Following these statements, primary voters in New York and across the Northeast decisively rejected Sanders’ candidacy, and effectively ensured that Hillary Clinton will be the next Democratic presidential nominee. But Sanders’ efforts to end the Democratic Party’s support for Israel may well endanger Clinton’s prospects in the general election. Rather than modify or moderate his positions on Israel, Sanders now seems intent on remolding the Democratic Party to reflect the views of his most radical anti-Israel (and anti-American) supporters. Sanders apparently wants to use his newfound political clout to revise the language of the Democratic Party platform as regards the only true democracy in the Middle East.

Sanders claims that he wants Democrats to embrace a more “balanced approach” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but his appointment of James Zogby and Cornel West to the Democratic Platform Committee suggests anything but. Indeed, both Zogby and West are notorious for espousing policy positions that are extremely critical of Israel, and for using rhetoric that sometimes borders on antisemitic.

Zogby, for example, has frequently used provocative and even bigoted language when commentating on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has compared the plight of the Palestinian people to that of the Jews during the Holocaust. He has described Gaza as “the world’s largest concentration camp” and repeatedly accused the Israeli government of perpetrating crimes against humanity. Comparing Israel’s self-defense actions to the Nazi genocide against the Jews is a not-so-subtle form of Holocaust denial: if all Nazi Germany did was defend itself against Jewish aggression, then there were no gas chambers, no rounding up of Jews from the most far flung corners of Europe and transporting them to Auschwitz, and no genocide. Moreover, Zogby has endorsed the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement, which calls for the boycott only of Israeli goods and institutions, until Israel allows for the so-called “right of return,” which would turn Israel into yet another Arab-Muslim majority state. In effect, Zogby is supportive of a group whose stated objective is to undo over 30 years of negotiations, and end the existence of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.