Hillel Schenker has spent his adult life in Israel, having made Aliya from Brooklyn to a Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz in 1963 — the same year that Bernie Sanders spent about three months on an HH kibbutz as a foreign volunteer. Hillel has long been a journalist and peace activist, and is currently chair of the Israeli chapter of Democrats Abroad. A frequent blogger for the Times of Israel, his latest post is to counter “the red-baiting of Hashomer Hatzair and the fact that Bernie Sanders spent three months in 1963 on such a ‘subversive’ kibbutz.” Click here to read this post.
Other relevant articles on this matter include a news report in the Times of Israel: “50 years on, Bernie Sanders still champions values of his Israeli kibbutz” beginning with the tag line: “Shaar Haamakim was a bastion of socialism when the Vermont senator volunteered there in the ’60s, and continues to preserve ‘social democratic values’.”
A piece by A. Daniel Roth in The Forward also celebrates the progressive heritage of kibbutz life and the Hashomer Hatzair movement: “Bernie Sanders Should Embrace His Kibbutz Past — Not Shrink From It.” Daniel, originally from Toronto, was a leader of Hashomer Hatzair-North America, before he made Aliya a few years ago; like Hillel, he now lives in Tel Aviv.
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