2016: Democratic front-runner Bernie Sanders says concerns about his honeymoon trip to the USSR in the ’80s are “silly.” He’ll have a harder time explaining his months-long stay at a hardcore Stalinist camp in the ’60s.
It’s clear the self-avowed socialist is even further left than he has admitted. Fifty years ago, during the height of the Cold War, he sought out communist indoctrination.
The Israeli press earlier this month broke the story that Sanders, who is Jewish, spent several months at an Israeli commune co-founded by a Soviet spy. The revelation is just now wending its way through the American media, where it’s been confirmed by none other than the New York Times, though the pro-Democrat paper predictably buried the story on its back pages.
As a college student in 1963, Sanders was a guest of the Hashomer Hatzair, a Marxist youth movement founded by communist Ya’akov Hazan, who called the Soviet Union a second homeland and eulogized Stalin as “the great leader and extolled commander. We lower our flag in grief in memory of the great revolutionary fighter (and) architect of socialist construction.”
Ignoring Stalin’s atrocities, Hazan oozed: “His huge historical achievements will guide generations in their march toward the reign of socialism and communism the world over.”
The Marxist movement Sanders joined pledged its allegiance to the Soviet Union and was described as “Stalinist” as late as 1969 — well after Sanders’ visit.
Sanders has acknowledged staying at a “kibbutz;” but there are many of them in Israel, and he and his campaign have refused to ID which one he attended. The Tel Aviv paper Haaretz dug up the records, revealing the exact camp — Sha’ar Ha’amakim — and noted that it was founded in 1935 during Stalin’s reign.
The Times reported that Sanders’ camp viewed the USSR as a model society worthy of adoption, and often flew the Red flag at its events — the same flag, notably, that Sanders would later hang in his office as mayor of Burlington, Vt., according to the New York Post.
The Times says Sanders and his comrades would farm in the morning and then partake in “cultural events” in the afternoon. Did he sing the communist workers’ anthem? Pay homage to Lenin and Stalin?
Voters ought to know. Only, the media aren’t interested in finding out. So far no debate moderator has asked Sanders about his commie camp days. Strikingly, even Fox News let Sanders off the hook in a rare interview last Sunday.
Sanders has a long resume of radicalism. Here’s the rest of Sanders’ subversive past the media are keeping under wraps:
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