Sarsour: I’m Proud To Help Elect Sanders As First Jewish President

Activist Linda Sarsour speaks during a protest on February 7, 2018 in Washington D.C. Image by John Moore/Getty Images

By Marcy Oster September 9, 2019

(JTA) — Controversial political activist Linda Sarsour has been named a surrogate for Bernie Sander’s 2020 presidential campaign.

Sarsour, a Palestinian-American woman who is a supporter of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, spoke on behalf of Sanders over the weekend in Brooklyn, New York, according to a video excerpt of the speech. The video in which she is identified as a “Civil Rights Activist, 2020 Bernie Surrogate” was tweeted by the campaign

“At a time of a startling rise in white nationalism and anti-Semitism, I would be so proud to win, but also to make history and elect the first Jewish American president this country has ever seen and for his name to be Bernard Sanders,” Sarsour says in the video.

In the more than a minute-long excerpt, Sarsour also says that Sanders believes in a foreign policy “that sees Palestinians as human beings deserving of human rights and self-determination.” She adds that rhe candidate does not ask how much foreign policy and heath care and higher education for all will cost, “because only people who don’t believe we deserve these things will ask us how to pay for things like health care, but never ask us how to pay for endless and unjust wars.”

Sarsour is a co-founder of the Women’s March, which lost the support of some Jewish women after she was accused of allowing anti-Semitism to pervade the movement and to marginalize Jewish women, and failed to immediately condemn Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan for his anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Sanders has called himself “proudly Jewish” but is a critic of Israel and its right-wing government, as well as its treatment of the Palestinians.

“I would be so proud to win, but also to make history and elect the first Jewish American president this country has ever seen and for his name to be Bernard Sanders.” –@lsarsour pic.twitter.com/INPRlvmMur

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) September 6, 2019

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’re in the middle of our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we have a very ambitious goal of $127,000 by April 21.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO