Hilary Israel and Clinton versus Bernie Sander on Israel - US Status Quo, Disproportionate Response to Indiscriminate Rockets attacks on Zion

A good politician can spin a position both ways bit the worst type of Antisemite is a Jew. Antisemitism is  Anti- Zionist. Zionism and Judaism have been inextricably linked since Zionism became Israel and more so with the rise of Fundamental Islam and second by second as it happens media coverage of events in the Middle East in social media in particular Facebook and Twitter. Bernie Sanders remarks can be interpreted as both. These aren't simply a Liberal Zionist remark. This is antiZionism, Anti Israel and hence anti- Semistic. Bernie Sanders has challanged the long time status quo of the US- Israel Relationship. Her track record on Zion isn't without blemishes but it comes with tremendous experience . Vote Hilary Clinton

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders -- the first Jewish candidate to win a presidential nominating contest -- believes Israel's response in the 2014 Gaza war was "disproportionate."

"Was Israel's response disproportionate? I think it was," he told CNN's Jake Tapper in an interview that aired Sunday on "State of the Union."

"Israel has a 100% -- and no one will fight for that principle more strongly than I will -- has the right to live in freedom, independently and in security without having to be subjected to terrorist attacks," he said. "But I think that we will not succeed to ever bring peace into that region unless we also treat the Palestinians with dignity and respect, and that is my view."

The seven-week conflict in 2014 was an Israeli response to Hamas rocket fire into southern Israel. More than 2,130 Palestinians were killed in the conflict, and it's not clear how many were civilians. At the time of the ceasefire, the United Nations estimated that more than 70% were civilians, but Israel reported a higher number of militants among the dead.

Tapper asked Sanders about an interview he gave to the New York Daily News earlier this month in which the Vermont senator said his recollection was that more than 10,000 innocent people were killed in the conflict. Sanders told Tapper that he wasn't sure what the death toll was, and when a Daily News editor clarified it to him, he accepted it.

But the claim attracted the attention of the Anti-Defamation League, whose CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, released a statement on Thursday saying he had spoken with Sanders and that the senator had clarified that his recollection was "inaccurate."

"As you know, the number was much lower," Tapper said.
"Yes," Sanders said.

The Vermont senator then stumbled when Tapper asked Sanders about criticism of Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., over Sanders' views of the Gaza clash.
"Who is Mr. Oren?" Sanders asked, apparently unaware of Israel's top diplomat to the U.S. during President Barack Obama's first term.

"Michael Oren, the former ambassador of Israel to the United States. And now he's a politician in Israel," Tapper said.

"I see. And he's attacking me for a statement I did not make," Sanders said.

Later in the interview, Sanders, a secular Jew, said he hopes to provide a "balanced" view on issues related to Israel and Palestine than most U.S. politicians.

"It is interesting ... that the first Jew in American history to win a delegate, much less a primary, is taking this position with Israel," Tapper told Sanders. "Usually in American politics, everyone just supports Israel whatever Israel wants to do, but you are taking a more critical position."
"I'm taking a more balanced position," Sanders replied.

He added: "Whether you're Jewish or not Jewish, I would hope that every person in this country wants to see the misery of never-ending war and conflict ended in the Middle East. It's a difficult issue and good people have tried to deal with it for years."

Sanders said the United States must play a role in supporting Israel while not ignoring the challenges of the Palestinian people.

"Of course we are going to support Israel, but you cannot ignore the needs of the Palestinian people in Gaza right now: poverty, unemployment, their community has been decimated," Sanders said. "You can't ignore that fact. And you can't just be only concerned about

For the sake iof Zion: 10,000 reasons why never to vote for Bernie Sanders

He is a long-serving US senator, who seeks the Democratic nomination for president and whose words influence the public and certainly his own supporters.

Democratic US presidential candidate and US Senator Bernie Sanders speaks at the NBC News - YouTube Democratic presidential candidates debate. (photo credit:REUTERS)

As his white hair and demeanor let on, Bernie Sanders is no youngster or political novice.

He is a long-serving US senator, who seeks the Democratic nomination for president and whose words influence the public and certainly his own supporters.

But there are some who would write off his dangerous and shocking statements in that interview with the New York Daily News – in which he claimed among other things that Israel killed 10,000 innocent Palestinians in the summer of 2014. Sanders later said he’d merely made a mistake about the figure, that should be forgiven, as a mistake made by a child or an amateur would be.

The Anti-Defamation League, the primary Jewish organization which publicly demanded that Sanders issue a correction, appears to have taken this approach. It “welcomed” Sanders’ statement that he accepted the much lower number of deaths in Gaza mentioned by one of the Daily News interviewers later on in the interview.

The ADL’s attitude is essentially this: Sanders confused some numbers and then accepted he was wrong. It could happen to anyone.

