Sen. Bernie Sanders: US Must Back Israel, But Also Be 'Pro-Palestinian'

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., insisted Sunday that the United States must continue to be pro-Israel, but “we have to be pro-Palestinian,” and he hopes and believes President Joe Biden understands that.

“I was delighted to see he is moving forward to try to rebuild with the international community — rebuild Gaza after all of that destruction,” the Vermont independent, who introduced a resolution to a resolution to block the $735 million sales of precision-guided weapons to Israel, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Sanders’ call for an even-handed approach has been called preposterous by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but the senator said Sunday that over the years, “the Netanyahu government has become extremely right-wing.”

“There are people in the Israeli government now who are overt racists,” said Sanders. “You have Hamas, a terrorist group, you have a right-wing Israeli government, and the situation is getting worse. All that I’m saying is 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.”

The last series of attacks killed 64 children and destroyed a large part of Gaza’s infrastructure in the destruction of infrastructure in a community “that has already been one of the most uninhabitable territories in the world.”

Even though Sanders has called for a block on weapons sales to Israel, he said Sunday he’d “absolutely” want to see conditions placed on aid to the Palestinians to make sure Hamas does not get control of any of it

“Look, Hamas is a terrorist, corrupt, authoritarian group of people,” said the senator “We have got to stand up to them. But, once again, our job is not simply to put more and more military support for Israel. It is to bring people together. We can’t do it alone. We need the international community. But that’s what I think we need to be doing.”

Meanwhile, reports of anti-Semitic incidents have grown in the United States this past week, and Sanders called that an “outrage.”

“We have to combat anti-Semitism,” he said. “We have to combat the increase in hate crimes in this country against Asians, against African-Americans, against Latinos. So we’ve got a serious problem of a nation that is being increasingly divided, being led by right-wing extremists in that direction.”

Sanders said he also thinks the rhetoric about the Israel-Hamas fight should be toned down.

“I think our goal is very simple,” he said. “Is to understand that what is going on in Gaza today is unsustainable. When you have 70% of the young people unemployed, when people cannot leave the community, when hospitals and wastewater plants have been destroyed, that is unsustainable. The job of the United States is to bring people together, and that is what we have got to try to do.”

Meanwhile, Biden and Republicans have been going back and forth on infrastructure, with the White House presenting a scaled-back bill, but Sanders, when asked if Democrats should go alone on legislation, said that the bill must continue to address further issues such as climate change.

“At a time when half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, we’ve got to create millions of good-paying jobs,” he said. “That is rebuilding roads and bridges. We talked about that forever. But it is also having to deal with the existential threat of climate. How do you not deal with climate when the scientists tell us that the very future of the planet is in peril, and how do we lead the world unless we have in a competitive education?”

Meanwhile, Sanders said proponents want bipartisanship on infrastructure, but he doesn’t think there is a “seriousness” on the part of Republican leaders.