The Ambiguous Faith of Bernie Sanders

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
 

Bernie Sanders is the first American Jew to mount a credible campaign for the White House.

Yet the American Jewish community has not rallied around him, nor has there been any Jewish groundswell of public pride. There are no calls for Jews to support their fellow Jew.

It’s because Sanders has almost nothing to do with the American Jewish community or its organizations and concerns.

Though his parents were European Jews -- his father came to America at age 17 -- and lived in the very Jewish milieu of Brooklyn, New York, a campaign ad describes Sanders simply as “the son of a Polish immigrant.”

Rabbi Michael Paley of New York, who knew Sanders in Vermont, was surprised by this. “Nobody in Poland would have considered Bernie a Pole,” Rabbi Paley said.

But Bernie Sanders is more than part of the growing category that Jewish demographers identify as “just Jewish.” He is a modern example of a specific historical type: what Isaac Deutscher, the biographer of the Soviet Communist Leon Trotsky, referred to as the “non-Jewish Jew.” 

These were people who became socialists, Communists, and anarchists by fervently embracing “universalist” ideals, and leaving behind the “parochialism” of Judaism (and, of course, Zionism). 

They defined themselves by their unconditional solidarity with the persecuted and oppressed.

Following in the footsteps of earlier Jewish radicals, Sanders was caught up in the left-wing movements of the 1960s. While at the University of Chicago, he joined radical student organizations like the Young People’s Socialist League and the Congress of Racial Equality.

After college, he was part of a mini-migration to Vermont of socially conscious urbanites going “back to the land.”

His political career in Vermont began with the Liberty Union Party, which grew out of the anti-war and civil rights movements. 

Today, Sanders preaches his own secular brand of social justice gospel. Socialism, not an attenuated Judaism, is his real religion.

At a rally last October, Sanders told his listeners that racism is a tool that politicians and the wealthy elites use to keep workers divided. By pitting black against white, men against women, and straight against gay, “that’s how the rich got richer while everybody else was fighting each other.”

This is a speech that, with few modifications, could have been made by any number of socialists 80 years ago!

In his Middle East policy, Sanders supports a two-state solution guaranteeing Israel’s right to exist as well as a Palestinian homeland, and also backed the administration’s deal to end sanctions against Iran. 

Gal Beckerman, a former opinion editor at the Forward, the New York left-of-center Jewish newspaper, has suggested that Sanders is actually representative of the direction the American Jewish community is headed.

“A majority of American Jews have tried hard to balance their liberalism with an identity that was also connected to tradition and religion, through Reform and Conservative Judaism, and an allegiance to Israel,” he contended in a February 15 New York Times article. But a 2013 Pew Research Center survey “suggests that the socialist worldview is winning out.” 

When asked what it means to be Jewish, 69 per cent of respondents answered “leading an ethical life,” and 56 per cent chose “working for justice and equality.” Only 19 per cent said it had to do with “observing Jewish law.” Support for Israel has also declined.

But this is “winning” by losing! All of these Jews with no connection to Judaism and Israel are, at most, one- or two-generation Jews. “Jewishness” for them is a cultural memory, at best, one that remains part of a childhood nostalgia revolving around food and song, and won’t be passed on.

Certainly their grandchildren most likely won’t be Jewish, as almost all of their children will have married non-Jews.

Such people, like many before them through the centuries, can be filed under the label “l’origine juif,” as the French say. But without actual Jews, not simply those who were born Jewish, there can be no Judaism or a Jewish people.

Germany Revises Refugee Policy

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
 

Germany’s love affair with the seemingly endless numbers of refugees from Syria and other nations entering the country seems to have reached its limits, and Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under mounting criticism for her asylum policies.

Opponents of Merkel’s decision last year to allow more than one million asylum seekers into the country have been vocal in demanding a less welcoming policy and they seem to be having their way.

The backlash gained momentum after the New Year’s Eve assaults against women in Cologne by men largely described as Arab or North African in appearance. Critics claim the government is now failing at its most basic tasks: protecting its citizens and upholding security and public order.

