Bernie Sanders, one of the Democratic candidates running for US Presidential elections in 2016, was accused by comedian Jackie Mason of being a "self-hating Jew". His brother, Larry Sanders, told the "Times of Israel" that this was because his brother disagreed with Benjamin Netanyahu's foreign policy. "Bernard is not a self-hating Jew. There was never a moment in our life when we had any reason to be self-hating. The fact that he does not agree with Netanyahu on politics does not make him a self-hating Jew." In March 2016, after a reporter asked him if he was "intentionally keeping his Judaism in the background", Sanders stated that he is "very proud to be Jewish, and being Jewish is so much of what I am. Look, my father's family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust. I know about what crazy and radical, and extremist politics mean." Max Berger wrote in "Haaretz", "While some in the Jewish American establishment strive to marginalize Bernie and his movement by suggesting we’re self-hating Jews who don’t care about Israel, it just goes to show how badly out of touch they are with the future of our community, and the values of our tradition." A related dispute revolved around his Jewish advisor, Simone Zimmerman, who was similarly accused of being a self-hating Jew. "In These Times" strongly criticized this accusation, describing it as "slandering".