#FeelTheBern Sanders appoints 3 anti-Israel 'activists' to write Democratic party platform, Wasserman-Schultz appoints another one as chair, and Clinton appoints... Wendy Sherman
The Democratic party has revamped the way it appoints members of its platform committee, apportioning representation based on votes in the primary. As a result, Hillary Clinton has appointed six members of the platform committee, Bernie Sanders has appointed five, and party Chaircritter Debbie Wasserman Schultz ('I wear my support for Israel to work on my sleeve every morning') has appointed four.
One of Sanders' appointees is longtime anti-Israel activist James Zogby.
Sanders’s choices include James Zogby, a pro-Palestinian activist who
is president of the Arab-American Institute in Washington and a
frequent commentator on Arab-Israeli issues.
On Saturday Zogby
noted recent government shifts under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
that consolidated his right-wing power base.
“His behavior has
been shameful, but so too is the extent to which Israelis, Americans and
others continue to enable his malevolent rule,” Zogby wrote.
The Obama administration has “repeatedly expressed displeasure over
Netanyahu’s settlement policies and his blatant interference in US
internal politics. Nevertheless the administration is now debating
whether to reward his government with a 10 year aid package valued at
$35 billion—while Netanyahu, supported by allies in Congress, is
brazenly holding out for $45 to $50 billion,” he wrote. “And so,
operating with virtually no restraints, Netanyahu continues to maneuver
and to aggressively advance his hard-line agenda. He maintains his grip
on power. Israeli society continues to become more extreme and
intolerant. Palestinians are more despairing and desperate. And peace
more remote.”
Other Sanders appointees include two other anti-Israel 'activists' - Cornel West and America's first Muslim Congresscritter, Keith Ellison.
One of Clinton's appointees is Wendy Sherman, the social worker turned nuclear negotiator, who brought us the disastrous nuclear agreements with Iran and North Korea.
And Wasserman Schutlz appointed as Chairman of the Platform Committee Representative Elijah Cummings, another member of the Hamas 54 (along with Ellison) who called for lifting the Gaza 'blockade' and letting Hamas continue to lob rockets at Israel.
Bernie's 'Jewish Outreach' Director: F*** You Bibi
Greetings from... well, you can guess where.
Bernie Sanders has appointed a 'Jewish outreach' director. He need not have bothered. In a March 3, 2015 Facebook post, the director, one Simone Zimmerman, threw a slew of expletives - including the "F" word - at Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Here's the original unedited post:
Zimmerman later edited the post to replace 'a-hole' with 'politician' and 'F-you' with 'shame on you.' But the internet has a long memory, and as Noah Pollak points out, the edits won't help Sanders much.
The choice of Zimmerman, a young anti-Israel activist with a history
of support for the BDS movement, signaled that the Sanders campaign was
not retreating from recent campaign behavior that many in the pro-Israel
community viewed as hostile.
Sanders turned down an invitation to speak at the annual AIPAC
conference, a bipartisan campaign stop for Republican and Democratic
politicians. Zimmerman condemned
Hillary Clinton’s speech to the AIPAC conference as “racist and
orientalist.” Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer on Sunday called Sanders’s recent comments about Israel’s conduct during fighting with the Hamas terrorist group “libelous.”
Zimmerman comes to the Sanders campaign after a stint as an
undergraduate at Berkeley, where she headed the campus chapter of J
Street, an anti-Israel lobbying and activist group.
Last year, Zimmerman promoted
a play called Martyr’s Street, whose plot compares an Israeli settler
to a Hamas bomb-maker. While a student at Berkeley in 2012, she signed a letter
criticizing the University of California system for issuing a report
about anti-Semitism on UC campuses. The next year, Zimmerman wrote an op-ed
calling on Hillel International, a national Jewish student
organization, to sponsor campus events promoting the BDS movement, which
seeks Israel’s destruction.
Maybe Bernie doesn't want any Jewish votes. He certainly doesn't want any pro-Israel votes.
