Where does Bernie Sanders stand on Israel?

[Little Tich]

Source: Times of Israel

The Jewish presidential hopeful, a former kibbutz volunteer, is against the US ‘pouring so much military aid into Israel,’ vows to be ‘evenhanded’ in dealing with Israeli-Palestinian conflict

WASHINGTON, DC — At a town hall meeting with his constituents in August 2014, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was asked a question about the then-ongoing Israel-Hamas war. What unfolded made the inside of that room seem as hot as the scorching summer conditions outside.

Prodded into discussing Israel’s conduct during the Gaza conflict, and interrupted for a second time by an angry attendee, Sanders told the man: “Shut up. You don’t have the microphone.”

The question that had preceded the eruption was from a woman who wanted to hear more from her senator about his position. He had recently abstained in a vote on Senate Resolution 498, which expressed support for Israel defending itself against “unprovoked rocket attacks” from Hamas. Sanders was one of the 21 members who didn’t sign the unanimously passed resolution.

While his eventual response didn’t satisfy Israel’s most ardent supporters in the room that day, neither did it please the ardent Israel detractors, and the audience contained more of the latter group.

“Is anybody happy in this room or feel good about the kind of civilian deaths we’ve seen in Gaza? The answer is no,” Sanders told the crowd in Cabot, Vermont. “Has Israel overreacted? Have they bombed UN facilities? The answer is yes. That is terribly, terribly wrong in my mind.

“On the other hand — and there is an another hand — you have a situation where Hamas is sending missiles into Israel. That’s a fact,” he went on. “And you know where some of those missiles are coming from? They’re coming from populated areas. That’s a fact. Hamas has used money that came into Gaza for construction purposes — and God knows that they need roads and all the things that they need — and used some of that money to build these very sophisticated tunnels into Israel for military purposes.”

Read more: http://www.timesofisrael.com/where-does-bernie-sanders-stand-on-israel-2/

[azurnoir]

1. The fallout of this is the rather weasley insinuation that Sanders did not really serve on a Kibbutz

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Bernie-Sanders-and-the-kibbutz-conundrum-441490

[Israeli]

2. " serve " .....???

.....as in slave ?

Honestly azurnoir something stinks to high heaven with this whole story .....He should name which Kibbutz he was on and put an end to all of this conundrum.

[azurnoir]

3. serve as in volunteer

[Israeli]

4. rumors flying around over here ....

....that it was Kibbutz Sha'ar HaAmakim .

[azurnoir]

5. Thank you

perhaps his hesitation to talk about it much has to do with noise being made about Bernie being a Socialist which for many Americans translates to Communist, a sort of 21rst century Red scare thing-heck I've even seen it deployed here at DU

[Israeli]

6. Yeah me too ...

Was among my first posts on here if memory serves me right .... oberliner no less .

The Forward has picked it up already I see :

http://forward.com/news/332946/revealed-at-last-inside-the-kibbutz-where-bernie-sanders-lived-and-learned/?attribution=home-hero-item-text-2

Sha’ar HaAmakim belongs to the same movement mine does ......Hashomer Hatzair.

[azurnoir]

8. yes I'm wondering if as things heat up the communist kibbutz version of the 'red scare' tactics

will be brought up

[Israeli]

9. Has already ....

see : http://forward.com/news/333020/bernie-sanders-stint-at-stalinist-kibbutz-draws-red-baiting-from-right/?attribution=articles-article-related-1-headline

For today's kibbutznik's that is just laughable azurnoir......my grandparents were communists and as a child I can remember the red flags flying ......but that was long ago .
Most of the communal aspect of most kibbutzim have long gone .
We went from communism to socialism to capitalism within my lifetime .

Bernie Sanders would not recognize Kibbutz Sha'ar HaAmakim if he returned today .

[azurnoir]

10. Stalinist? oh the hyperbole, but I kind of expected it

now what you were saying about kibbutz these days my standing was that they now for the most part more closely resemble what in the old days were called moshavs

[Israeli]

11. Kind of azurnoir.....

....there are still moshavs and like kibbutzim they are based on agriculture and farming .

Probably the best way to describe both today is like small rural villages .

The kibbutzim that have become privatized ( Sha'ar HaAmakim is one ) have created housing projects to entice young urban families seeking an escape from city life and the expense of owning a home in say Tel Aviv / Jerusalem .......to move .
So in many ways today we have become suburbia.

[Israeli]

7. Here is how he stood in 1990 Little Titch ....

Sanders in 1990: US must pressure Israel on Palestinians

In interview given 26 years ago, presidential hopeful lamented Israel’s role as ‘mercenary for US government’ through its weapons sales to Central America

BY TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF AND JTA February 7, 2016

Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders has had a long and apparently often critical relationship with Israel.

One mystery that surrounded the 74-year-old senator’s past links to the Jewish state was the identity of the kibbutz on which he spent several months in 1963 as a volunteer. On Thursday, veteran Israeli journalist Yossi Melman announced that the Democratic hopeful had named it in an interview with him more than 25 years ago.

In 1990, on the eve of his election to the US House of Representatives as a socialist, Sanders named the kibbutz where he volunteered as Sha’ar HaAmakim, a fact Melman published in his Haaretz interview.

But the very fact that journalists had to go to the archives in an effort to sleuth out the location of the 22-year-old Sanders’s volunteering highlights the senator’s reticence in raising his views on and ties to Israel in the current campaign.

Sanders has long been critical of Israeli settlement building and its conduct of recent fighting against Hamas in Gaza, but has also been vocal about Israel’s right to defend itself against attack.

