Bernie Sanders isn’t following the usual path to attract the Jewish vote in New York.
While Ted Cruz and John Kasich tour matzo factories and Hillary Clinton reminisces about her Israeli friends, Sanders has hired a pro-BDS activist — favoring boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel — to lead his newly launched “Jews for Bernie” organization.
Just a few years out of University of California at Berkley, the campaign’s new Jewish outreach director Simone Zimmerman spent her early twenties actively protesting the 2014 war in Gaza and opposing what she described as the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.
Old social media posts and op-eds show her calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an “arrogant, deceptive, cynical, manipulative a—hole” and telling Democrats who support Clinton’s “hawkish” policies to “wake the f—- up.”
Zimmerman opposed federal funding for Israeli projects in the West Bank. She also has advocated for the Jewish group Hillel to allow participation by organizations that support the BDS movement and backs the pro-BDS Jewish Voices for Peace. During the Gaza war, she founded a group called IfNotNow that spent the summer protesting outside the offices of American Jewish groups.
Since her appoitnment to the Sanders campaign earlier this week, major English language newspapers in Israel, such as Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post and Arutz Sheva have run articles and critical op-eds discussing Zimmerman’s views and their implications for the Sanders campaign.
When reached by the Washington Examiner, Zimmerman refused to talk about her role on the campaign. When asked about Zimmerman’s prior activism, one Sanders staffer told the Examiner, “I don’t see anything wrong. She’s just doing her job.”
Sanders was the only candidate still in the race to skip the annual AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, D.C Instead, he remained in Utah, where he gave a brief policy speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, during which he spoke of both the importance of Palestinian rights and the importance of standing with Israel.
The Vermont senator caused outrage in the pro-Israel community during an April 4 meeting with the New York Daily News editorial board when he cited inflated mortality statistics from the Gaza War, claiming Israel “indiscriminately” killed over 10,000 Palestinians. Later, the Democratic socialist admitted that his facts might not have been accurate. According to Hamas, only 1,462 civilians were killed, and Israeli estimates show even smaller numbers.
After the interview, former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren demanded an apology from Sanders, saying he “accused us of blood libel.” The Anti Defamation League also called on Sanders to apologize and retract his statement.
If anything, Zimmerman has been even more critical of Israel. “No public relations trick can save Israel’s image,” she wrote in a February 2015 op-ed in Haaretz. “The problem isn’t with the hasbara [public relations]. The problem is nearly 50 years of occupation. The problem is rampant racism in Israeli society. The problem is attacks on human rights defenders by extremists and by the state. The problem is a Jewish establishment that ignores or justifies all of this.”
Clinton is more popular than Sanders among Jewish voters. He trails Clinton 60-38 in popularity, according to a poll released this week. And with four days left until the New York primary, Sanders favorable/unfavorable ratings among Jewish Democratic voters is 60/26, whereas the former secretary of state’s favorable/ unfavorable ratings among New York Jewish Democrats is 80/19.
On Thursday night, the two candidates will face off on the debate stage in Sanders’ hometown of Brooklyn, N.Y. Clinton continues to lead Sanders among all Democratic voters in the state 51.6-39.3, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average for the state.
