Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said Israel has “become a fundamentalist country” under Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
“Too many people don’t understand that the Israel of today is not the Israel of 20 or 30 years ago,” Sanders told Crooked Media.
This is a right-wing country, increasingly a fundamentalist country. Some of the men in power believe that God told them that they have the right to control the whole region.
Sanders has long been a critic of the Israel-Hamas war, which began on October 7 when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people and taking 200 hostages. Since then, more than 32,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israeli attacks, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. The United Nations warns that half of Gaza’s population is at risk of starvation.
Sanders continued:
In my opinion, Hamas committed an atrocity, Israel certainly had the right to defend itself, but it did not and still does not have the right to wage war against the entire Palestinian people.
Two thirds of the casualties and deaths are women and children. This is unacceptable.
In an earlier interview with The Independent, Sanders said he “wants to cut off funding for Netanyahu’s war machine,” referring to continued US aid to Israel. Sanders, along with four members of the Senate Democratic caucus – Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen and Vermonter Senator Peter Welch – voted against a national security package last month that would have provided aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. But Sanders has yet to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
Meanwhile, support for Sanders’ position is growing in the US. According to a Gallup poll released on Wednesday, 55 percent of Americans disapprove of Israel’s continued attacks in the besieged region, while 36 percent approve, marking the first time a poll has found that a majority of Americans do not support the war. This is a significant shift from November, when the same poll found that a majority of Americans supported the war.
The Biden administration has also begun to change its position on aid to the Palestinians.
On Monday, the United States did not cast a veto vote in the United Nations Security Council, allowing the council to adopt a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in the war. This is the first time the US has done this since the start of the war. Previously, the Biden administration had used the US veto three times to block a ceasefire resolution supporting Israel’s continued attacks in Gaza.
Netanyahu criticized the decision as “not conditional on the release of the hostages.”
Ahead of a meeting with his Israeli counterpart on Tuesday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the civilian death toll in Gaza was “too high”. Austin also made an urgent appeal to Israel to increase the amount of aid it allows into Gaza to prevent famine.