The republication of the 1990 interview last week suggests that Sanders’s criticism is not new.

“I’d like to see the United States pressing Israel more on the Palestinian issue,” he said in 1990, according to an English translation of the Hebrew translation of Sanders’s original English-language interview with Melman.

He also had some choice words about Israel’s willingness to sell weapons in the Western Hemisphere at the time.

“As a Jew, I feel quite ashamed at Israel’s involvement in this continent” – i.e., Central and South America. “It’s embarrassing that Israel of all nations is selling guns to the worst of all regimes. Why do you need to be the mercenaries of the American government?” he demanded.

In the 1990 article, reproduced Thursday on Haaretz’s website, Sanders told Melman that he visited Israel in 1963 as a guest of the leftist Zionist Hashomer Hatzair movement and stayed at its affiliated kibbutz, northeast of Haifa.

Sha’ar HaAmakim was founded in 1935 by immigrants from Romania and Yugoslavia who had been trained in farming techniques. The kibbutz still includes farmland and has a flour mill and a dairy, but its primary income is currently from the manufacture of solar panels, according to its website.

It’s not clear what drew Sanders to Israel; his older brother, Larry, was spending some time there. He also had earned some renown as a civil rights activist at the University of Chicago.

Sanders’s own reticence during this campaign to discuss his Jewish upbringing and his time in Israel, where he traveled with his first wife, Deborah Shiling, who also was Jewish, are reflected by his campaign, which has turned away queries about his Israel stay.

It’s not exactly clear when he was in Israel; although he tells Haaretz he was there in 1963, he did not graduate from university until 1964. He also had not married Shiling by June 1964, when she is listed as a maid of honor at her sister’s Baltimore wedding in a New York Times notice.

Sanders, born in Brooklyn to a Polish immigrant whose family perished in the Holocaust, had divorced Shiling and was living in Vermont by the late 1960s.

At the time of the interview with Melman, Sanders was the mayor of Burlington, the state’s largest city, and was a sharp critic of the foreign policies of the Reagan and first Bush administrations, particularly in Central America.

Source: http://www.timesofisrael.com/sanders-in-1990-us-must-pressure-israel-on-palestinians/

[oberliner]

12. He is great on this issue

“The hatred, violence and loss of life that define this conflict make living an ordinary life a constant struggle for both peoples. We must work with those Israeli and Palestinian leaders who are committed to peace, security and statehood rather than to empty rhetoric and violence. A two-state solution must include compromises from both sides to achieve a fair and lasting peace in the region. The Palestinians must fulfill their responsibilities to end terrorism against Israel and recognize Israel’s right to exist. In return, the Israelis must end their policy of targeted killings, prevent further Israeli settlements on Palestinian land and prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes, businesses and infrastructure.”

Hopefully folks here will come around to Bernie's POV on the subject.

[King_David]

13. Yes , agreed...

He is great on this issue.

Hopefully even those sporting Bernie Avatars and professing support for Bernie ,come around to supporting Bernies POV on this issue.

[6chars]

15. he doesn't talk about it like it's about him

which is pretty unusual for national politicians.

kind of ironic given that he lived there for a bit.

[azurnoir]

14. Clinton to Attack Sanders on Israel Record After New Hampshire Defeat

“Hillary Clinton has been a very strong friend of Israel and that is something that should not be lost on the American Jewish community,” said Paul Hodes, a former New Hampshire congressman who came to rally for Clinton at her post-primary event. Hodes, who is Jewish and from New Hampshire, told the Forward: “Senator Sanders hasn’t showed himself to be the kind of friend of Israel that Secretary Clinton is.”

http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/u-s-election-2016/1.702540

[King_David]

16. Be interesting how Bernie will respond..

The Jewish candidate probably going to dissapoint you

[azurnoir]

17. and exactly what will he say that'll disappoint me?

[King_David]

18. The extremist anti Israel views expressed by half the posters in this group certainly bear no

Resemblance to any Democratic Party rep nor candidate nor potus- whatsoever.

They are marginal views and The Jewish candidate is no different in that his record on Israel are not similar to any marginal extremist anti Zionist view expressed here by half the group and they never will be either.

[azurnoir]

19. can't come up with anything specific?

[King_David]

20. Read this group

The antiZionist rhetoric is sometimes at fever pitch....

Read the threads in Arab MK visiting houses of murderers of Jews.

When they talk about how it's understandable that Jews are murdered or cause and effect or some other rubbish....they talking about half of us in this group and Bernie too .

'If Israel wasn't occupying West Bank, Palestinian kids wouldn't need to kill Jews'

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1134124787

These are not Democratic Party values.

[azurnoir]

21. neither is denying families the burial of their family members, which is why the MK's visited

oh wait Osama bin Laden's body was dumped at sea but not Saddam Hussein's who was allowed a traditional burial

[King_David]

22. So what ?

Huh?

[azurnoir]

23. ........

[King_David]

24. I don't follow your last 2 posts at all ..

Try explain in a paragraph here.

[Mosby]

25. saddam was buried 6 days after his execution.

How come sharia law wasn't followed?

[azurnoir]

28. at least he was buried Israel had been holding these bodies since last October

[notadmblnd]

26. Are we back to Sanders is not Jewish enough meme?

Cause we were there about a week ago, just after the concern that he is too Jewish.

[UnBlinkingEye]

27. Bernie is very good on the middle east.

I think people will be in agreement with his foreign policy positions. Bernie is a very intelligent and honest analyst in general from what I have seen and read so far.