Bernie's Suspended Jewish Outreach Aide

Simone [Zimmerman] was suspended from her job in the Sanders campaign, ostensibly for a Facebook post last year in which she called [Benjamin] Netanyahu “an arrogant, deceptive, cynical, manipulative asshole. He is the embodiment of the ugliest national hubris and tone-deafness towards the international community. F**k you.” (A few hours later, she erased the profanity).

Perhaps Simone chose the wrong words. Perhaps she should have called Netanyahu “one of the most obnoxious individuals you’re going to come into - just a liar and a cheat,” as former Clinton administration press secretary Joe Lockhart did. Or she could have simply called him a “liar,” like former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Or she could have used the term popular in the British foreign office: “armored-plated bullshitter.” Or she could have called him a “corrupt individual, a contentious liar who is ruining everything that is good about our society.” Those words came from Leah Rabin. 

After Simone’s words came to light, the Sanders campaign came under what the New York Times called “concerted and ultimately overwhelming pressure from American Jewish leaders” to fire her.

[...]

Simone Zimmerman cares about Israel. She cares about the Jewish people. She even cares about American Jewish organizations. And she believes there should be a space in those organizations for moral opposition to Israeli policies, the kind of moral opposition once offered by communal leaders like Nahum Goldmann, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg and Rabbi Arthur Schindler. Treat people like her as the enemy and you make enemies of the best of the younger American Jewish generation.

[...]

[Simone is like other Millenial American Jews: they fell a strong] allegiance to the Jewish people. They care more about the organized American Jewish community because they were raised in more affiliated, more traditional Jewish homes. Simone, for instance, is the product of Jewish day school, Jewish camp and Conservative Judaism’s youth movement, United Synagogue Youth.

[...]

Simone came to Berkeley expecting to do AIPAC-style Israel advocacy. But at a certain point, the tension between her liberalism and the American Jewish establishment’s Zionism snapped. For many of the Jewish Millennials [...] , that rupture came as the result of interactions with Palestinians: interactions that made them confront the human consequences of holding millions of people as non-citizens, without free movement, under military law, for almost fifty years.

[...]

I’m not worried about Simone Zimmerman. She’ll do fine. I’m worried about a community that punishes its children for challenging its lies.

  Haaretz: Peter Beinart

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.