Some 40 per cent of Germans want Merkel to resign because of her handling of the crisis, according to one recently published poll.

Indeed, there is a very real chance her three-party coalition government, which includes the Social Democrats and the Christian Social Union (CSU) of Bavaria along with her own Christian Democratic Union (CDU), could unravel. 

So the German cabinet has taken steps toward tightening asylum rules, including a two-year ban on family reunifications. They will now exclude three North African countries – Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia -- from their asylum list. Refugees from those countries can now be sent home. 

It will also become easier to deport migrants who commit crimes. As well, asylum seekers will have to provide small contributions from their monthly stipends to help cover the costs of integration courses.

All this comes against the backdrop of forthcoming elections in three German states, Baden-Wurttemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Saxony-Anhalt. 

Opinion polls currently suggest that an anti-immigrant, right-wing party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), founded three years ago, will enter all three state legislatures. In the past two years, the party has won seats in five other German states.

A political movement further to its right, the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (PEGIDA), formed in 2014, demands even more restrictive immigration rules, particularly against Muslims. It has been holding major demonstrations in various German cities; one rally in Dresden last October drew nearly 20,000 people.

Merkel’s description of them as having “prejudice, coldness, even hatred in their hearts” hasn’t had much effect.

Sigmar Gabriel, the German vice-chancellor and a Social Democrat, has accused PEGIDA of having become “a reservoir of racist xenophobia” and the “street arm” of the National Democratic Party (NPD), which is widely seen as neo-Nazi. 

Nonetheless, he admitted that “there is certainly a growth of populism on the right which has to do with parties and the social elites too often believing that their debates are identical with those of normal people.”

Horst Seehofer, the CSU minister-president (premier) of the state of Bavaria, has been pressuring Berlin to tighten its liberal policies. (Many of the migrants enter Germany at the Bavarian border with Austria.) 

“If our asylum policy isn't corrected,” Seehofer has warned, then “the existence of the CDU and CSU” is threatened.

Markel was a loyal citizen of the Communist East German Democratic Republic right up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Has she retained some of its “internationalist” ideology?

The Death of Two Dictators

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Francisco Guillermo Flores of El Salvador, a country of some seven million people, who was facing charges of diverting $15 million in contributions for earthquake victims to his personal and political party accounts, died on Jan. 30, at age 56.

Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores, a Guatemalan brigadier general who presided over some of the bloodiest years of his country’s civil war before seizing power in a 1983 coup, died Feb. 1. He was 85.

Flores was a member of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), the conservative party that has controlled the presidency of El Salvador for two decades, beginning in 1989. He took office in 1999 and was in power until 2004.

He had been under house arrest since November 2014, accused of embezzling donations from the Taiwanese government that were intended for earthquake survivors in 2001. Flores contended that El Salvador enjoyed “a privileged relationship” with Taiwan because it backed that country’s application for membership in the United Nations.

In December, a Salvadoran judge ordered Flores to stand trial on charges of pocketing $5 million personally and dispersing $10 million to his party’s coffers.

When he was inaugurated for a five-year term in 1999 at the age of 39, Flores was the youngest president in the Americas.

After he was elected, Flores paid homage to a founder of his party, Roberto d’Aubuisson, a National Guard officer accused of many right-wing murders, including the killing of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980, during the country’s vicious civil war, in which an unknown number of people “were disappeared” during the conflict, and more than 75,000 were killed.

His government was characterized by its close alignment with United States policies. He authorized the deployment of 3,000 Salvadoran troops to Iraq in support of U.S. forces in 2003. Flores was also responsible for the Salvadoran adoption of the United States dollar as its official currency.

Guatemala’s Mejia Victores was in a long line of military dictators. From 1960 to 1996, more than 200,000 civilians were killed during a civil war between government forces and leftist guerillas. More than 80 per cent of the victims were Mayans, who make up about half of Guatemala’s population of 16 million.

Almost half of the war’s human rights violations occurred in 1982, when General Efrain Rios Montt seized power and made Mejia Victores his defence minister. Seventeen months later, Mejia Victores ousted Ríos Montt. But political killings continued.

