Bernie Sanders’s name may be on the tip of the tongue of most Americans, and increasingly among Israelis interested in the US presidential elections, but on the kibbutz in the Haifa area where Sanders spent time over 50 years ago, nobody remembers him.
Sanders has coyly refused to divulge the name of the kibbutz where he spent several months in 1963, but Haaretz unearthed a 1990 interview with Sanders identifying the agricultural commune as Sha’ar Ha’amakim.
No one currently at Sha’ar Ha’amakim remembers Sanders, who has preached his doctrine of democratic socialism on the campaign trail. No records with his name survive, JTA reports.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at the Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, January 31, 2016. (AP/Evan Vucci)
But Albert Ely, 79, who managed the kibbutz volunteer program in the early 1960s, remembered someone named Bernard. And he said that if Sanders was there, he was probably picking fruit before the sun rose.
“I was astonished that the name Bernard, which is French, belonged to an American,” Ely told JTA, sitting in his home here. “I remember a lot of volunteers. I don’t remember him. If he was here, he was with the Americans.”
— JTA
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