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March 10, 2020

Bernie's penchant for anti-Semites and America haters is increasingly hard to miss

By Andrea Widburg

Of late, Bernie has been making a big push about his being Jewish.  He's doing this because of concerns about the anti-Semites with whom he surrounds himself and his hostility to Israel.  On Monday, he undercut his own "I'm a proud Jew" message when he took on Phillip Agnew, a rabid anti-Semite and America-hater, as his newest senior adviser.

Bernie's efforts to appear philo-Semitic arise from the fact that Judaism, unlike any other religion, has not only doctrinal components, but also genetic and cultural aspects.  Jews are a race because their genes identify them as Jewish.  Jews are undoubtedly a religion, as evidenced by the fact that millions of Jews live their lives to a greater or lesser extent in accordance with the Torah.  And finally, Jews are a culture, one that is distinct from other cultures and that is not dependent on religious worship or even on genetic Jewishness.  (Trump, for example, has a decidedly Jewish sense of humor.)

Bernie is genetically Jewish.  He and his followers wield like a shield the fact that he had relatives who died in the Holocaust.  Bernie has an accent one associates with Jews raised in Brooklyn, and he undoubtedly is comfortable with some Yiddish expressions and probably likes chicken soup with matzoh balls (but who doesn't?).

But what Bernie does not have is a religious or cultural affinity for Judaism.  As a socialist, he's hostile to religion.  As a communist, he's hostile to the world's only Jewish state.  During his three months in Israel, he lived on a kibbutz so Marxist and unsupportive of the Jewish state that Bernie, for many years, refused to name it.  Bernie is a Jew in genes only.  Nothing more.

And like so many Jews who have turned against their lineage and their faith, Bernie is an anti-Semite.  The self-loathing Jew is a stereotype rooted in fact.  Other famous self-loathing Jews are Karl Marx, Noam Chomsky, and George Soros.  They are all dangerous people who use their troubled inner battles to damage other Jews.

American Jews, even progressive Jews, are beginning to notice Bernie's anti-Semitism, and Bernie needs to win them back.  That's how we get ads like this:

But try as he will to woo Jews, Bernie's innate anti-Semitism keeps oozing out.  The latest example (via Twitchy) is the news on Monday that Phillip Agnew will be a senior adviser to Bernie's campaign.  In a Twitter thread, John-Paul Pagano spells out how deeply Agnew hates both America and Jews:

It's both depressing and frightening that one of the last two people standing in the Democrat Party primary is a man who thinks Agnew is a good pick for a senior campaign adviser.

Meanwhile, Rashida Tlaib, one of Bernie's biggest cheerleaders, tweeted out a picture of herself on Monday proudly wearing a shirt that erases Israel from the map:

And there's one of Bernie's surrogates, Amir Zahr, a virulent anti-Semite by any standards.

All of these surrogates are the type of anti-Semites who profess to love Jews but whose political positions make clear that they love Jews best when the Jews are dead and gone.

It's reasonable to judge people by the company they keep.  Bernie doesn't hang with a very nice class of people.

Of late, Bernie has been making a big push about his being Jewish.  He's doing this because of concerns about the anti-Semites with whom he surrounds himself and his hostility to Israel.  On Monday, he undercut his own "I'm a proud Jew" message when he took on Phillip Agnew, a rabid anti-Semite and America-hater, as his newest senior adviser.

Bernie's efforts to appear philo-Semitic arise from the fact that Judaism, unlike any other religion, has not only doctrinal components, but also genetic and cultural aspects.  Jews are a race because their genes identify them as Jewish.  Jews are undoubtedly a religion, as evidenced by the fact that millions of Jews live their lives to a greater or lesser extent in accordance with the Torah.  And finally, Jews are a culture, one that is distinct from other cultures and that is not dependent on religious worship or even on genetic Jewishness.  (Trump, for example, has a decidedly Jewish sense of humor.)

Bernie is genetically Jewish.  He and his followers wield like a shield the fact that he had relatives who died in the Holocaust.  Bernie has an accent one associates with Jews raised in Brooklyn, and he undoubtedly is comfortable with some Yiddish expressions and probably likes chicken soup with matzoh balls (but who doesn't?).

But what Bernie does not have is a religious or cultural affinity for Judaism.  As a socialist, he's hostile to religion.  As a communist, he's hostile to the world's only Jewish state.  During his three months in Israel, he lived on a kibbutz so Marxist and unsupportive of the Jewish state that Bernie, for many years, refused to name it.  Bernie is a Jew in genes only.  Nothing more.

And like so many Jews who have turned against their lineage and their faith, Bernie is an anti-Semite.  The self-loathing Jew is a stereotype rooted in fact.  Other famous self-loathing Jews are Karl Marx, Noam Chomsky, and George Soros.  They are all dangerous people who use their troubled inner battles to damage other Jews.

American Jews, even progressive Jews, are beginning to notice Bernie's anti-Semitism, and Bernie needs to win them back.  That's how we get ads like this:

But try as he will to woo Jews, Bernie's innate anti-Semitism keeps oozing out.  The latest example (via Twitchy) is the news on Monday that Phillip Agnew will be a senior adviser to Bernie's campaign.  In a Twitter thread, John-Paul Pagano spells out how deeply Agnew hates both America and Jews:

It's both depressing and frightening that one of the last two people standing in the Democrat Party primary is a man who thinks Agnew is a good pick for a senior campaign adviser.

Meanwhile, Rashida Tlaib, one of Bernie's biggest cheerleaders, tweeted out a picture of herself on Monday proudly wearing a shirt that erases Israel from the map:

And there's one of Bernie's surrogates, Amir Zahr, a virulent anti-Semite by any standards.

All of these surrogates are the type of anti-Semites who profess to love Jews but whose political positions make clear that they love Jews best when the Jews are dead and gone.

It's reasonable to judge people by the company they keep.  Bernie doesn't hang with a very nice class of people.