Yossi Melman, who in 1990 interviewed for Ha’aretz the then candidate running to represent the State of Vermont in Congress Bernard Sanders, no longer works for Ha’aretz, and so he published his short memoir of “my talks with Bernie” with the competition, Ma’ariv. Melman, who was senior correspondent on national security, intelligence and strategic issues for Ha’aretz, is considered left-leaning and supports a Palestinian state. As such, he was bowled over by the notion that an American Socialist was hoping to make it to Congress, and his interview, in February 1990, was aptly headlined, “The First Socialist.”
Last Thursday, Melman read (in Ha’aretz) that several media outlets were eager to solve the riddle of what Kibbutz had been home to the presidential hopeful during his stay in Israel in 1963. Sanders’ official bio did not mention the name of the kibbutz, which led to ever spiraling speculations, including a rumor that Bernie had left some of his genetic material in Israel, which is why he’d rather not reveal the details of his visit.
Melman contacted the Ha’aretz archive and asked to pull his 1990 interview, and he quickly announced to the world, via Twitter, that Sanders spent part of 1963 in Kibutz Sha’arei Ha’amakim, which belonged to the Hashomer Hatzair movement—about as far left as you could go back then in Israel before you turned Communist. Melman reports that his clarification tweet was accepted with gratitude by everyone, including the NY Times, Washington Post, and even his colleagues in the Israeli media, who are not renowned for saying nice things about anyone, especially a fellow journalist.
“I received my 15 minutes of Fame,” Melman writes. He then begins to relate those wild and crazy days in Harvard during the first Bush administration, where both he and Sanders had been engaged in different study programs. “He was then Mayor of Burlington, the largest city in Vermont, and was planning to run for Congress, after having lost an earlier attempt.”
Vermont is one of those tiny US states, population-wise, who send two senators but only one congressman to Washington, Melman informs his Middle Eastern readers. He confesses that he was attracted to Sanders not because of his Jewish origins, but because he insisted on defining himself as “a proud Socialist,” which in post-Reagan America was not something you advertised necessarily if you ran for political office.
Regarding his Israeli experience, Sanders confessed to his Israeli interviewer that after returning to the US in 1963 he had forgotten all about Israel, Zionism and Judaism. He was active in radical left-wing circles, and was even nicknamed “Sandernista,” as in the Nicaraguan leftist group, the Sandinista (FSLN), which governed from 1979 to 1990.
Here’s something Melman remembers from the interview which will surely not go over well in Silver Springs, never mind Flatbush Avenue: “During the interview he told me that ‘as a Jew I’m ashamed of Israel’s involvement on our continent. It’s embarrassing that of all countries, it’s Israel selling weapons to the worst central- and south-American regimes. Why do you have to be mercenaries for the American Administration?’ Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said, ‘I’d like to see the US, too, pushing Israel more.’ Nevertheless, despite his criticism, I never got the impression in all our conversations that he is anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist.”