Feel the Bern: 'Israel killed 10,000 innocent people in Gaza'
Greetings from a British Airways lounge somewhere in Central Europe on a cloudy, rainy, dreary day (yes, it's travel day yet again). What an appropriate time to talk about Democratic Socialist Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' claim that Israel killed 10,000 'innocent people' in Gaza. This is from Daniel Greenfield.
Bernie Sanders is wrong. This isn't even in dispute.
Sanders:... my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?
Daily News: I think it's probably high, but we can look at that.
Sanders: I don't have it in my number...but I think it's over 10,000.
Even assuming
that every Hamas terrorist and accessory was "innocent", that's four
times the number of total people killed in the last conflict.
But while the 10,000 figure is the banner headline, the real story seems
to be an incoherent interview which reveals that Bernie Sanders knows
little about what's going on and has no actual policy. Trump gets
blasted for this often enough while Sanders gets a pass when he quotes
imaginary figures and really seems not to know what he's talking about.
I have criticized Bernie Sanders for being anti-Israel, and there's a
dose of that in the interview, but mostly it's dominated by a kind of
'meh-ness'. Bernie isn't interested in foreign policy and it shows. In
some ways he seems less interested in pressuring Israel or having any
kind of plan than some Republicans.
Does anyone recall another Presidential candidate who seemed uninterested in foreign policy? How has that worked out? Bernie is far less competent than Hillary Clinton, but he's at least as dangerous.
[I]n practice, Bernie Sanders wants to forcibly evict Israeli Jews from
their homes, but leave it up to Israel whom to evict? This is
borderline incoherent. And it doesn't get any better...
Daily News: I was talking about something different, though.
Expanding settlements is one thing; coming into office as a President
who said as a baseline that you want Israel to pull back settlements,
that changes the dynamic in the negotiations, and I'm wondering how far
and what you want Israel to do in terms of pulling back.
Sanders: Well, again, you're asking me a very fair question, and if I
had some paper in front of me, I would give you a better answer. But I
think if the expansion was illegal, moving into territory that was not
their territory, I think withdrawal from those territories is
appropriate.
Daily News: And who makes the call about illegality, in your mind?
Sanders: Well, I think that's based on previous treaties and ideas. I happen to think that those expansions were illegal.
What defines illegality? Bernie Sanders has no idea. Treaties? At some
point his advisers will tell him the UN and then it will get truly
messy. Bernie Sanders is against "illegal settlements", which are
actually just Jews living in territory conquered by Muslim invaders in
'48 and liberated by Israel in '67, but has no idea what they are or
what defines Israeli territory.
Daily News:
Okay, so if we were to find Israeli settlements, so-called settlements,
in places that has been designated to be illegal, you would expect
Israel to be pulling them back?
Sanders: Israel will make
their own decisions. They are a government, an independent nation. But
to the degree that they want us to have a positive relationship, I think
they're going to have to improve their relationship with the
Palestinians.
Except of course Israel hasn't
been allowed to make its own decisions and there's no way to fix that
relationship with terrorists.
For those of you who think Bernie won't be the nominee anyway, he won the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday. And the US isn't Israel and generally finds a way to stop candidates who have been indicted from running. Another Clinton scandal may be on the way.
This is perhaps a good summary of the Democratic race as seen by supporters of Israel:
Hillary Clinton will certainly be on a "Get Israel" mission. Bernie
Sanders is signaling more anti-Israel views, but ones that he isn't
committed to or especially invested in. This is the Democratic Party
now. Stick your hand in the box. Find the lesser of two evils.
That's true. The problem is that on the Republican side, Donald Trump doesn't exactly seem to have a coherent policy either.
Feel the Bern: 'Israel is the cause of Middle East strife'
Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders claims his 'judaism' is an important part of who he is. Israel is apparently not part of his 'judaism' liberalism. Here he is speaking on Monday in Dearbornistan, Michigan
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Jack W).
Honestly, he doesn't sound that much different than Trump ('level playing field treating everybody equally').
For those who need those words explained, here's an explanation:
Praising
former Democrat presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton for their
presumably good faith-endeavors to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict,
Sanders implied that America unjustifiably treated the various parties
unequally.
