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In Bernie Sanders’ world, Israel is the fons et origo of America’s ills. It’s a nasty little Sparta, always causing or unnecessarily prolonging wars, unworthy of our support, and in America, its Jewish supporters are deplorably helping to move American politics rightward, as they did by supporting Donald Trump. Sanders uses his Jewish identity as a shield that allows him, he thinks, to get away with outrageous remarks about Israel. “Hey, I’m Jewish, so how can I be unfair to Israel?” For the answer to that, just point to Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein. More on Bernie Sanders, in aspect an upper-west-side schlemiel — with the vowels and consonants to prove it — who has made his mark as a Senator from Vermont, can be found here: “Why Does Bernie Sanders Feed Antisemitic Stereotypes?,” by Sheila Nazarian, Algemeiner, November 18, 2024:
Shortly after the presidential election, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders released a scathing statement blaming the Democrats for Trump’s victory.
Alongside a slew of criticisms of Democratic policies on healthcare and labor, Sanders tore into the party for their stance on the Israel-Hamas war, writing that “despite strong opposition from a majority of Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government’s all-out war against the Palestinian people which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children.”
What “strong opposition” is that from a “majority of Americans” to providing Israel with the military means it needs to defend itself in a two-front war against the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah? Fewer than one in three Americans think that Israel may have “gone too far” in Gaza, while more than two-thirds think Israel’s conduct of the war is either just right, or that the IDF ought to be pressing Hamas even harder than it has been.
Bernie Sanders is also wrong about the importance American voters give to the war in Gaza — only 4% list foreign policy as a major concern, and of those 4%, how many are most interested in an impending trade war with China, or in the Russia-Ukraine war, or North Korea’s saber-rattling, rather than the war in Gaza? The future of democracy, the economy, immigration — these are the matters that voters cited as their main concerns. The war in Gaza matters so much to Bernie Sanders, and he has decided it must matter just as much to hundreds of millions of Americans. It doesn’t. And those most concerned with the war in Gaza are likely to be people who disagree with Sanders; these are the supporters of Israel who are worried about America standing by its embattled ally as it fights its multi-front war.
He refers to the “all-out war” he claims Israel is conducting “against the Palestinian people.” The IDF is not waging war against the people of Gaza, but against the terror group Hamas, which has brought only misery to ordinary Gazans. The IDF does everything it can to warn Gazans about areas and buildings that are about to be targeted. To this end, by March the IDf had dropped nine million leaflets, sent fifteen million text messages, and made sixteen million robocalls, all to warn civilians so that they could get out of the way of those sites in time. Israeli pilots are instructed to abort their missions whenever the risk of civilian casualties is too high.
As usual, Sanders’ statement is deeply off base — both about the situation in Israel, and about the impact of the war on the 2024 election.
Exit polls and voter surveys have painted a clear picture of American priorities in the 2024 election, and the war in Gaza was nowhere near the top of the list.
Instead, the leading issues were the state of democracy, which 34% of voters cited as their main concern, followed by 31% for the economy, abortion for 14%, and immigration at 11%. By contrast, only 4% of voters were most concerned with foreign policy….
Foreign policy includes many things besides the war in Gaza: the Ukraine-Russia war, and the North Korean troops now helping Putin; the looming trade war with China, and Beijing’s threats to its neighbors over competing claims in the South China Sea, as well as potential threats to Taiwan; the Paris Agreement on the climate; the defense spending of NATO members; North Korea’s nuclear threat. Of those 4% “most concerned with foreign policy,” how many were focused mainly on the war in Gaza? And of those, how many shared Sanders’ anti-Israeli views and how many were worried that Washington was not doing enough to help Israel?
Sanders has embraced the resolutely anti-Israel members of the Squad, particularly Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He stumped for Ilhan Omar both in her primary contest and in the election, constantly praising her as “not only one of the most courageous members of Congress—a leader who time and time again stands up for the working class against powerful special interests—she is also one of the toughest people I know.” Omar’s vituperative attacks on Israel don’t bother Sanders — for god’s sake, he agrees with her. He has also supported, and been supported by, Omar’s even more extreme colleague, Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib.
Tlaib endorsed Sanders for President in 2019. Since then they have been close. When Tlaib wanted to hold a meeting in the Congress Visitors Center to mark the “Nakba,” the Palestinian term meaning “catastrophe,” that refers to the Palestinians who left Israel during the 1948 war, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy thwarted her plan by reserving the space himself. Bernie Sanders then stepped in by chairing the meeting in another room in the Senate office building. At the meeting, Tlaib claimed that Israel was an “apartheid” state that commits acts of terror. Sanders made no objection. And Sanders is an ally not just of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, but also of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also well known for her Israel-bashing. But Sanders wants you to know that he’s Jewish, so no matter what he says about Israel, no one can accuse him of antisemitism.
Bernie Sanders. Know him by the company he keeps — Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Ortiz. Know him by the charges he makes against the state of Israel, that he declares guilty of “ethnic cleansing,” though he has held back on making the charge of “genocide,” stating that he prefers to wait for the ruling on that charge by the International Court of Justice. Know him by the anti-Israel bills he keeps introducing in the Senate, his latest being a bill that would halt a $20 billion military aid package to Israel, at the very moment when Israel is fighting a four-front war against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran. But remember, Bernie is Jewish, practically a yeshiva bocher. He only wants to save Israel in spite of itself. He wants it to go back to being an even tinier state that it is now (scarcely discernible on a map of the world). He wants it to be squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines, with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea. Then the state of Palestine can come into being on all the territory Israel will have been pressured to give up. And peace, of course, will reign. Don’t we have Mahmoud Abbas’ solemn assurances on that very score?
Some people claim that Bernie Sanders’ heart is in the right place, but it’s not his heart that sends shivers down my spine. It’s his mind.