WHEN BERNIE SANDERS FINALLY MENTIONED THE BARRAGE OF ROCKETS FIRED AT ISRAEL, HE PISSED OFF BOTH SIDES

Bernie Sanders remarks on Gaza rocket fire draws ire from Israelis, Palestinians

Israel Hayom
November 15, 2019

Bernie Sanders - who is vying for the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2020 - drew ire from Jew and Palestinians when he weighed in on Israel’s ongoing conflict with Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

In a tweet posted Thursday night, Sanders said that Israelis “should not have to live in fear of rocket fire.” However, in the same breath, he also remarked that “Palestinians should not have to live under occupation and blockade.”

He then called on the US to “lead the effort” to bring peace between Israel and Gaza.

The statement, made well after several Democratic Party heavyweights already chimed in and backed Israel’s right to defend itself, was seen by Jewish groups and Israeli politicians as drawing a false moral equivalence between Israel and terrorists.

Israel’s former ambassador to the US, Danny Ayalon, slammed Sanders's statement.

“This isn’t a ‘he-said/she-said’ crisis with identical sides. One side is America's closest ally in the Mideast. The other side celebrated on 9/11,” he said.

The CEO of the American Jewish Committee agreed, calling his take “moral equivalence on steroids.”

“100s of rockets [are] fired at Israel. Millions of Israelis in bomb shelters,” Harris said. “Yet no yet no mention that Israel left Gaza in 2005. No mention of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. No mention of their genocidal intent. No mention of Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour, for example, responded to Harris and said, “Israel is the clear aggressor. You forget to mention that Israel withdrew from Gaza, YET control the border, the airspace, and the sea. They have continued to maintain a deadly blockade on Gaza strangling 2 million people.”

But - in a rare instance of pro-Israel advocates and pro-Palestinian advocates agreeing on something - even some Palestinians found fault in Sanders’ tweet.

Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada - a staunchly anti-Israel site, said Sanders's remarks were too little, too late.

Earlier this week, Sanders published an op-ed in the left-leaning Jewish Currents. There, he maintained “it is not anti-Semitic to criticize the policies of the Israeli government,” adding on to his prior stance that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is “racist.”

Additionally, at the J Street Conference in Washington, D.C. last month, he said that a portion of the U.S. military assistance to Israel should go towards humanitarian relief in the Gaza Strip.