In
other words, allegedly favorable treatment of Israel at the expense of
its Arab enemies needed to change. Moral relativism was also deployed
via implication, declaring all sides as entitled to equal treatment.
“For
decades now, there has been hatred and warfare in the Middle East,”
Sander said.
“All I can tell you is I will make every single effort to
bring rational people on both sides [of the Israel/Arab conflict]
together, so that hopefully we can have through a level playing field -
the United States treating everybody in that region equally - hopefully,
and I know that there are people of goodwill in Israel and the Arab
communities,” Attributing
regional conflict to Israel’s existence by conflating Israel with the
entirety of the Middle East, Sanders neglected to comment on the roles
of Muslim and Arab social and cultural pathologies driving the “hatred
and warfare” of the region.
Approximating
the modern state of Israel’s age - sixty-seven years - Sanders pushed
via implication the narrative framing peace between Jews and Arabs in
and around Israel as the master key to regional utopia, asserting, "We
cannot continue to have for another sixty years the kind of hatred and
conflict that exists in the Middle East.”
Earlier
in his address, Sanders described Muslims in America as being
“scapegoated” by Donald Trump, framing them as an at-risk minority group
in need of benevolent Democrat protection while simultaneously casting
the Republican front-runner as a modern iteration of Adolf Hitler, as
per the weekly left-wing media narrative.
Sanders was introduced by Representative Keith Ellison, whose endorsement he procured months earlier.
If anyone needs more evidence that the Democratic party does not support Israel (Hillary Clinton is no better but much shrewder), please let me know.
Marco Rubio (and Ted Cruz) got Barack Obama right, so why won't anyone else say so?
I have now watched the video of Chris Christie 'destroying' Marco Rubio on Saturday night, and I have to tell you that the people commenting on it have missed the boat. If you haven't seen it yet, the video is embedded here.
Yet Rubio also had an important point: Christie’s premise is dead
wrong. Obama has not steered the Titanic into an iceberg because he is
an unprepared, untested amateur. He has done it quite deliberately, at
times masterfully, because Obama believes in the policies that
constitute the iceberg. He is a movement leftist with a transformational
agenda and an Alinskyite’s understanding of the extortionate uses of
power. Authoritarian rule, government-controlled health care, open
borders, runaway spending, Islamist sympathies, crony-capitalist green
energy – these are not initiatives Obama stumbled into because he was
unprepared. Obama has studiously taken the country where he wants it to
go. And he has rolled over the old experienced hands to do it – so much
for amateur hour.
Obama is not the bumpkin of Christie’s portrayal. But Christie is not so
much wrong in this regard as calculated. Progressive-lite types like
Christie want Obama’s failed presidency to be seen as the consequence of
lack of experience rather than as policy-driven because they often
cooperate with Obama Democrats and sympathize with a number of their
policy preferences.
Christie couldn’t get enough of Obama after “Super Storm Sandy” –
regardless of how much it undermined Mitt Romney. At best, Christie has
been ambivalent in his opposition to Obamacare – carefully navigating
between his instinctive support of it and the intense opposition of more
conservative voters whom he knew he’d be courting in the 2016 GOP
primaries. And while Christie is trying to appeal to conservatives as
the adult in the room willing to speak hard truths about entitlements
and debt spending, his record as governor is: Talk a good game but do
essentially nothing about our basket-case state’s structural problems.
That is a big part of why, as Rubio pointed out, Christie’s tenure has
featured multiple credit downgrades.
The Christies of the Republican party insist that the country is in
disastrous shape because Obama was not up to the job. In truth, Obama
used Democratic congressional control when he had it to push through
Obamacare and Dodd-Frank; ever since, having taken the measure of
feckless GOP opposition, he has skillfully (albeit illegally) exploited
executive power to pursue progressive objectives. Obama has been plenty
up to the job as he intended the job to be done.