It is true that much of the outrage focused on the grossly inaccurate “10,000” number Sanders gave for civilian deaths in Gaza. The ADL’s initial statement, for example, mentioned that Sander’s said Israel’s use of force was “disproportionate,” but was primarily dedicated to the highly exaggerated number of civilian deaths. David Horovitz’s attention-grabbing headline was, “Seven Times Worse than Hamas: Bernie Sanders by the Numbers,” and his article focused mostly on the claim of 10,000 killed.

Indeed, if it were just a question of getting a number right, then the indignation of Jewish organizations and Israeli politicians would be partially misplaced, as Jerusalem Post op-ed editor Seth Frantzman suggested in his recent column. It would also follow that having publicly accepted that 10,000 Palestinian civilians were not killed, those dedicated to countering the defamation of Israel should drop the matter, as the ADL has.

But Sanders’ did not just confuse numbers.

His accusation against Israel was more damning than any number could be. Sanders claimed that Israel indiscriminately killed 10,000 civilians.

“I think most international observers would say that the attacks against Gaza were indiscriminate,” Sanders said. With the technology available, “they could have been more discriminate in terms of taking out weapons that were threatening them,” he argued.

Then he gave the 10,000 number. Then he again said, “I do believe and I don’t think I’m alone in believing that Israel’s force was more indiscriminate than it should have been.”

So more than merely inflating the number of those killed by a factor of seven, Sanders essentially accused Israel of mass murder.

As to his numerical error, this too cannot be so easily written off.

Even considering how many have been slaughtered in Syria just next door, killing 10,000 people is no less of a slaughter, especially if done in the span of a few weeks, as Sanders believed.

What seems to have confused some people about whether Sanders is responsible for his statements were the myriad disclaimers Sanders tacked on to his many accusations to give himself cover, just like the politician he pretends not to be.

“My recollection is”; “Does that sound right?”; “I don’t have... [an exact] number but I think it’s over 10,000”; “My understanding is that a whole lot of apartment houses were leveled”; “Hospitals, I think, were bombed”; “So yeah, I do believe and I don’t think I’m alone in believing....”

But by going on record and repeating, exaggerating, and basing a political position on an accusation of wrongdoing, Sanders essentially endorsed that accusation, regardless of the disclaimers. If Sanders was as unsure as he made himself out to be, he ought not to have repeated such outrageous accusations at all.

At best Sanders readily accepted a claim that Israel committed mass murder. Had he any sympathy for Israel, the 10,000 number would not have left his mouth.

He might also have been aware that accusations like the one he repeated and embellished are constantly hurled at Israel to demonize it and would not have added to the anti-Semitic mob’s cry.

This was not just a misfired synapse or a lack of precise information. It was a presumption about who is terrorizing who in the conflict between democratic Israel and Palestinian terrorists.

This is not something that a little education can fix, as Sanders’ appointment of new Jewish outreach director, Simone Zimmerman, has confirmed. (In a recent op-ed in Haaretz, she wrote, “No public relations trick can save Israel’s image. The problem isn’t with the hasbara [public diplomacy]”). Sanders himself is no ignoramus. He’s a political veteran and like Zimmerman, an idealist with a definite world view. Israel just does not figure too highly in that world view.

In the Daily News interview, Sanders said he thought Israel should be recognized as a Jewish state.

But when asked why, he didn’t say, as even President Barack Obama has said, that the Jewish people need a state of their own or that Israel is their ancestral homeland.

Instead, Sanders replied, “that’s the status quo.”

The flip side of such reasoning being that if it were not the status quo, Sanders would not necessarily support the existence of a Jewish state.

Sanders’ answer to a bigoted question about “Zionist Jews” a few days later at the Apollo in Harlem, New York, seems to confirm this. Sanders responded that he was “proud to be Jewish,” but he added the proviso that “you’re not going to find any candidate running for president, for example, to talk about Zionism” – which is the rationale for the existence of a Jewish state in the land of Zion.

Sanders has also made clear how, as president, he would relate to Israel.

“[T]o the degree that they want us to have a positive relationship,” Sanders said of Israel in his discussion with the Daily News, “I think they’re going to have to improve their relationship with the Palestinians.”

According to Sanders, support for Israel should depend on how it gets along with the people who refuse to recognize its right to exist and constantly wage terrorism campaigns against it.

Under president Bernie Sanders all Palestinian terrorist groups will have to do to destroy Israel’s relationship with the United States is wage war on Israel, hide among their own civilian population to create a high level of civilian casualties and claim Israel is firing indiscriminately.

President Sanders will not doubt such claims and may even parrot them in a press conference. Palestinian spokesmen like Saeb Erekat won’t even have to falsify the casualty numbers. President Sanders might make up a number for them.

Believing, publicly repeating, exaggerating and essentially endorsing blood libels against Israel, as Bernie Sanders did and as he may do as president, is no mere error of arithmetic or memory to be quickly forgiven and forgotten.