In what could be a big victory for the radical left-wing of the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders’ chief foreign-policy advisor Matt Duss is tipped take up a position at the State Department, news reports suggest.
“Matt Duss, Sanders’ foreign policy adviser who has become a well-known figure among progressive activists, is expected to depart for a position in the Biden administration’s Department of State,” the Politico reported citing sources. “If that scenario materializes, it will be viewed by many on the left as a victory for progressives,” the news outlet added.
If appointed, Duss may be the most controversial pick of the Biden administration so far.
In a recent tweet, Duss equates Israel to an “apartheid” state. He also supports the antisemitic Israel boycott movement, or the BDS. “Anti-BDS hysteria is a con and Democrats need to stop playing along,” he tweeted in April 2019. But his obsession with the Jewish State goes back a long way.
While smearing the Jewish State, Duss defends the anti-Semitic BDS movement. In a 2015 congressional hearing on this matter, he claimed that “it is a mistake to focus on the BDS movement while ignoring the main reason for its continued growth, which is the failure to end the occupation.” Duss failed to mention that the Arabs citizens of Israel enjoyed equal rights as their Jewish compatriots, while the Palestinian’s in the West Bank and Gaza suffered at the hands of the tyrannical PLO and Hamas leadership.
In 2013, Duss came under fire for blogging Nazi-era propaganda posters. “Duss, a blogger at the CAP Action Fund’s ThinkProgress website, used the Nazi posters to substantiate his accusation that a political cartoon published by a right-leaning Israel group was “blatantly anti-Semitic,” The Washington Free Beacon reported at the time of the controversy.
The WFB in August 2013 profiled Duss’ troubling anti-Israel activism in the blogosphere:
Duss earned notoriety in 2011 when he and several other ThinkProgress bloggers were engulfed in a scandal surrounding their writing on Israel and Jews, with some critics saying the language was borderline anti-Semitic. That prompted a rare rebuke by the Obama administration of the think tank, which has close ties to the White House.Articles penned by Duss and other CAP Action Fund bloggers were said “to be infected with Jew-hatred and discriminatory policy positions toward Israel,” according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which combats anti-Semitism.Duss wrote that Israel’s naval blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip was like “segregation in the American South” and a “moral abomination.” (…)Officials at Jewish organizations have consistently said Duss’ Israel criticism crosses the line. The use of Nazi imagery, these officials say, is just the latest example.
This notorious track record did not prevent his political rise within the Democratic Party, and he became Bernie Sanders’ chief foreign policy advisor in 2017. The D.C.-based Foreign Policy journal credits Duss for “crafting” Bernie’s foreign policy. This much-feted policy includes Sanders’ support and admiration for Communist dictators, from Cuba’s Fidel Castro to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
In February 2019, leftist weekly The Nation published a glowing profile of Duss, describing his feats as a noted “Islamophobia” expert and his early fascination with the “Muslim world on a trip to Istanbul” in 2000. “He found the experience of being awakened by the morning call to prayer transformative, and began reading obsessively about Islamic history and politics,” the magazine revealed.
The weekly also explained his prime motivation for entering politics. “The 9/11 attacks the following year left him frustrated and concerned about the way the US media portrayed Muslims and the Middle East, and for the first time in his life he felt a sense of political mission,” The Nation wrote.
The speculations over Duss’ appointment comes as the Biden administration named another Sanders foreign policy advisor, Robert Malley as the new U.S. envoy to Iran. Malley is regarded as the architect of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and served as the ‘ISIS czar’ in President Barack Obama’s administration.
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