At a Bernie Sanders Sunday appearance at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, a Black audience member berated the presidential candidate over his relationship with “Zionist Jews.” John Prince, who came to the event wearing a Black Lives Matter pin, yelled. “What is your relationship with your Jewish community?”
Prince explained, “You studied in Israel for a year (Bernie said he was in Israel for a year, but didn’t study). As you know, the Zionist Jews—I don’t mean to offend anybody—they run the Federal Reserve, they run Wall Street, they run everything.”
Obviously, Prince was channeling every known modern-day anti-Semite, from Henry Ford down to David Duke and Louis Farrakhan. The answer any Jewish person—left, right or center—would have expected from Bernie was: “You are an anti-Semite and you don’t deserve an answer, you sniveling bastard.”
He could also come up with a few references as to how those very rabid accusations ended up with transports of millions of Jewish “rulers of the world” into the ovens. There was a lot he could have said. Instead, Bernie, after mouthing the obligatory “I’m proud to be Jewish…” capitulated to the anti-Semitic scum, after a bit of mayhem in the audience, “But you’re not gonna’ find any candidate running for president — for example — [willing to talk] about Zionism and the Middle East. I am a strong defender of Israel, but I also believe that we have got to pay attention to the needs of the Palestinian people. They’re all wonderful people and I’ve met them on both sides of the issue. And there are bad people on both sides of the issue. And if we are gonna’ bring peace, hopefully, God willing, in the Middle East, we’re gonna’ have to treat both sides with respect and equality. All right?”
As Daniel Greenfield pointed out Sunday, the anti-Semitic “only Black lives matter” John Prince in the Apollo crowd didn’t ask about Israel or the peace process. “He was using Zionist in a generic anti-Semitic context. Sanders got applauded when he said that he was proud to be Jewish.”
But Bernie explained to him: “No, no, no, no, no, that’s not what you’re asking. No that’s not what you’re asking,” meaning the Black anti-Semite, who was also yelling, “They’re buying Harlem,” was actually inquiring about whether Bibi Netanyahu is prepared to invite Mahmoud Abbas to embark on the next phase in the negotiations.
“He could have denounced anti-Semitism the way he scores points denouncing other forms of bigotry, including Islamophobia,” Greenfield wrote. “But Bernie Sanders didn’t talk about anti-Semitism. Instead he used the opportunity to distance himself from the accusation of Zionism by talking about “equality” for both sides. And that was pathetic and cowardly.”
Prince continued the conversation with reporters afterward, as the Observer reported, quoting him as saying, “If you’re in Bed-Stuy, Williamsburg, you see them—they’re playing Monopoly. He’s part of them [Bernie the Jew], yes, he’s part of them. That’s like me saying ‘I don’t want to help the blacks out when I get the presidency.”
There’s actually one strong common denominator between the concerns of Prince in Harlem and Black Brooklyn and Arabs in Judea and Samaria — they don’t want Jews buying up property where they are. Otherwise, it wasn’t the peace process Prince was after, it was the Jew. And Bernie let him, actually encouraged him, by, essentially, being too afraid to challenge his hateful views.