigan elected a pro-Israel Democratic senator.
Sanders’ statement feeds into antisemitic stereotypes, and it is especially noxious given his insistent weaponization of his Jewish identity to viciously criticize the Jewish State.
Sanders has spent the months since October 7, 2023, behaving as a token Jew for some of the most virulently anti-Israel segments of the left, highlighting his own Jewish heritage only insofar as it helps him slander Israel and Zionism, and refusing to condemn the dog-whistling antisemites in his corner of the party.
Charging Israel with the Democrats’ humiliating defeat this year is just the latest example of this tendency, which feeds into the time-honored antisemitic strategy of blaming Jews for self-inflicted issues.
American voters did not come to the ballot box concerned with Benjamin Netanyahu — they voted with their own country and personal interests in mind.
Sanders’ insistence on overlooking this obvious reality, and accusing the “Zionists” for the loss, reflects a concerning level of ignorance and a willingness to throw his own people under the bus for cheap political capital.
Rather than fanning the flames of Jew hate, the senator would do well to turn his concerns inward towards his own party and the myriad ways they have failed the American people. Otherwise, if they don’t learn to speak to everyday American voters, the Democrats will keep losing, and Bernie Sanders will shout his brainless lies into the void.
Sheila Nazarian is a Los Angeles physician and star of the Emmy-nominated Netflix series Skin Decision: Before and After. Follow her on Instagram.
The post Why Does Bernie Sanders Feed Antisemitic Stereotypes? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Mississauga vigil for Hamas leader was called off, but the Jewish community says the mayor should apologize for defending it
The group said members were going to be volunteering on an urgent food security issue instead.
The post Mississauga vigil for Hamas leader was called off, but the Jewish community says the mayor should apologize for defending it appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Amsterdam Police Identify 45 Suspects Linked to Violent, Antisemitic Attack Targeting Israeli Soccer Fans
Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters are guarded by police after violence targeting Israeli football fans broke out in Amsterdam overnight, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 8, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ami Shooman/Israel Hayom
Dutch police said on Sunday that they have identified and are investigating 45 suspects of whom they have images in connection to the violent attacks targeting Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam earlier this month.
“Because of the seriousness of the crimes, but also because of the social impact, we immediately scaled up to a special investigation team,” Dutch police chief Janny Knol said in a statement.
All 45 suspects are being probed for serious violent crimes, according to Dutch media. Nine of them have been arrested so far and remain in police custody, authorities said on Sunday, including a suspect who reported to police on Saturday night after his unblurred photo was released to the public.
On Friday, police said they were investigating 29 more suspects, including two who ultimately turned themselves in and have been arrested. Unblurred photos of the some of the other suspects have been online since Friday night and more images of suspects will be released soon, according to a police spokesperson cited by the NL Times.
Following a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the Dutch team Ajax in Amsterdam on Nov. 7, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian gangs violently attacked Israelis who attended the soccer game. The premeditated and coordinated attack took place in various parts of the city late that night and into the early hours of Nov. 8. Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv were chased, run over by cars, assaulted, and taunted with anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian slogans such as “Free Palestine.” Five people were reportedly hospitalized for injuries.
Police are “looking at all crimes committed in the run-up to the game and in its aftermath,” Knol said after the violence erupted in the Dutch capital.
A Dutch court last week arraigned eight suspects, including minors, who were arrested in connection to the violent attack in Amsterdam, the NL Times reported. Those suspects include a 21-year-old man from Almelo, a city in eastern Netherlands; a 37-year-old man from Amsterdam suspected of pulling someone off his bicycle; two men, ages 19 and 21, who were arrested over the weekend; and two 26-year-old men, one from Amsterdam and one from Utrecht, who are suspected of publishing posts on social media that incited violence against the Israeli soccer fans.
The post Amsterdam Police Identify 45 Suspects Linked to Violent, Antisemitic Attack Targeting Israeli Soccer Fans first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Tufts University Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine Until 2027
A statue of the school’s mascot, “Jumbo,” stands on the campus of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, US, Nov. 27, 2017. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect
Tufts University in Massachusetts has extended a suspension of its Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter until January 2027, a school spokesman confirmed with The Algemeiner on Monday.
