Al-Arabiya Praises Bernie Sanders’ Arabic-Language Campaign Poster Against ‘Racism, Hatred, and Bigotry’

TEL AVIV – Major Arabic-language news outlet Al-Arabiya praised a recent tweet in Arabic from Bernie Sanders, contrasting Sanders’ outreach to Arab-Muslim Americans to Donald Trump’s previous comments about Muslims, MEMRI reported.

Sanders’ official Twitter account tweeted, in English, campaign posters with the slogan “Not Me – Us” and the text “America becomes a greater nation when we stand together and say no to racism, hatred, and bigotry. #AmericaTogether” and then retweeted the same message in a number of languages, including Arabic.

The social media activity was noticed by Al-Arabiya, which put out a dispatch reading: “In an atmosphere of polarization, the discourse of hatred, and Republican candidate Donald Trump’s hostile statements toward Muslims, the Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders has launched a campaign against hatred, bigotry, and violence in a number of languages, among them Arabic.”

Referring to a story told by Trump at a rally about Muslims being executed with bullets dipped in pig’s blood, Al-Arabiya claimed that while Trump was intensifying the tone of his statements about Muslims, Sanders was trying to “reflect the ethnic, cultural, and racial diversity of the United States, which he sees as the factor that strengthens the superpower.”

Al-Arabiya, which is Saudi-owned, commended Sanders for being the sole candidate in the presidential race to tweet in the Arabic language at a time when “speaking Arabic in public or on board an airplane may be sufficient to cause Americans to panic, to notify the authorities, and to fear Arab and Muslim identity.”

The report commented that the Arabic Sanders used was imprecise, causing some people to joke that he may have used Google Translate. Nevertheless, the report said, “the message itself was sufficient to convey the idea.”

The news outlet, which described Sanders as a “liberal Jewish Democratic senator,” noted that the Arab-Muslim electorate is not taken seriously in American elections, as opposed to votes from other minorities including Jews and African-Americans.