Bernie Sanders suggests Israel support should come with strings attached
Finally a high-ranking democratic party member standing for the people of Palestine
Bernie Sanders was interviewed on Face the Nation this last weekend on Sunday February 19th, 2023. The interview included conversations on a variety of topics written about in Bernie Sanders’ new book, It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.
There were multiple moments in the interview Sanders pushed back against institutional narrative and mainstream ideas on where the Democratic Party is today. The topic of this column is to look into some of Senator Sanders’ ideas on how to proceed with Israel.
In the interview, Sanders suggested:
I am very worried about what Netanyahu is doing and some of his allies in government and what may happen to the Palestinian people. And let me tell you something, I mean, I haven't said this publicly. But I think the United States gives billions of dollars in aid to Israel. And I think we've got to put some strings attached to that and say you cannot run a racist government. You cannot turn your back on a two-state solution. You cannot demean the Palestinian people there. You just can't do it and then come to America and ask for money.
As one could imagine…many people weren’t in love with this statement. For decades, Israel has been one of the most sensitive topics for politicians to tackle. It would be irresponsible not to mention the amount of outside influence that goes into influencing conversations pertaining to Israel.
The largest pro-Israel PAC, AIPAC, in 2022 contributed over $13 million and spent nearly $3 million on lobbying. Also in 2022, they ranked 4th out of all PACs and companies in total amount contributed to candidates. Essentially, whenever a candidate running for office criticizes Israel they start pouring money into their opponent — creating an environment where politicians are terrified to go against the AIPAC’s policy positions.
Sanders’ comments on Israel quickly caused commotion. The RNC Research Twitter account almost immediately posted a video of his statements with the caption ‘Socialist Bernie Sanders says he's “embarrassed" by what he calls Israel's "racist government’.
The Republican Party very obviously sees this as a misstep and an opportunity to attack.
Conventional wisdom has been that the AIPAC is a Democratic leaning organization. The RNC’s quick post demonstrates a point the senator made in the interview:
The way I look at AIPAC now, in terms of their political activities – this is not even just a pro-Israel group. This is a corporate PAC, sometimes getting money from Republicans, sometimes supporting extreme right-wing Republicans. So what really upset me very much is that in many of these primaries, we had great candidates, young people, often people of color, and yet AIPAC and other super PACs spending millions of dollars trying to defeat them.
Even though the AIPAC has created a label for themselves as Democratic leaning — they aren’t afraid to go after anyone who criticizes Israel. They do not care about your policy position on anything else…they just want to know you won’t interfere. And Republicans will capitalize on this whenever given the chance.
Senator Sanders, as mentioned above, labels Israel’s government as racist. What prompts this assertive label? Is Israel racist towards Palestinians? Or in other words…is Israel actively discriminating towards Palestinians based off their ethnic and racial identification?
Yes. For many reasons.
The Knesset in 2018 passed a law with constitutional status affirming Israel as the “nation-state of the Jewish people,” declaring that within that territory, the right to self-determination “is unique to the Jewish people,” and establishing “Jewish settlement” as a national value.
If your priority is to promote one ethnic group and demote another — thats racist. Imagine if we did that (or currently do) to racial groups in the United States?
Those policies include limiting the population and political power of Palestinians, granting the right to vote only to Palestinians who live within the borders of Israel as they existed from 1948 to June 1967, and limiting the ability of Palestinians to move to Israel from the OPT and from anywhere else to Israel or the OPT.
One would think this wouldn’t require further clarification. Remember a time in the United States when a certain racial group was limited in terms of voting power?
In the course of establishing Israel as a Jewish state in 1948, its leaders were responsible for the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages in what amounted to ethnic cleansing. They chose to coerce Palestinians into enclaves within the State of Israel and, following their military occupation in 1967, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They have appropriated the vast majority of Palestinians’ land and natural resources. They have introduced laws, policies and practices that systematically and cruelly discriminate against Palestinians, leaving them fragmented geographically and politically, in a constant state of fear and insecurity, and often impoverished.
Also…
The very existence of these separate legal regimes, however, is one of the main tools through which Israel fragments Palestinians and enforces its system of oppression and domination, and serves, as noted by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), “to obscure [the Israeli apartheid] regime’s very existence”. Indeed, Israeli policies aim to fragment Palestinians into different geographic and legal domains of control not only to treat them differently, or to segregate them, from the Jewish population, but also to treat them differently from each other in order to weaken ties between Palestinian communities, to suppress any form of sustained dissent against the system they have created, and ensure more effective political and security control over land and people across all territories.
I seem to remember that when the United States segregated schools and land — it was classified as racist.
Israel maintains its system of fragmentation and segregation through different legal regimes that ensure the denial of nationality and status to Palestinians, violate their right to family unification and return to their country and their homes, and severely restrict freedom of movement based on legal status. All are intended to control the Palestinian population and aim to preserve a Jewish Israeli majority in key areas across Israel and the OPT. Whilst they are granted citizenship, Palestinian citizens of Israel are denied a nationality, establishing a legal differentiation from Jewish Israelis. They are also denied certain benefits because of a linked exemption from military service.
Recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu has proposed many policies furthering a racist agenda towards Palestinians:
withholding some $40 million in tax revenues and instead using the money to compensate Israeli victims of Palestinian violence. There are also plans to halt development in Palestinian villages in Israeli-controlled parts of the West Bank.
revoking the VIP privileges of top Palestinian officials and banning displays of Palestinian flags inside Israel.
When evaluating the policies and political positions of the Israeli government, Senator Sanders’ classification of them as a racist government seems aligned with the definition of racism. The Israeli government has, throughout the decades, instituted practices that were clearly discriminatory based off ones ethnicity and race.