This reality is not helpful to a Christie, who wants to be seen as a
pragmatic problem-solver willing to “cross the aisle.” The logic of
Christie’s championing of bipartisan cooperation “to get things done”
has necessarily meant working in furtherance of Obama’s agenda (and, in
New Jersey, working closely with Democrats – which is how you get
multiple credit downgrades). No one courting the Republican base can
afford to be seen as complicit in Obama’s program. So, for Christie, if
Obama is to be portrayed as a failure, it’s got to be because Obama
wasn’t prepared to be president, not because of policies Republicans
have supported.
Rush Limbaugh wonders why only Rubio and Ted Cruz are willing to acknowledge that Obama's behavior has been a deliberate attempt to destroy the United States.
And I think... This is what I was talking about earlier when I say, "I
think some of these professional media analysts..." God bless them and
they do hard work, and many of them, they're just fine people. But I
don't know that they have the ability to see these debates the way
people watching the debates on TV see them. Meaning: I don't know how
big a faux pas this was for Rubio. Clearly it was not a positive;
clearly it was not his best. But I don't think it ruined his chances and
wiped him out like some in the media opined.
...
Let's get to the audio sound bites. I want to start with this. It's
the fastest way to get into this. Because this is important, folks.
This is really, really important. There are only two people that I'm
aware of that are making a consistent point of this. Rubio, actually, is
atop of this. Rubio and Cruz are the only two in the entire Republican
field. Carly Fiorina may have said something like this occasionally.
With Rubio, it's a theme. With Cruz, it's close to a theme. And the
real question is: Why do the other Republicans in the field disagree?
Why do they not say it themselves, that Obama is doing what he's
doing on purpose and by design? That is a brilliantly conceived and
flawlessly executed plan to transform America into something it was not
founded to be. This is something crucially important to Republican
voters. To people inside the Beltway, it's kind of a chuckle. "There
they go again, those right wingers!" To people inside the Beltway, to
the elites, to the establishment, Obama's just the latest Democrat to
come along.
He's no different than any other Democrat. "It's just the Democrat
Party, and they have a president." They don't see the country in crisis
in any way. Not because of the economy, not because of immigration,
not because of foreign policy. In no way are we in a crisis. And, as
such, they don't see what Obama's doing as anything except maybe a
young, inexperienced -- this is Christie's point -- incompetent boob.
Well, that's not who Obama is. Rubio's opponents are using it to
disqualify him. "See! Obama doesn't know what he's doing, and Rubio's
the same kind of guy, just a few short years in the Senate running for
president. We can't afford it.
"Meanwhile, the governors! We're the guys. We're the tough guys.
We've had to make tough decisions," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The
governors will not admit who Obama is. The governors will not admit it,
and Trump does not agree that Obama is purposely doing this. Trump
thinks he's a blithering incompetent. This is crucially important.
...
He's one of two people saying it. Now, folks, you go out and talk to
actual Republican primary voters. You go out, outside of Washington,
outside New York, go out to where these primaries and caucuses are being
held, and you will find that this is exactly what has propelled
Republicans to the polls in droves in 2010 and 2014. It's not the
belief, it's not the theory, it is the knowledge that Obama's doing this
on purpose, and there isn't and hasn't been any push-back. And
Republican voters are livid. Obama has said he's doing it on purpose.
He has said his purpose is to transform the nation. Everybody knows
that Obama is an Alinskyite.
The real question is -- and I was talking about this over the weekend
with my good buddy, Andrew McCarthy. The real question is, why are
these other guys not saying it? Why does Chris Christie make fun of
it? Why does Donald Trump pooh-pooh it? Well, Trump I have to leave
out of this, out of this theory. But Trump also, just for the record,
said he thinks Obama's an incompetent boob, doesn't know what he's
doing. Christie's point is Obama's incompetent, he doesn't know what
he's doing because he's inexperienced just like Rubio doesn't know what
he's doing 'cause he's experienced. It's Barack Obama 2 in that Rubio
would be inexperienced senator, elected president, we don't want to do
that again.
