(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.
