(JTA) – Simone Zimmerman, the newly hired national Jewish outreach coordinator for the Bernie Sanders campaign, called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “manipulative asshole” last year in a Facebook post.
“Bibi Netanyahu is an arrogant, deceptive, cynical, manipulative asshole,” Zimmerman, a former J Street student activist, wrote on Facebook in March 2015, according to the Washington-based Free Beacon.
“F— you, Bibi, for daring to insist that you legitimately represent even a fraction of the Jews in this world, for your consistent fear-mongering, for pushing Israel in word and deed, farther and farther away from the international community, and most importantly, for trying to derail a potentially historic diplomatic deal with Iran and thus trying to distract the world from the fact that you sanctioned the murder of over 2,000 people this summer …,” the post continued.
Zimmerman edited the post on March 3, 2015, changing asshole to “politician” and the second expletive to “shame on you.”
During the Gaza war in the summer of 2014, which she was referring to in the Facebook post, Zimmerman was one of the leaders of a group of young Jews that held regular protest vigils outside the offices of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, reading the names of Palestinians and Israelis killed in the conflict.
Zimmerman opposes Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, wants Hillel to allow participation by groups that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, is against Jewish federation funding for Israeli projects in the West Bank and wrote favorably of the efforts of Jewish Voice for Peace, a pro-BDS group, to get “international corporations to stop profiting off human rights abuses.”
Zimmerman noted that she herself is not a supporter of BDS. “I am not a bds supporter. Never have been,” she said on Twitter in response to David Greenfield, a New York City councillor, who called her “pro-BDS.”
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