Longtime Netanyahu Critic Senator Sanders Now Says All Israeli Politicians Are Extremists

Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent and unofficial leader of the progressive left, is now saying that none of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli competitors are fit to ally with America. As the midterm elections near, Democratic Socialists of America and some other Democrats, as well as some Republicans, are making opposition to Israel central to their political campaigns. Mr. Sanders, widely considered the DSA’s elder statesman, was interviewed on the anti-Israel podcast, Zeteo, on Wednesday. The senators agreed with the website’s CEO, Mehdi Hasan, that all the Israeli politicians who hope to unseat Mr. Netanyahu in the country’s October 27 election are “extremists.”The Jewish senator has long turned Mr. Netanyahu into an avatar of all that’s wrong with the state. Having visited an Israeli kibbutz in 1963, Mr. Sanders at times claims to support Israel even as he opposes aid, military cooperation, or any American support of the Jewish state. Roughly 80 percent of Democrats have negative views of Israel, according to recent polls, while up to 70 percent of Republicans support the Jewish state. DSA politicians and allied Democratic legislators can read the tea leaves. Mr. Netanyahu’s government is not “aligned with U.S. national security objectives,” Senator Chris Murphy, the two-term Connecticut Democrat, claimed on NBC on Sunday. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland is a top critic of Israel and Mr. Netanyahu, and Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon supports a Mr. Sanders-led bill to cut aid to Israel. While Representative Ro Khana initially backed Israel’s response to the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, he now says the Israel Defense Forces should have ended all military acts in Gaza. Instead, he told the Free Press, Israel should have engaged in “a peace process with the Arab Peace Plan to try to actually have a non-Hamas Palestinian state with a secure Israel.”The idea of a Palestinian state, though, is an anathema even for Israel’s most left-wing politicians. “After the criminal Hamas attack of October 7 any talk of a Palestinian state is destructive for Israel,” the leader of a liberal party, the Democrats, Yair Golan, told Haaretz in a recent interview. Tied with Mr. Netanayahu in polls ahead of October’s legislative elections, which will determine the next prime minister, a former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, now head of the centrist Yashar!, or “Straight” Party, joined the premier’s cabinet after the attack before leaving in mid-2024. Likud members accuse him of prematurely advocating an end to the war. On the contrary, Mr. Eisenkot told Channel 12 News this week, unlike some Likud cabinet members, he was the one urging to intensify military action in Gaza.Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents say his closeness to President Trump prevents him now from assailing Hamas. Following that criticism, the IDF struck several Gaza targets on Thursday. The premier’s opponents also demand to defy Washington and intensify strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israeli politicians, meanwhile, assailed the Netanayhu government for a slow reaction to Jewish extremists who took over Palestinian homes in Judea and Samaria. The American Ambassador, Mike Huckabee, a strong Israel supporter, called the extremists “terrorists,” and the IDF eventually removed them from the Arab village. Earlier this week, Mr. Van Hollen urged Mr. Huckabee to resign. The senator accused the ambassador of becoming an “apologist for the extremist government in Israel.”Mr. Sanders originated the claim that he supports the Jewish state, but not its “extremist” government. Now, though, the Vermonter seems to paint all Israeli politicians in the same “extreme” brush. In the Wednesday interview, Mr. Hasan said that people on the left pan Mr. Sanders for “what they think is your overriding focus just on Netanyahu, on treating Netanyahu and his admittedly far-right government as the chief problem, rather than Israel itself.”The senator agreed. “It would be easy to say, ‘Well, you got a terrible prime minister, get rid of him, and things will be all right,’” he said. Unlike the Kibbutzniks of the 1960s, he added, in current Israel “you have a significant movement that has moved to the right, and I would hope that there will be brave leaders in Israel who will take that on.”Mr. Hasan, though, said that “none of the current ones, unfortunately, seem to meet that criteria, I think we can agree.” Mr. Sanders responded, “Yes.”

Longtime Netanyahu Critic Senator Sanders Now Says All Israeli Politicians Are Extremists

Longtime Netanyahu Critic Senator Sanders Now Says All Israeli Politicians Are Extremists

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