The government, under pressure from the United States and other nations, did move to reform the political system, and Mejia Victores announced elections for the framing of a new constitution and for the presidency.

But shortly before leaving office in 1986, he issued a decree granting amnesty to all those accused of political crimes and human rights violations committed during his and his predecessor’s rule. The law was repealed a decade later.

In 2011, Mejia Victores was prosecuted in Guatemala on charges of crimes against humanity for the killings of thousands of indigenous Guatemalans by soldiers under his command. He was ruled unfit to stand trial because of a stroke.

The two countries have recently moved along different political trajectories. Salvador Sanchez Cerén, a former guerrilla fighter, won the 2014 presidential election in El Salvador as the candidate of the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).

But in Guatemala, James Ernesto Morales was elected president last year under the banner of the right-wing National Convergence Front (FCN-Nacion), a party with close ties to the military.

Jewish Students Face Problems at York University

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
 

On many campuses across the country, pro-Israel students face a well-financed juggernaut of anti-Israel groups whose sole focus is to demonize Israel.

Toronto’s York University, in particular, has not been a hospitable place for Jewish students for the past few years. Many feel that a climate of anti-Semitism, masquerading as “anti-Zionism,” pervades the university. Some students have feared for their physical safety at times.

Things took an even uglier turn this past January. A pro-Palestinian acrylic painting on display over one of the entrance foyers to the Student Centre since 2013, entitled “Palestinian Roots,” has drawn criticism.

It shows a person looking at a bulldozer close to a building while holding rocks, wearing what looks like a Palestinian flag with a map of Israel without its borders – in other words, a map lacking the “Green Line” that divides Israel from the West Bank.

 

At the bottom of the mural, the words “justice” and “peace” can be seen along with other text. The artist, Ahmad Al Abid, is a 2013 graduate of York.

Gayle McFadden, chair of the York University Student Centre, sees nothing wrong with this. She said the student’s piece was “an artist’s interpretation of what’s currently going on in Palestine.” 

She added the usual boilerplate: “Anti-Semitism is directly against people of the Jewish faith, and I think that is abysmal and horrible, but critics of the state of Israel are not that.” The work is “merely critical of the state of Israel and its continued occupation of Palestine.” 

McFadden of course thinks she knows better than the Jewish students do as to what is and isn’t “anti-Semitic!”

Paul Bronfman, the chair and CEO of William F. White International Inc., a provider of movie and theatrical production equipment, was less sanguine when he recently learned of the mural. 

His company has provided thousands of dollars of equipment and technical services, as well as access to seminars, student lectures, trade shows and open houses, to the university.

He contacted York University, but was told the student centre is its own legal entity. Administrators, he complained, “gave me a bunch of political rhetoric” and “nonsense.”

Bronfman told York University president Mamdouh Shoukri that the school would be “persona non grata” until the painting was removed. “It’s not artistry; it’s just pure hate,” he contended.

 “I’m finally putting my money where my mouth is. I’m withdrawing all of our student filmmaker support,” Bronfman declared. 

 “This poster is more than a mere piece of art -- it is propaganda, and a clear call to murder,” Avi Benlolo, president of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, has stated, adding that anti-Semitic attitudes are already “rampant” at the university. 

Benlolo said he had heard of Jewish students who no longer wear overt displays of their faith, such as Star of David necklaces or kippas.

In 2013, the York Federation of Students officially endorsed the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign, a push to impose economic and academic sanction on Israel.

Even ordinary Jewish, events are routinely targeted by protesters. Last December, a Chanukah get-together sponsored by the Hillel Jewish student group at York was disrupted by supporters of Students Against Israeli Apartheid. It is, of course, a Jewish religious holiday more than 2,000 years old.

 “If a mural condoning violence against any other nation was hung on campus, it would rightfully be condemned. Only when it pertains to Jews do we see this disturbing double standard,” remarked Danielle Shachar, a fourth-year psychology student, describing York as “a breeding ground for violence, hate and discrimination against Israel and its student supporters.”

