Bernie Sanders has been repeatedly uttering the phrase “Israel has a right to defend itself” on his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, which in the year 2025 can only be interpreted as blatant genocide apologia.
Israel does not have “a right to defend itself” against an occupied population in a giant concentration camp. Under international law it has a right to end the occupation, and that’s it. “Israel has a right to defend itself” is just a slogan people say when they want to justify supplying an ongoing genocide.
Sanders has been mixing his support for Israel in with periodic criticisms of Netanyahu and the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, always taking care to make his criticisms about the behavior of Israel’s current leadership and not the nature of the racist apartheid state itself.
Sanders is doing this for two reasons. Firstly, he is working to galvanize a big tent inclusive coalition of Democrats in opposition to Trump, and he wants that big tent to include people who think genocide is bad and people who think genocide is fine. He doesn’t want to offend the pro-genocide liberals.
Secondly, Sanders is doing this because he himself is a Zionist. Like other liberal Zionists, Bernie Sanders upholds a vision of an Israel that has never, ever existed: one which remains an ethnostate dominated by Jews, but which conducts itself in a kind and just manner, without constantly murdering and abusing Palestinians.
This iteration of the state of Israel is a fiction. An imaginary fantasyland, like Narnia. Everything about Israel is stacked against the possibility of such a status quo ever emerging, and Israel has always done everything it can to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. By pretending it is possible to have the Zionist entity and also have peace and justice, liberal Zionists help manufacture public consent for continuing to feed weapons to the genocidal apartheid state of Israel.
95% of them support the genocide what the hell are you on about
More than 60% straight up admit they want to kill every last Palestinian
It is telling that you believe Israelis are not literal Nazis. They are literal Nazis. Get it through your head already. They live in Israel of course they are Zionists. There are extremely few dissidents such as Gideon Levy actively opposing Israel. Gideon has made that very clear in his videos.
I think you’re over simplifying the issue a little here.
On first glance it seems the first one, 95%, figure was taken in January 2024, not long after October 7th and understandably tensions were high, and propaganda is high coming from the Israeli government and it’s supporters.
The over simplification comes from your 60% figure. You’re conflating that these people think they have a God given right to that land with genocide.
I don’t have the answer but labelling all Israeli Jews as Nazis is a little much imo. I do believe a genocide is happening and I believe Israel and the west are in the wrong, and i wholeheartedly support Palestinians and can empathise with Hamas being somewhat necessary as a means of fighting back, but I really don’t like the idea of labelling all of any demographic with the same label.
This is three months into the genocide. It was beyond obvious and indefensible what was going on at week 2.
You mean like how the Israeli surpreme court literally just said exactly that?
Yes but my issue is with the claim it is every Israeli, I’ve been quite clear that I’m not defending the government.
Israel is the Israeli government. That is kind of the definition.
Do you believe the Israeli government has a right to exist?
A country is not its government. If half the people vote in the current government then the other half didn’t.
No I don’t believe this Israeli government should exist.
No a government very much defines the country. Especially in the case of a colony. Let me word the question to specifically describe Israel:
Do you support the existence of a colonial ethnostate based on Jewish racial surpremacy?
You’re saying that if I vote for person A and then person B gets elected that I support person B.
You see how that’s illogical right?
Israelis in every party support what I described above. A few fringe Arabs in it do not but they recently got booted.
The Israeli surpreme court, the highest order of the countries foundational laws said that Jews have a religious right to genocide others in Israel.
Israel by its very core definition is what I described above. If you disagree let me know why.