{"id":24011,"date":"2016-03-19T04:52:34","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T04:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/us-election-bernie-sanders-to-skip-aipac\/"},"modified":"2016-03-19T04:52:28","modified_gmt":"2016-03-19T04:52:28","slug":"us-election-bernie-sanders-to-skip-aipac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/us-election-bernie-sanders-to-skip-aipac\/","title":{"rendered":"US election: Bernie Sanders to skip AIPAC conference"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Jewish presidential hopeful is the only candidate who decided not to appear at the AIPAC event next week.}<\/p>\n<p>US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is the only candidate for the country&#8217;s top post who has decided to not take part in next week&#8217;s conference for the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC.<\/p>\n<p>In a letter to Robert Cohen, the chief of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, on Friday &#8211; Sanders, the first Jew to ever win a presidential primary in the US, expressed regret that he could not conduct a speech at the event due to his busy campaign schedule.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Obviously, issues impacting Israel and the Middle East are of utmost importance to me, to our country and to the world,&#8221; he said.<br \/>\n&#8220;Unfortunately, I am going to be traveling throughout the West and the campaign schedule that we have prevents me from attending.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sander&#8217;s decision came after more than 18,000 people signed petitions calling for Sanders to turn down AIPAC&#8217;s invitation to join the conference.<\/p>\n<p>A statement posted on the two petitions, both launched by Max Blumenthal &#8211; a prominent activist and author who opposes Israel&#8217;s occupation of Palestinian territories &#8211; said that Sanders &#8220;does not belong&#8221; in the conference, which it said features &#8220;Islamophobes, anti-immigrant activists and religious extremists&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>AIPAC, considered the main arm of the pro-Israel lobby in the US, has been accused of promoting discriminatory and harsh policies against Palestinian civilians.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Sanders has called for equality between Palestinian and Israeli communities. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I will make every single effort to bring rational people on both sides together, so that hopefully we can have a level playing field, the United States treating everybody in that region equally,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-11035 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/0987b6803c5448ffb7f034a5309eb0fc_18-2.jpg\" alt=\"Sanders has called for more equality between Israelis and Palestinians\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Jewish presidential hopeful is the only candidate who decided not to appear at the AIPAC event next week.} US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is the only candidate for the country&#8217;s top post who has decided to not take part in next week&#8217;s conference for the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC. In a letter to Robert Cohen, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24011"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24011"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}