Now they’re gunning for Bernie…

JVL Introduction

In a shabby piece of political partisanship, Deborah E. Lipstadt, distinguished scholar of the Holocaust, turns her guns on Bernie Sanders for being – wait for it – blind to antisemitism on the left.

Her attack is full of distortion and vindictive misreading and her occasional “evidence” is, bizarrely, largely from Britain and is presented as revealed truth: Jeremy Corbyn and co “have not only cavorted with antisemites and Holocaust deniers but have adamantly refused to take antisemitism seriously and have outrageously blamed the victims for their own travail”; Corbyn is “openly supporting violence” when he  “welcomes Hamas and Hezbollah leaders” (ignoring his decades long and repeatedly stated conviction that you have to talk to enemies as well as friends if you want to make peace). BDS’s founders also get it in the neck, “supporting violence” with their “call for the destruction of the state of Israel”.

And Sanders is then accused of using “antisemitism as a cudgel to score political points”!

There is a Yiddish word for it  – chutzpah.

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Addition: Bernie Sanders’  statement on antisemitism follows the Lipstadt article below

This article was originally published by Forward on Tue 12 Nov 2019. Read the original here.