Tufts first temporarily deactivated the group in October, citing “multiple violations of university policies,” including SJP’s promoting violence and calling on peers to participate. According to a disciplinary letter shared by SJP, days ahead of a celebratory demonstration it planned for the anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the group posted a picture of “individuals with assault rifles, instructing students to ‘Join the Student Intifada’ and to ‘escalate’” during its event. The inciting content left school officials “no choice but to impose interim suspension,” the university said in the letter.
SJP has said that the university’s adding 27 months to its initial suspension represents “an attempt to fracture the strength of our movement” and accused it of “bankrolling” conflicts in the Middle East. Additionally, in a gesture which aimed, unsuccessfully, to turn the tables on Tufts, SJP proclaimed its “formal break and disaffiliation from tufts university [sic].”
It continued, “As the zionist [sic] genocide of Palestine and Lebanon has escalated over the past year, tufts [sic] in turn has sought to repress our solidarity movement,” the group charged. “The administration has threatened to suspend individuals over Instagram posts and vigils …We are done justifying our action against this university’s role in the genocide of the Palestinian people. We will not apologize.”
Tufts University spokesman Patrick Collins defended the school’s decision in a lengthy statement shared with The Algemeiner. It explained that SJP has violated nearly a dozen prohibitions on gambling, communicating violent threats, and unauthorized assembly.
“The complaint is now resolved, resulting in a disciplinary suspension that takes into account the group’s actions, their impact on other community members, the group’s repeated refusal to cooperate with university policies and expectations, and its refusal to follow through on sanctions arising from previous conduct policy violations,” Collins wrote. “The suspension also follows multiple attempts over the last year by the university’s student life staff and other administrators to work and communicate with SJP and its leaders, who have rejected these efforts.”
Collins noted that SJP can apply for re-recognition by the university, pending its compliance with certain “terms,” which include observing its suspension, something it has failed to do so far. If it is reinstated by the university, SJP will be placed on a “one-year probationary period,” during which school officials will determine if it has truly reformed. He added that what SJP is experiencing is not, as the group has maintained, personal or ideological.
“The Student Code of Conduct for the Schools of Arts & Sciences and Engineering considers and addresses student and student organization behavior regardless of their viewpoints,” he continued. “Individuals and groups that violate university policies face a range of disciplinary actions, up to and including suspension or expulsion from the university for individuals, and suspension or permanent revocation of university recognition for student organizations.”
SJP’s suspension comes amid concern that it and similar pro-Hamas organizations are using college campuses as recruiting grounds for domestic terrorist operations.
“The movement contains militant elements pushing it toward a wider, more severe campaign focused on property destruction and violence properly described as domestic terrorism,” Capital Research Center researcher Ryan Mauro wrote in a groundbreaking report, titled “Marching Toward Violence: The Domestic Anti-Israeli Protest Movement,” which was published last week. “It demands the ‘dismantlement’ of America’s ‘colonialist,’ ‘imperialist,’ or ‘capitalist,’ system, often calling for the US to be abolished as a country.”
Drawing on statements issued and actions taken by SJP and its collaborators, Mauro made the case that toolkits published by SJP herald Hamas for perpetrating mass casualties of civilians; SJP has endorsed Iran’s attacks on Israel as well as its stated intention to overturn the US-led world order; and other groups under its umbrella have called on followers to “Bring the Intifada Home.” Such activities, the report explained, accelerated after Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, which pro-Hamas groups perceived as an inflection point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an opportunity. By flooding the internet and college campuses with agitprop and staging events — protests or vandalisms — they hope to manufacture a critical mass of youth support for their ideas, thus creating an army of revolutionaries willing to adopt Hamas’s aims as their own.
“Groups in the pro-terrorism, anti-Israel movement co-exist as our concentric circles of increasing malevolence,” Mauro explained. “Groups in the outermost circle avoid risks as they recruit new protest members and seek to integrate as many political causes as possible under the anti-Israel umbrella … Some militants aspire to incorporate the campaign into a broader wear on law enforcement if not an insurgency.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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