Rubio's point, no, no, no, no, no. Obama's not incompetent. He's
not inexperienced. He's doing exactly what he wants to do. And none of
these Republican moderates will go there. You want to know why? You
want to know why? You want to know why they cannot agree that Obama's
doing this on purpose? Very simple. They cannot agree that Obama's
doing it on purpose. They do not dare say that Obama's doing it on
purpose because they have all worked with Barack Obama, in one way or
another, every one of these governors, many of them, and even a lot of
Republicans in the House and Senate have worked with Obama to advance
certain elements of the agenda.
...
I think the real important question here to ask and answer is why
won't anybody but Rubio and Cruz say it? Because that's essentially, if
you had to encapsulate what the Republican primary is, it's about
that. Like they keep harping on, Christie -- or it might have been
Trump, I don't know who it was -- jumped on Rubio, maybe it was a
moderator in the post-debate analysis. Why does he keep campaigning
against Obama? Obama's not on the ballot. Obama's seven years old.
Obama's in his last year. Why does he keep running against Obama?
Because Hillary and Bernie Sanders want to continue what Obama has
started, and it is the transformation of America. The Republican base
is fully aware of it. The Republican primary voters have been begging
the Republican Party to stop this since 2010, since 2009 when Obama took
office.
...
See, the post-debate analysts who are either on sight or in studios,
television studio, I really -- this is not a criticism of them. I don't
want anybody to get the wrong idea. I think when you start making fun
of Rubio for repeating that Obama's doing it on purpose, you don't
understand how important that is to the Republican base, which is what
this primary is all about. It's fundamental. And by the same token,
defining conservatism, being able to, is fundamental. It's what this is
all about. And if you can't do it, if your definition of conservatism
is ignorant or wrong, I guarantee you you're gonna pay for it when it
comes time to vote.
I think Rush got it right. The only candidates for whom the American citizens in Israel will come out to vote are Rubio and Cruz. We all get that they are the only two candidates that will try to undo what Obama has wrought. And one of the things Obama has wrought is trying to set Israel on a path toward destruction (God Forbid).
Here's hoping that New Hampshire voters don't listen to the media tomorrow.
It's come to this: Socialist Bernie Sanders compares Holocaust to imaginary phobia
I want to remind you all that I live in a country where 'socialism' is (unfortunately) not a dirty word. But even we know the difference between the Holocaust and the anti-Semitism that gave rise to it, and the imaginary phobia known as 'Islamophobia.'
But in one of the most emotional moments of the night, George Mason
University senior Remaz Abdelgader stood up and demanded to know how
Sanders would address the rising tide of Islamophobia in the U.S. Her
voice breaking, she spoke of how hurt she feels when she hears anti-Muslim rhetoric from other candidates for president — including GOP frontrunners Ben Carson, who has said he doesn’t want a Muslim as president of the U.S.
“Being an American is such a strong part of my identity, but I want
to create a change in this society,” she said. “I’m so tired of
listening to this rhetoric saying I can’t be president one day, that I
should not be in office. It makes me so angry and upset. This is my
country.”
Sanders insisted she join him on stage and gave her a hug as the crowd of a couple hundred stood and cheered.
Then, in response to her question, Sanders does something he rarely
does: he spoke personally about his Jewish faith and family history,
which includes losing relatives in the Holocaust, and said Americans
need to learn from that past. “If we stand for anything we have to stand
together and end all forms of racism in this country,” he said. “I will
lead that effort as president.”
It gets worse from there.
No people have been subject to greater amounts and more severe discrimination than Jews. Incidents of anti-Semitism throughout the West remain totally disproportionate to the number of Jews present in those countries. Comparing Holocaust level anti-Semitism to 'Islamophobia' is cheap populist grandstanding.
Bernie Sanders apparently volunteered on an Israeli Kibbutz (collective) for a few months some 50+ years ago. But no one can remember on which one, so now they are trying to use social media to find out. Caption read: "Remember him from the dining hall?"
In the picture, Bernie is wearing the famous kova tembel (dunce cap) that was popular in Kibbutzim way back when.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
