The anti-Israel senator has not attended a single meeting in 18 years.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
An effort is underway to remove Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) from the board of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, The New York Post reported Monday.
Sanders, who is Jewish, was appointed in 2007 as one of 10 congressional representatives on the Museum Council, drawn evenly from the House and Senate and from both parties.
The council’s other 55 members are nonpolitical appointees selected by the US president to serve five-year terms.
According to the paper, which examined attendance records, the lawmaker has not attended a single meeting in 18 years.
“There are two large meetings every year where people fly in from all over the country,” said board member Robert Garson, president of the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. “But Bernie Sanders couldn’t be bothered to walk across the road in DC.”
Garson and 11 other council members finally had enough, and wrote a letter last week to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) requesting that Sanders be replaced.
They also hinted to his repeated charge that Israel committed genocide in the Gaza Strip while at war with Hamas terrorists – claims Jerusalem categorically denies – as making him ill-suited for the position.
“Some of Senator Sanders’ public statements regarding contemporary genocidal conflicts, including characterizations widely viewed as inconsistent with the principles of Holocaust remembrance and genocide prevention that the Museum exists to uphold, have raised concerns among Council members about his alignment with the mission of the Museum and its governing body,” the letter stated.
“In the current context, with Jew hatred and Holocaust distortion rising globally, it is imperative that Senate-appointed representatives on the Council are fully engaged and steadfastly supportive of its mission,” it added.
Stating that the matter wasn’t personal, the signatories said Sanders should go because having a senator on the board who does not participate regularly “or is publicly positioned in ways that many of his colleagues believe detract from the Museum’s core educational and commemorative purposes” undermines the council’s ability to fulfill its mission.
Jimmy Resnick, a Florida-based signatory who founded the Miami Beach Holocaust Memorial and was appointed to the board by President Donald Trump, told the Post that Sanders’ seat was effectively wasted.
“He doesn’t care — it’s like a nonexistent position,” Resnick said. “So why take up a seat that someone else would actually show up for?”
Besides charging Israel with committing war crimes in Gaza, Sanders has compared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hamas and tried to block US arms sales and other aid to the Jewish state during the war.
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