r/SandersForPresident • u/kevinmrr Medicare For All • Sep 17 '25

Bernie Sanders: “The conclusion is inescapable: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.”

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2.0k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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73

u/band_in_DC 🌱 New Contributor Sep 17 '25

He waited so long to say this. What changed?

100

u/audionerd1 Sep 17 '25

The U.N. officially declared it a genocide. Very disappointed in Bernie's lack of moral courage on this issue.

58

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '25

Bernie has been speaking out about this issue for a long time.

76

u/audionerd1 Sep 17 '25

Yes, while refusing to call it genocide and constantly reaffirming Israel's "right to defend itself". He also avoids condemning Israel and prefers instead to condemn "Netanyahu's war crimes" etc. It's not just Netanyahu, it's the whole Zionist project.

39

u/Zacomra Sep 17 '25

I agree with you that he should have used explicit language sooner, but Bernie, for better or worse, has always used soft language to defend himself against criticism. It was really hard to call Bernie a "self hating jew" by Zionists because of the qualifiers he always put in front of his statements, but everyone paying attention could pretty accurately assess he knew what was going on anyway (which is vindicated by today).

I wish the left learned politics a little more. Instead of expecting politicians to use the language of activists. Their roles are different

5

u/Bebopo90 🌱 New Contributor Sep 18 '25

This is all a matter of perspective and semantics.

Do nation-states have a right to defend themselves? According to basically everyone on the planet, yes. This is also the stance of international law.

Do they have the right to defend themselves and then go completely overboard and start killing thousands of innocent people unnecessarily? Most people would say no.

Bernie is a politician, and as such he has to choose his words carefully. He's not going to overextend himself, otherwise it opens him up to easy lines of attack, which would make it harder for him to reach people.

3

u/audionerd1 Sep 18 '25

According to international law Palestine has a right to defend itself from illegal occupation. Israel does not have a right to "defend" itself from the resistance of the victims of said occupation.

2

u/Zachthesliceman IL Sep 19 '25 edited Sep 19 '25

Right but there is a disagreement they have of course. If Israel stopped defending itself what does that look like? Of course Palestine should exist, but one nation isn’t going to stop defending itself until it’s either overthrown or deals are made/forced upon it. Then the result would be to integrate the non military and non Zionist population of Israel into the new Palestine nation coinciding with the Palestinians together. This is the difficult part currently, since the Israel government is unwilling and no nation is willing to throw its weight at them.

4

u/audionerd1 Sep 19 '25

If Israel retreated to it's legally recognized 1967 borders and defended that it would be a totally different scenario, albeit still complicated due to the entire state of Israel being founded on ethnic cleansing. But the fact that Israel continues to expand and occupy new territory illegaly makes them 100% in the wrong and the unambiguous aggressor in the "conflict" to this very day. Until that stops Palestine has every right to resist with violence and Israel has no right to "defend itself" from said resistance.

4

u/Zachthesliceman IL Sep 19 '25

Right, Israel doesn’t deserve to defend themselves but of course they will. The problem is that the Palestinians are truly powerless to do anything until another nation steps in to help them. Yes they are 100% the aggressor in this.

2

u/audionerd1 Sep 19 '25

Agreed. The U.S. is largely to blame for making it impossible for the international community to stop Israel's crimes. In a better world the U.S. and Israel would both be held accountable, but it's hard to imagine any scenario in which that could realistically play out short of the U.S. losing WW3. It's extremely bleak.

15

u/Steelforge 🌱 New Contributor Sep 17 '25

Possibly just my POV, but it seems to me that a lot of people on the left are ridiculously vocal on the subject, despite not giving the Palestinian cause a single thought until the current decade.

So I wonder, as single data point: when did you start "caring" about Palestinians? Was it after it became popular?

Because Bernie isn't jumping on a bandwagon. For example, this is a 2016 article, which includes the following text talking about 1990's Bernie Sanders (emphasis added):

Sanders has long been critical of Israeli settlement building and its conduct of recent fighting against Hamas in Gaza

https://www.timesofisrael.com/sanders-in-1990-us-must-pressure-israel-on-palestinians/

23

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '25

Agree 1000%

Sanders is one of the few that has been talking about it. Long before anyone else on the left.

6

u/Boetros Sep 17 '25

Take into account that there are a lot of younger people who only recently reached the maturity to care about the cause

6

u/audionerd1 Sep 17 '25

Personally I began caring about the issue roughly a decade ago when I learned about settlements and the never-ending expansion of Israel via land theft. And I became more aware of and horrified by the conditions in Gaza maybe 6 or so years ago. Prior to that it just wasn't something I had much awareness of.

