Bernie Sanders has accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of being responsible for what he said was Israel’s “overreacting” to Hamas missile attacks last year and causing civilian damage.
The man who wants to be the first Jewish President, although he says he has no use for organized religion, told Rolling Stone:
War is terrible unto itself. But I think that Israel overreacted and caused more civilian damage than was necessary.
They have very sophisticated weapons systems. They make the case, and I respect that, that they do try to make sure that civilians are not damaged. But the end result was that a lot of civilians were killed and a lot of housing was destroyed. There was terrible, terrible damage done.
He obviously is not running after Tea Party voters.
Sanders left out of his comments what he said at a Town Hall meeting earlier this year, as reported here:
After saying that Israel overreacted, he added, as seen as seen and heard in the video below:
On the other hand, you have a situation where Hamas is sending missiles to Israel, and you know where some of these missiles are coming from? They are coming from population areas.
In the interview with Rolling Stone this week, The Vermont socialist senator adopted the “two-state solution,” of course, and noted:
The United States has got to work with the Palestinian people in improving their standard of living, which is now a disaster, and has been made much worse since the war in Gaza.
If he had gone back a few years earlier, he would have realized that the standard of living for Arabs in Gaza was far higher since Israel took over the region after the Six-Day War in 1967.
That ended when the Palestinian Authority launched its intifada that eventually led to the expulsion of Jews, who employed thousands of Arabs, and the entrenchment of the Palestinian Authority regime that ruined their standard of living.