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Sanders: Netanyahu government includes ‘overt racists’

The U.S. should not be “supplying weapons to kill children in Gaza,” Sanders declared.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

Former Democratic candidate for president and self-declared socialist Bernie Sanders slammed the U.S. government for supporting Israel on CBS’s Face the Nation program on Sunday, saying that Israel should not be “supplying weapons to kill children in Gaza.”

The Independent senator from Vermont told host John Dickerson that “the United States of America has got to be leading the world in bringing people together, not simply supplying weapons to kill children in Gaza. This last series of attacks killed 64 children.”

Sanders did not mention the Israeli children killed by rockets launched from Gaza, including a 5-year-old boy and 16-year-old girl.

Nor did he acknowledge that Hamas uses innocent men, women and children as human shields and that Israel takes measures to avoid civilian casualties.

Last week, Sanders introduced legislation to block a $735 million arms sale package to Israel.

During the conversation, Sanders acknowledged that Hamas is a “terror group,” but he focused most of his criticism on the Netanyahu government, which he said includes “overt racists.”

When asked about a major uptick in anti-Semitic attacks throughout the U.S. against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas conflict, Sanders blamed “right-wing extremists.”

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Sanders’ comments on the program were a continuation of an op-ed he penned last week, which was published in the New York Times.

“Over more than a decade of his right-wing rule in Israel, Mr. Netanyahu has cultivated an increasingly intolerant and authoritarian type of racist nationalism,” Sanders claimed in the article.

“In his frantic effort to stay in power and avoid prosecution for corruption, Mr. Netanyahu has legitimized these forces, including Itamar Ben-Gvir and his extremist Jewish Power party, by bringing them into the government. It is shocking and saddening that racist mobs that attack Palestinians on the streets of Jerusalem now have representation in its Knesset.”

Jewish victims of Arab mob violence, including Lod resident Yigal Yehoshua, who was killed last week by rock-throwers, went unacknowledged by Sanders.

“In the Middle East, where we provide nearly $4 billion a year in aid to Israel, we can no longer be apologists for the right-wing Netanyahu government and its undemocratic and racist behavior,” he wrote.

“Palestinian lives matter,” the op-ed concluded.