The Democratic National Committee has accepted Bernie Sanders-appointed pro-Palestinian activist James Zogby to its platform drafting committee in an attempt to ease interparty tensions.
Zogby, president and founder of the Arab American Institute (AAI) and an avid critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is one of five Sanders-sponsored members on the 15-member platform drafting committee. Though Zogby currently serves as co-chair of the Democratic resolution committee, he has never before helped draft the platform document, according to the Washington Post.
Zogby is a long-time Israel critic. In 1996, his organization AAI supported a D.C. rally at which protesters sported signage with phrases like “Peres and Hitler Are the Same. The Only Difference Is the Name” and “Israel the hate state.” Years later, in May of 2011, he compared the “plight of the Palestinians” to the Holocaust.
“To ignore this reality is to invite disaster,” he wrote. Zogby is also an advocate of the far left group Boycott Divest Sanctions (BDS), and has called the movement “a legitimate and moral response to Israeli policy” and Israel’s “bullying tactics.”
Sanders has not voiced opposition to BDS, though its supporters have caused him some grief. In April, the Vermont senator was forced to suspend his Jewish Outreach Coordinator, Simone Zimmerman, after she posted inflammatory remarks about Netanyahu on Facebook. “F-ck you, Bibi,” Zimmerman wrote in the March 2015 post, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Zogby, too, has called Netanyahu “weak,” “fearful,” and a bully with “shameful” behavior. He also said that Bibi’s 1996 election win was “tragic” and compared it to the Communist Party winning in the Soviet Union.
Zogby’s left-wing stance on Israel falls in line with Sanders’, who said in April that the country’s self-defense during the 2014 Gaza war was “disproportionate.” Sanders also mistakenly recalled that Israel “indiscriminately” killed “10,000 innocent people,” in the Gaza war, nearly five times the United Nations estimate.
Zogby told the Post Monday that Sanders desired a solution that met “the needs of both” the Israelis and Palestinians, like most of the Democratic party. Still, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s stance on Israel stands in contrast to her left-wing opponent. For one, Clinton has condemned BDS, calling it “one-sided, discriminatory, and unfair.” She has also defended Israel’s right to self-defense, saying that the Israelis “do not invite the rockets raining down on their towns and villages.”
Despite Hillary and Bernie’s substantial policy difference, Zogby does have a history with Clinton’s husband. In 1998, then-President Bill Clinton called Zogby “a remarkable voice for calm and clarity” and thanked him for years of advice.
Zogby’s appointment comes after a week of tension between the Sanders campaign and DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who, Sanders supporters allege, has rigged the party system in Hillary Clinton’s favor.
The Democratic National Committee did not respond to a request for comment.
This article has been updated for clarity.
