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By Andrea Peyser
April 11, 2016

If you’re Jewish, don’t vote for Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders is not quite Jewish. He’s Jew-ish — a non-practicing, anti-Israel, kinda, sorta Hebrew.

Raised in a veritable shtetl in Brooklyn, the Bernmeister had a bar mitzvah, worked as a volunteer on an Israeli kibbutz — a collective farm modeled on communist principles — for several months while in his 20s, and counts a number of his European ancestors as victims of the Holocaust.

But the geriatric Vermont senator, who craves toppling Her Hillaryness from her presidential perch as he might crave a bagel with a schmear, is hardly down with the Chosen People.

Before running for the Democratic presidential nomination, before making a nebbishy star turn on “Saturday Night Live,” Bernie was something of a ham. He rapped on a folk-rock album while serving as mayor of Burlington, Vt., in 1987. Then he donned a yarmulke to play a stereotypically obnoxious rabbi named “Manny Shevitz” (oy) in a low-budget 1999 romantic comedy, “My X-Girlfriend’s Wedding Reception,” while serving in the House.

In the flick, Bernie/Manny rants disjointedly before wedding guests in a thick outer-borough accent, slamming the Dodgers for leaving Brooklyn and bemoaning the big money paid to baseball-playing free agents. Was he signaling that, if elected president, the self-described “democratic socialist” might one day try to redistribute athletes’ wealth?

“Now let’s just thank God you have your arms, you have your legs,” he bellowed. “Let’s eat!”

Offensive? Quite. Anti-Semitic? For sure. (He later had a cameo in another film!)

Bernie Sanders, 74, has forged a far-left political brand, siding with Jew-haters and Israel foes, which is redundant. I urge Jews and their supporters voting in New York’s Democratic presidential primary on April 19 to reject Bernie. He’s not good for the Jews, or anyone else. The rotten actor is certainly not good for the City of New York, home to more Jews than Jerusalem is.

Bernie is strangely quiet about his recent history-making achievement. Winning the New Hampshire Democratic primary on Feb. 9, Sanders became not only the first Jew ever to win a presidential primary or caucus, but the first non-Christian to do so.

This might help explain why he doesn’t talk about it. Sanders was the only presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, to skip the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s Policy Conference in Washington, DC, last month. Campaigning in Utah, Sanders instead delivered a speech to the pro-Israel lobbying group from afar that was highly critical of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.

He uttered the tired refrain that Israel’s military needs to end its “disproportionate” responses to Palestinian terror.

What’s “disproportionate” about Israel’s self-preserving responses to rocket fire on civilians’ heads, Bernie?

He was the first US senator to join House Democrats boycotting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress. He rejected Netanyahu’s dire warning that the nuclear deal entered into by the governments of Iran, the United States and other world powers threatens the very existence of the Jewish state.

Campaigning in Dearborn, Mich., last month, a city whose population contains the nation’s highest proportion of Arab-American Muslims, Sanders stuck it to his own people.

“Hopefully, we can have a level playing field, the United States treating everyone in that region equally,” he said about US involvement in the Middle East. A playing field in which bloody attacks on Israel don’t draw a “disproportionate” response? Sanders scored an upset victory in the Michigan primary, beating Dem front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Bernie’s antipathy toward the Jewish state contrasts sharply with the pro-Israel views expressed by his presidential foes on both sides of the aisle.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, converted to Judaism before marrying a Jew, and has given birth to three Jewish children, delighting the tykes’ grandfather. But Trump seemed to foreshadow Bernie’s “disproportionate” schtick, saying on MSNBC in February about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “Let me be sort of a neutral guy.” He has since backed away from the loaded statement.

Clinton, seeking support from Jewish elected officials and big-money donors, lately has crowed about her long-standing support for Israel.

This might make a voter forget her close ties to President Obama, whose relationship with Israel’s government is decidedly frosty.

Appearing last week in a town hall meeting on NBC’s “Today” show, Bernie was asked to defend his Jewish cred.

“Corned beef or pastrami?” Matt Lauer asked, passing along a viewer’s tweet. (Would he ask Ted Cruz, “Rice and beans or platanos?”?) “Pastrami, all the way,” Bernie shot back.

I’ll take a goyische president over this loser any day.