On Saturday, Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders held an event at the Apollo Theater in New York, in an effort to reach out to his hometown’s minority communities before next week’s presidential primary. At the close, the organizers announced that there was no more time for questions, only to make an exception and allow one final query. Afterward, they probably wished they hadn’t.
“As you know,” opened the questioner, “the Zionist Jews–and I don’t mean to offend anybody–they run the Federal Reserve, they run Wall Street, they run every campaign.” As this unfolded, Sanders began wagging his finger in dissent, and interjected to deem “Zionist Jews” a “bad phrase.” His interlocutor, pressed to articulate a question, concluded by saying, “What is your affiliation to your Jewish community? That’s all I’m asking.”
“No, no, no, that’s not what you’re asking,” Sanders quickly replied, in a nod to the question’s underlying prejudice. “I am proud to be Jewish,” he declared, to cheers from the audience. But then Sanders did something odd. Rather than using the question as a teaching moment to address and rebuke its anti-Semitic underpinnings, Sanders instead immediately pivoted to his stump speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Talking about Zionism and Israel,” he said, “I am a strong defender of Israel, but I also believe that we have got to pay attention to the needs of the Palestinian people.” He never challenged the actual contents of the question, let alone labeled it anti-Semitic.
Watch the entire exchange below:Needless to say, Sanders has mustered far more outrage for Wall Street, systemic racism, and Islamophobia, than he did when confronted with anti-Jewish prejudice. His reserved response to the anti-Semitic questioner stands in stark contrast to his powerful rebuke of anti-Islamic prejudice back in October, when he movingly embraced a Muslim student on stage.
There is still plenty of presidential campaign to go, and Sanders may well have other opportunities to address this issue. So here, for the record, is what he should have said, and what he should say in the future:What you just heard was outlandish and unacceptable, but I am glad that you did, because it gives me an opportunity to utterly repudiate it. The lie that a secret Jewish conspiracy controls this country or others has been used to justify the persecution and murder of Jewish people for centuries, including my own family in the Holocaust. It is an ancient anti-Semitic canard whose bigotry is not lessened by prefacing it with the word “Zionist.”
I completely reject that question and the prejudice behind it, just as I have stood on stages like this one and rejected the systemic racism in our society and the rising tide of Islamophobia in this election. There are those who traffic in hateful stereotypes and seek to pit us against each other–black and white, gay and straight, Jew and non-Jew–and I will always stand against them, and for all of us.
For Yair Rosenberg, “Because Holocaust” is a powerful answer. He thinks that pointing and sputtering is the way to go.
There are only two honorable forms of argument — to challenge facts and logic. Every other attempt is dishonorable.
Much of life is a brutal struggle for scarce resources between competing groups.
