ANGELO LYNN

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders this week voiced strong opposition to President Biden’s proposal to allocate another $10.1 billion of emergency funding to Israel in its war against Hamas. Without equivocating, Sanders said Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza civilians was immoral.

Sanders’ statement came as Congress considers the Biden administration’s $110 billion emergency foreign aid supplemental bill. While Sanders said he is supportive of many provisions of the bill, including additional aid to Ukraine to repel Russia’s invasion, he later voted against the bill, joining most Republicans in a 49-51 defeat. It needed 60 votes to pass.

While the bill’s defeat puts the Ukraine’s war with Russia back into the spotlight, Sanders focused his objection on the staggeringly high death toll of Israel’s invasion of Gaza: an estimated 16,000 Palestinians have been killed in the past two months, two thirds of whom are women and children; tens of thousands more have been injured; 1.8 million people have been displaced from their homes and “are struggling every day to get the food, water, medical supplies and fuel they need to survive; 250 people have been killed in the West Bank since October 7^th and more than a thousand Palestinians have been driven off their land there.” 

“No, I do not think we should be appropriating $10.1 billion for the right-wing, extremist Netanyahu government to continue its current military approach,” Sanders continued. “What the Netanyahu government is doing is immoral, it is in violation of international law, and the United States should not be complicit in those actions.”

“We are all clear that Hamas, a corrupt terrorist organization, began this war with their barbaric attack against Israel on October 7. Given that reality, Israel has a right to defend itself. It does not, however, have the right to wage all-out war against innocent men, women, and children who had nothing to do with the Hamas attack.”

Sanders goes ahead to put the high death toll in context. In Ukraine, which has seen the most intense fighting in Europe since World War II, at least 10,000 civilians have been killed since Russia’s invasion in February 2022 — almost two years later. To restate: 16,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza in the past two months.

Sanders acknowledges that Biden’s team has been trying to get the Israelis to be “more targeted in their approach,” but with limited success. How then, Sanders asks, “does giving Netanyahu another $10 billion with no strings attached help advance the critical policy goal of the United States to protect civilians and allow for a lasting peace?” He then suggests any additional military aid to Israel “must have conditions attached to secure the necessary changes in policy. We cannot be complicit in the current Israeli approach.”

As has been stated from the outset of this invasion, the only thing Netanyahu is likely to listen to is a direct threat to shut off American aid when he goes too far. Sanders is saying that time is now; he’s not wrong.

Angelo Lynn