Bernie Sanders compares Gaza war to Nazi Holocaust

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders declares Israel guilty of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, compares war against Hamas to the Holocaust.

By World Israel News Staff

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders compared Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip to the Holocaust after endorsing a United Nations report that accused Israel of committing genocide in the coastal enclave.

While Sanders has been a frequent critic of the Jewish state and the Netanyahu government, he has not described Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocidal until now.

The independent lawmaker, who caucuses with the Senate’s Democrats, published an opinion piece on his Senate website on Wednesday, responding to the release of a report a day earlier by a UN Human Rights Council commission of inquiry claiming Israel’s conduct during the war against Hamas since 2023 meets four of the five definitions of “genocide” as laid out by the 1948 UN convention on genocide.

In his article, Sanders lambasted what he called “the extremist Netanyahu government” and accused Israel of severely restricting the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into the Gaza Strip, despite the large-scale entry of aid trucks and use of airdrops to distribute aid to Gazans.

Citing unverified Hamas claims, Sanders wrote that “more than 400 people… have already starved to death,” while using the terror group’s fatality figures claiming 65,000 deaths in Gaza during the war.

Sanders went on to accuse both Israel and the Trump administration of “pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank.”

“Having made life unlivable through bombing and starvation, they are pushing for ‘voluntary’ migration of Palestinians to neighboring countries to make way for President Trump’s twisted vision of a ‘Riviera of the Middle East,'” he said.

The senator reiterated his demand that the US impose an arms embargo on Israel, halting the sale and transfer of all “offensive arms” to Israel.

“The United States must not continue sending many billions of dollars and weapons to Netanyahu’s genocidal government,” he declared.

In an unprecedented shift in rhetoric, Sanders then invoked the legacy of the Holocaust, comparing the war in Gaza to the Nazi genocide.

“The very term genocide is a reminder of what can happen if we fail. That word emerged from the Holocaust — the murder of six million Jews — one of the darkest chapters in human history.

“Make no mistake. If there is no accountability for Netanyahu and his fellow war criminals, other demagogues will do the same. History demands that the world act with one voice to say: enough is enough. No more genocide.”