Bernie Sanders defended Israel’s “right to defend itself” during the Gaza genocide and delayed calls for a ceasefire until public pressure mounted. While later opposing aid to Israel, he still legitimized Israeli violence and withheld full solidarity with Palestinians.
Bernie Sanders is an Independent U.S. Senator from Vermont and a two-time Democratic presidential candidate. Though viewed as a progressive icon, his record on Palestine shows a consistent refusal to hold Israel fully accountable, even amid genocide.
POLITICS
Despite his progressive image, Bernie Sanders refused to demand a ceasefire for weeks as Israel massacred Palestinians. His language blamed Hamas, not the apartheid state. Only after mass civilian deaths did he shift—yet still avoided fully backing Palestinian liberation.
During the first two months of the genicide Bernie refused to join Rashida Tlaib and othe progressives in a call for a ceasefire. When asked about it on November 5th he said “I don’t know how you can have a ceasefire, (a) permanent ceasefire, with an organization like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the state of Israel,”
Once the death toll in Gaza was close to 30000, he gave in to the pressure from his voters, and finaly called for a ceasefire, but didn't specify if he meant a permanent ceasefire or a temporary one.
As of March 11, 2024, Senator Sanders called on President Biden to block funding for Netanyahu's "war machine." He cited that thousands of children "will starve to death" without intervention. Senator Sanders has since stood against any additional funding for Israel since this date and wants to peovide funding to Gaza's starving population.
Two-state solution:
The two-state solution, once hailed as the path to peace, has proven itself to be a hollow promise, built upon the fractured dreams of generations of Palestinians. It has served as a smokescreen for the continued expansion of Israeli settlements, the entrenchment of occupation, and the perpetuation of systemic discrimination against Palestinians. In essence, it has enshrined a reality where Palestinian statehood is nothing more than a distant mirage, forever out of reach amidst the ever-expanding borders of Israeli control.
Israeli politicians themselves have cast irrefutable doubt on the feasibility of a two-state solution, with absolutely heinous statements made across both left and right-wing government officials that’ve made it clear Israel has always rejected and in fact worked against a two state solution. All the heinous remarks they’ve said recently have been widely documented but these beliefs have predated even this decade. In 2009, Israel’s new foreign minister completely dismissed the resolution of a two state solution.
In contrast, a one-state solution offers a vision of a future where individuals coexist as equals, sharing a common destiny and forging a shared identity based on principles of justice, dignity, and mutual respect within Palestine. It recognizes the inherent rights of all individuals to live in freedom and security, free from discrimination and oppression.
To advocate for a one-state solution is to reject the notion that peace and justice can only be achieved through the partitioning of land that has been soaked in the blood and tears of generations of Palestinians. It is a recognition that true reconciliation can only be built on a foundation of equality, where every individual – regardless of ethnicity, religion, or background – enjoys the same rights and opportunities under the law.
Central to the call for a one-state solution is the right of return for all Palestinian refugees – a right enshrined in international law and denied for far too long. It is a recognition of the historical injustice inflicted upon millions of indigenous Palestinians who were forcibly expelled from their native homes before, during and after the Nakba, as well as a commitment to rectifying this injustice by granting them the opportunity to return to their homeland.
Dehumanization of Palestinians:
The systematic erasure of Palestinian history and culture is a well-documented effort that has been ongoing since the early 1900s. This erasure has taken many forms, including the destruction of physical records and infrastructure, the suppression of Palestinian voices and narratives, the appropriation of Palestinian cultural heritage and most visibly, the dehumanization of the Palestinian populace.
From the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, Palestinian records, literature, and cultural heritage faced deliberate and concerted efforts to obliterate their existence and narrative. This deliberate "archival silencing" has made reconstructing this period in Palestinian history incredibly challenging, yet the truths that remain paint a horrifying picture of the deliberate erasure and destruction of an entire population and its culture.
The dehumanization of Palestinians has been a deliberate policy, perpetuated through military operations, discriminatory laws, Israeli education and a pervasive culture that fosters prejudice. Dehumanising rhetoric, portraying Palestinians as "roaches" and "rats," lays the foundation for atrocities by stripping away their humanity in the eyes of the oppressor.
Widespread media narratives also project institutional biases ranging from depicting Palestinians solely as militants or desperate victims and erasing their normal daily life to embedding language biases around land, protests and resistance tactics. These patterns collectively indicate how public discourse within segments of Israeli society systematically dehumanize Palestinians while entrenching prejudices against them.
Supporting the IDF:
The IOF has never been a moral army, let alone the ‘most moral.’ In fact, they originate from larger terrorist groups that reigned terror in Palestine and murdered hundreds and thousands of innocent men, women and children — and continue to do so to this day.
The insidious claim that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) represent the "most moral army in the world" is a blatant affront to the Palestinian people and an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses, war crimes and the brutal suppression of Palestinian nationalism and identity.
This propagandistic myth constitutes an act of violent erasure against the immense suffering and resilience of the Palestinian people in the face of the colonial Zionist project to dispossess and displace them from their ancestral homeland. In reality, the factual record makes a mockery of this "moral army" fallacy.
The IDF and its predecessors have perpetrated horrific massacres against defenseless Palestinian villages like Deir Yassin and Al Dawayima, where women and children were raped, disembowels and burned alive. They have also repeatedly used Palestinian civilians, including children, as human shields; despite claiming it’s Hamas who do this.
Furthermore, the IOF have illegally abducted thousands of Palestinian children from their homes, tortured them and then subjected to sham military tribunals - with systemic practices of child abuse, both physical and sexual, carried out by the so-called "most moral army." Any attempt to lionize the IDF as a virtuous force is an abhorrent denial of the lived reality for Palestinians under its military occupation and colonial subjugation. It erases the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of villages in the Nakba, the wanton targeting of civilian areas under the Dahiya Doctrine, the extrajudicial executions of hostages and the myriad other well-documented atrocities and violations of international law committed by Israeli forces over decades.
Those who unquestioningly regurgitate this fallacy align themselves with the historical bloc of colonial powers who have sought to dominate, subjugate, and erase the national and human rights of indigenous peoples worldwide. They engage in the same rhetoric once used to justify settler-colonial projects like the Indian Removal Act, the wars of extermination against Native Americans, and other campaigns of ethnic cleansing and land theft prosecuted in the name of racial superiority and "civilizing" missions.
The enduring resilience, struggle, and activism of the Palestinian people against these criminal dehumanizing forces represent the highest moral ground. To condemn them while sanctifying their oppressors is a perverse obfuscation that can only be rooted in ideological discrimination. Any honest examination of the Israeli occupation's practices can only lead to the conclusion that the IDF's conduct has been a moral abomination, a stain upon human conscience that must be unanimously repudiated.
To perpetuate the odious lie of the "most moral army" mythology or to show the IOF support is to align oneself against the hard-won dignity and heroic resistance of the Palestinian people in word and deed. It is to abet injustice, turn a willfully blind eye to atrocity and act as an apologist for a ruthless and unrelenting campaign of ethnic persecution and dispossession in the name of racial supremacy.
It is, in essence, an egregious act of complicity in crimes against humanity and should be condemned as false propaganda at every turn.
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