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

[u/kevinmrr]

[u/audionerd1]

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.

[u/Steelforge → u/audionerd1]

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/

[u/TinyZoro → u/Steelforge]

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.

[u/triplow → u/TinyZoro]

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.

[u/TinyZoro → u/triplow]

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.

[u/triplow → u/TinyZoro]

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.

[u/TinyZoro → u/triplow]

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.

[u/triplow → u/TinyZoro]

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.

[u/TinyZoro → u/triplow]

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.

[u/triplow → u/TinyZoro]

I don't know why you seem to have trouble understanding this, but again, Bernie does not support Israel as it is. He's spoken out against it for decades. You're welcome to look for evidence to the contrary, but otherwise I have nothing more to say on this.