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I Worked for Bernie Sanders. The Democratic Party Is Turning Against the Jews.
Joel Rubin
August 21, 2026

…The reason I was hired [by Bernie Sanders] was clear to me. The campaign understood that Jews—who have long voted overwhelmingly for Democrats—were an important constituency for Sanders, and they worried that anti-Zionist voices in his coalition would jeopardize his Jewish support. But very quickly after joining, I realized there had been a profound misunderstanding on the part of the campaign team: Many of the activists trying to get Sanders elected—and who the campaign depended on—were not looking for a candidate who supported Israel’s existence. That I did was a letdown for them, but one that they had to swallow. At the time, I assumed these were outliers—a vocal fringe the campaign would eventually outgrow. But I was wrong. They were a sign of where the campaign, and the Democratic Party as a whole, was rapidly heading: toward a status quo in which the price of belonging to the party is to explicitly distance yourself from Israel, denounce the mainstream Jewish institutions that support the Jewish state, and accept the premise that Zionism itself is incompatible with progressive politics. READ MORE

JEWISH INSIDER Van Hollen, Kaine, Sanders plan to force vote on Israeli policy in West Bank Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and eight Democratic colleagues plan to force a vote in the Senate in the coming weeks to require the State Department to produce a report for Congress on violence by settlers and Israeli forces in the West Bank, including killings and detentions of Americans. If the resolution were to pass — which is unlikely — and the State Department were to fail to produce the report within 30 days, most U.S. security assistance to Israel would be cut off. After such a report was delivered, any senator would also be able to force a vote on cutting off aid to Israel.