She indicated that it leaves her feeling unsafe, especially on a campus where there has been violence against Jewish students in the past.

Natalie Slavat, the president of the York Hillel, asserted that “while the intentions of the artist are ambiguous at best, the way in which this piece is perceived by many Jewish students like myself is anything but vague.” In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “stone-throwing means one thing: Violence.”

Is the painting ant-Semitic? This is a matter of conjecture, because technically it is only criticizing Israel. But this may have become a distinction without a difference, since so-called anti-Zionist attacks more and more morph into simple anti-Semitism. I’m inclined to agree with the Jewish students, who certainly see it as creating a chilly climate for them at York. Perhaps they should have the last word.

Are Trump, Sanders Channeling Roosevelts?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
 

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the two “outsiders” contesting, respectively, the Republican and Democratic nominations for the American presidency, each seem to be channeling a President Roosevelt – just different ones.

Trump is an economic nationalist who advocates a robust and nativist foreign policy – a platform very similar to that of President Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican in the White House from 1901 to1908.

Sanders wants to recreate the liberalism of Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1930s “New Deal.”

The multimillionaire Trump comes out of the early 20^th century “titans of industry” tradition, while the socialist Sanders is the child of the 1960s New Left, which was itself an attempt to recreate earlier American revolutionary movements for economic, racial and social change. 

While at the University of Chicago, Sanders joined radical student organizations like the Young People’s Socialist League and the Congress of Racial Equality.

Both New York-born men are secular and neither makes much use of religious imagery. 

Trump battles socially conservative evangelical Christians like Ted Cruz and “establishment” figures like Jeb Bush. Sanders has single-handedly taken on the well-oiled Hillary Clinton political machine, with only “grass roots” financial backing. 

Trump, who has never held elected office, is no dyed-in-the-wool Republican. He espouses socially liberal positions at odds with many in his party – indeed, his views have been sneered at by Cruz as being “New York values.” 

Like Teddy Roosevelt, Trump portrays himself as a “man of action.” (TR was a soldier in the 1898 Spanish-American War and one of its most conspicuous heroes.) Fred Trump, Donald’s father, told his three sons to be “killers.”

Trump supports the capitalist system but, again like Roosevelt, sees it as being in need of reform, in order to “make America great again.” 

Theodore Roosevelt believed that America should “speak softly and carry a big stick” in the realm of international affairs and that its president should be willing to use force, clearly something Trump agrees with.

Trump accuses the country’s elites of selling out America’s economic interests on behalf of a vague notion of “globalization” – one that has devastated domestic industries and has cost millions of workers well-paying jobs.

A populist, Sanders wants to revitalize the left and advance equality in the country. He also wants to reduce the power of the financial plutocrats on Wall Street who now dominate the economy and “buy” politicians through contributing billions of dollars in campaign donations. 

Sanders is the only candidate who prioritizes campaign finance reform and appeals to those who feel the entire democratic system has broken down.

As well, Sanders advocates major reforms, including making public colleges and universities tuition-free, instituting universal health care, and transforming a criminal justice system that over-incarcerates people. 

On foreign policy, Sanders is a “dove.” He advocates abandoning policies that favor unilateral military action and pre-emptive war, ones that make the United States “the de facto policeman of the world.”

In effect, both men are independents. Teddy Roosevelt left office after 1908 but, displeased with his Republican successor, William Howard Taft, in 1912 he bolted to form the Progressive (“Bull Moose”) Party. (Roosevelt had once referred to himself as being “as strong as a bull moose.”) This split the Republican vote, resulting in victory for the Democrat Woodrow Wilson. 

Trump, too, often seems a bull in a china shop, his loyalty to the Republican Party paper-thin. Might he, like Roosevelt, do the same if he loses the nomination?

As for Sanders, he was not even a member of the Democratic Party until last November. His political career in Vermont began with the Liberty Union Party, which grew out of the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. 

Either of these candidates, if successful, may overturn the American political system as we know it.