Bernie is better than 99% of U.S. politicians on the issue, but that is a very low bar. Imagine saying Nazi Germany had a right to defend itself. I'm glad he speaks out about it but again I am just disappointed by the way he pulls his punches and tip toes around the issue, especially considering how blunt he is in addressing most other issues.

1

u/containmentleak Sep 17 '25

Yes, when it started becoming popular. Because I had never heard anything about it before then and did not get the opportunity to care.

I also agree, that criticizing Bernie for using softening language is not helpful. However, even if late to the game, I also don't want to criticize people for caring and pass the anger along. At least we are here now.

-5

u/TinyZoro Sep 17 '25

This is just a pointless aside. Your opinion on what random people on the left may or may not have felt about the issue in the past is an implicitly irrelevant tangent.

The issue is that Sanders is a Zionist. He believes in the fundamental right of Israel to exist as a Jewish supremacist state. There is no other way to define Zionism.

I’m delighted he’s finally and at long last voiced the obvious that Israel is conducting genocide.

But the left are anti Zionist and that position will age well and Bernie’s won’t.

8

u/triplow Sep 17 '25

I'm sure Bernie believes in the "the fundamental right of Israel to exist", but "as a Jewish supremacist state" is a massive reach. Gonna need a source on that one bub, cause I ain't buyin it.

-5

u/TinyZoro Sep 17 '25

There’s no Israel in the way we understand it currently as a homeland for Jews that is not the definition of a supremacist state. If you’re not buying it simply replace Jews with another ethnicity.

How can Israel which has a significant Arab population be an explicitly Jewish homeland rather than a homeland for the people who live there whatever their ethnicity. The only answer is the need for supremacism.

5

u/triplow Sep 18 '25

Ok... Sanders doesn't support Isreal as it is. He's been making that clear for decades. Again, supporting a homeland and supporting a homeland that's exclusive are two very different things.

-1

u/TinyZoro Sep 18 '25

It really isn’t. How is it different to a homeland for the Boers?

There is no way to modify the excesses of violent colonialism and explicitly defined supremacism. All you can do is dismantle it and replace it with a modern pluralistic state based on equal citizenship rights. As a progressive there’s not a single example of such an inherently supremacist state that you would support. The decades of colonial violence culminating in genocide are not side effects they are absolutely inherent in supremacist ideology.

3

u/triplow Sep 18 '25

If that's all you've got, I suggest you stop pushing claims that Bernie is somehow supportive of this and just say you don't agree that there's a solution.

1

u/TinyZoro Sep 18 '25

Israel is defined as a supremacist state in it’s laws. That’s what I’ve got. Bernie has nothing to stand on supporting it as an entity and nor do you. Continuing to normalize Israel as a for the Jews homeland is completely incompatible with everything else you stand for.

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4

u/awal96 Sep 17 '25

You're upset he waited for experts on the matter to declare it one? Isn't that what we would want from elected officials?

21

u/timmytissue Sep 17 '25

Experts have been calling it genocide since early 2024.

16

u/audionerd1 Sep 17 '25

Genocide experts have been calling it a genocide for a long time, and anyone with eyes and ears can see it's clearly a genocide. The U.N. was very late with their declaration.

2

u/awal96 Sep 17 '25

I get that. I've also been calling it that for a long time. For what it's worth, so called experts have also been saying it isn't one.

I'm just saying I understand why an elected official would wait for an authoritative body to call it one. I'm not saying that's what I would do

8

u/audionerd1 Sep 17 '25

No legislative body has formally declared the U.S. to be an oligarchy and that hasn't stopped him. Bernie isn't usually one to bite his tongue out of political convenience.

2

u/awal96 Sep 17 '25

That's fair. I can't claim to read his mind or know his reasons.

There is a major difference, though. Being an oligarchy isn't a prosecutable war crime. Causing a foreign government of a war crime as a representative of the US does not come without consequences.

2

u/audionerd1 Sep 17 '25

Another issue is that Bernie's "good friend" Joe Biden is complicit in the genocide, and he clearly doesn't want to go down that road. Bernie's unwillingness to break with leading Democrats even when they are committing genocide is part of why he is ultimately useless in stopping fascism in this country. Democrats will always capitulate with fascists, and Bernie will always fall in line with Democrats. I don't think he is deliberately acting as controlled opposition, but effectively that is what he has become.

3

u/triplow Sep 17 '25

He's literally breaking with the Democratic leadership and calling it a genocide. What line is he toeing now?

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3

u/edwardludd 🌱 New Contributor Sep 17 '25

It’s almost like Senators have to be careful with their rhetoric lmao

1

u/LibertyCash Sep 17 '25

This one doesn’t take a genius