Sen. Bernie Sanders seems to have lost the battle to secure the Democratic presidential nomination, but his way is a huge success. If his message of a more just society had come 60 years ago, we can assume he would have been dealt with by “Big Brother” Joe McCarthy. Even two decades ago his message would have been ridiculed. Today, Sanders’ ideas are winning support from tens of millions of Americans, who are fed up with the policies of the big parties.

The path Sanders has woven is the only one to a promising future for his country. A path that recognizes the person inside every human, even if they are on the margins of society. Sanders also based his election campaign on this same principle: Instead of knocking on the doors of the rich to finance him and dictate his way, he joined up with millions of regular folk. The clearest expression of this phenomenon was seen when Sanders received the largest number of individual financial contributions in the history of U.S. presidential campaigns. People are starting to take their fate into their own hands.

What’s surprising in this story, from our perspective in the Middle East, is that Sanders didn’t need to demonstrate a great deal of knowledge or engage in verbiage to express his views.

In last month’s CNN debate with Hillary Clinton, he barely managed to say more than a few sentences in the face of Clinton’s barrage of words. But they were enough to give even a brilliant speaker like Clinton a hard time. He told her she didn’t mention the Palestinian people in her speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in March. This “innocent” remark was enough to undermine the foundations of Democratic party policy, which gives total support to the Israeli occupation.

Sanders described the force used by the Israeli army in Gaza during the 2014 war as “disproportionate.” These few, magic words were enough to express his disgust at the Democrats’ support for the murder of some 2,500 Gaza Strip residents in Operation Protective Edge. His most crushing statement was, “[Benjamin] Netanyahu is not right all of the time.” After all, Clinton supports Netanyahu, who fans hatred toward Arab citizens but who, in a proper government, would protect them. At the same time, he rushes to call the parents of a Jewish murderer who, in cold blood, killed a wounded Palestinian lying on the ground in Hebron.

Sanders’ behavior during two recent events showed what he is made of. First, he avoided making a speech at the AIPAC conference; second, and despite the Zionist lobby, he refused to sign a letter from senators urging U.S. President Barack Obama to increase military aid to Israel. In both cases, Sanders showed exemplary American patriotism and also love for his Jewish people.

“Your friend is the one who tells you the truth, not the one who supports you when you’re being foolish,” the Arabs say. A true friend warns Israel to rely on justice in dealing with the Palestinians, rather than relying only on weapons. In contrast, the 83 senators who signed the letter provided ammunition to all the anti-Semites, who may yet claim that the Jews who are holding America by the throat are those who actually wrote the letter, and all the senators did was sign it. So thank you, Bernie Sanders, for refusing to sign the senators’ letter and saving the honor of the Jews and Americans.

I considered suggesting that Sanders make aliyah – he could teach Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog what an opposition is. After all, here they think opposition means supporting the current ruler. If Herzog were American, he would have announced long ago, in light of the filthy waves Donald Trump is making in U.S. politics, that his supporters are not allowed to appear that they’re “lovers of black people.”

I have never met Sanders. He is Jewish and I am Arab. But when I hear what he says, I feel that, nevertheless, the world is not a den of wolves. An ancient Arab poet once said, “May you have a brother your mother did not give birth to.” That’s how I feel now, my brother Bernie.