Israel’s defenders demand accountability as Sanders neglects Holocaust duty, echoing anti-Israel narratives and Arab silence.
Senior members of the governing board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have formally urged Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to remove Bernie Sanders from the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, citing an astonishing eighteen-year record of total nonattendance.
According to internal attendance records reviewed by council members, Sanders—appointed in 2007—has not attended a single council meeting, despite the body convening twice annually to guide Holocaust remembrance, genocide education, and moral responsibility. In a sharply worded letter, board members stressed that Sanders has “rarely, if ever,” participated in the council’s work.
Beyond absenteeism, the letter raised alarms over Sanders’s public rhetoric on modern conflicts, particularly statements widely viewed as distorting Holocaust memory and undermining genocide prevention principles. His repeated accusations against Israel—including branding its war against Hamas terrorism as “genocide”—have drawn outrage from Holocaust educators and Jewish leaders alike.
Sanders’s record includes denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a Washington visit and attempting multiple times to block US defensive arms to Israel—efforts rejected decisively by the Senate. Critics argue this pattern aligns with narratives that embolden terror groups, while Arab regimes remain conspicuously silent on genuine genocides across the region.
For council members, the issue is not politics but integrity: Holocaust remembrance demands presence, seriousness, and moral clarity—values they say Sanders has abandoned while Israel continues standing firm against terror and historical distortion.
