Bernie Sanders calls Netanyahu’s right-wing government ‘racist’

The U.S.should “not just support one country, which is now run by a right-wing, dare I say, racist government,” said Bernie Sanders.

By AP and World Israel News

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is standing by his criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying the American goal in the Middle East must be to try to bring people together and “not just support one country, which is now run by a right-wing, dare I say, racist government.”

Senator Sanders said Monday at a CNN town hall in New Hampshire that he believes the United States should “deal with the Middle East on a level-playing-field basis. What I believe, and you know the United States gives billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, what I believe is not radical.”

He told the audience that “as a young man I spent a number of months in Israel, worked on a kibbutz for awhile; I have family in Israel, I am not anti-Israel, but the fact of the matter is that Netanyahu is a right-wing politician who I think is treating the Palestinian people extremely unfairly.”

Sanders claimed that he is “100% pro-Israel” and that the country has “every right in the world to exist and to exist in peace and security and not be subjected to terrorists’ attacks.”

However, soon after declaring his second run for president, Sanders reportedly hired two senior advisers with anti-Israel backgrounds.

Campaign manager Faiz Shakir and foreign policy adviser Matthew Duss have been accused of furthering anti-Semitic conspiracy theories during their tenure at the left-wing think-tank Center for American Progress (CAP), reported the Washington Free Beacon.