Bernie Sanders expresses support for pro-Palestine protests

Bernie Sanders speaks out about US college protests against Israel’s war in Gaza while drawing attention to the need to “condemn, in every form, antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of bigotry”.

Mr Sanders, the independent Vermont senator, was questioned by CNN’s Dana Bash on State of the Union on Sunday over the role of antisemitism in pro-Palestine protests that have erupted across college campuses in the United States.

Reports of antisemitism have cropped up across university campuses since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, leaving 1,200 dead. Mr Sanders said to CNN that antisemitism is a “vile and disgusting ideology”.

“But here is the reality: right now, what Netanyahu’s right-wing, extremist and racist government is doing is unprecedented in the modern history of warfare,” he said.

“We are looking at the possibility of mass starvation and famine in Gaza. When you make those charges, that is not antisemitic. That is a reality.”

As the war has continued with ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza and more than 34,000 Palestinians being killed, antisemitic, Islamophobic and anti-Arab hate incidents have increased across the country, civil rights advocates have reported.

The continuing attack on Gaza has also seen pro-Palestine protests sweep across college campuses in solidarity with Gaza through demonstrations and encampments on campus lawns.

As tensions have escalated, hundreds of people have been arrested on differing campuses, students and professors alike, and law enforcement has launched violent crackdowns on the protests.

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More than 100 people at Columbia alone amid the protest encampments, which are demanding the school to divest their financial ties to Israel over the war in Gaza.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused US college students protesting against the war in Gaza of being antisemitic in a video released on Wednesday, where he referred to protestors as “antisemitic mobs” and compared them to “what happened in German universities in the 1930s”.

Mr Sanders responded in a statement on Thursday refuting Netanyahu’s accusations of antisemitism.

“No, Mr Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 – 70 per cent of whom are women and children. It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless – almost half the population,” Mr Sanders said.

The senator reiterated his statement on State of the Union on Sunday, adding that we “have to pay attention to the disastrous and humanitarian disaster taking place in Gaza right now”.

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“I’m Jewish, all right? My father’s family was wiped out by Hitler. Antisemitism is a disgusting and vile form of bigotry, which has killed millions of people,” Mr Sanders said Sunday, according to CNN. “I would hope that every American condemns antisemitism. We condemn Islamophobia and all forms of bigotry.”

Mr Sanders accused Netanyahu in his Thursday statement of attempting to “distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government”.

“It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable for your actions,” he said.

Protests have taken place at a number of US universities including Yale, Columbia University, New York University, University of Southern California, and the University of Texas, Austin.

US House speaker Mike Johnson visited Columbia on Wednesday, where he also characterised all the campus pro-Palestine protests across the country as “antisemitic” and called for the university’s president to resign, yet he was greeted by a chorus of boos and chants from the crowd.