Bernie Sanders

Sanders Rips ‘Fiction’ That There’s Nothing US Can Do to End Gaza Carnage

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) delivers a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate on March 6, 2023.  (Photo: Sen. Bernie Sanders/YouTube Screengrab)

“Of course we have the leverage,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders. “We are funding the war.”

Flanked by photos of hungry children and destroyed buildings, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders said in a speech Wednesday that the Biden administration must stop merely asking the Israeli government to halt its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza and begin using real leverage to bring about an end to the war and ensure the free flow of aid to the territory’s starving population.

“The U.S. government should make it clear that failure to open up access immediately and feed starving people will result in the Netanyahu government not getting another penny of U.S. taxpayer military aid,” said Sanders (I-Vt.), who noted that “right now we have the incredible situation where a U.S. ally is using U.S. weapons and equipment to block the delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid.”

“And if that’s not crazy,” the senator added, “I don’t know what is.”

More than a dozen children in Gaza have reportedly died of malnutrition and dehydration in recent weeks as U.S.-backed Israeli forces continue to obstruct the delivery of humanitarian aid—including by firing on aid convoys and crowds of desperate people gathering in the hopes of bringing sacks of flour back to their families.

In the absence of sufficient food and clean water, many people in Gaza have resorted to eating leaves, grass, and animal feed and drinking contaminated water. Gaza’s food production infrastructure has been decimated by Israeli bombing.

“If humanitarian organizations do not intervene urgently,” one Gaza doctor said last week, “you will find people and children dying in the streets.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department admitted earlier this week that Israeli officials have blocked critical humanitarian aid, including flour, from entering Gaza. But the administration has refused to use its leverage to force the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change course, relying instead on private meetings with Israeli officials and mild public criticism.

On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that the Biden White House has approved more than 100 separate arms sales to Israel over the past five months, even as it has publicly expressed concerns about the staggering civilian death toll in Gaza. Citing unnamed U.S. officials, Axios reported Thursday that “the Biden administration has no plans to restrict military assistance to Israel at this time.”

Sanders said during his floor speech Wednesday that it is “absurd to criticize Netanyahu’s war in one breath and provide him another $10 billion to continue that war in the next.”

“But perhaps the most remarkable thing about this disaster is the fiction we tell ourselves here in Congress that there is nothing, just nothing, that we can do,” the senator continued. “Isn’t this awful, my goodness. Look how all of those buildings have been destroyed—70% of the housing units, terrible. Children going hungry, terrible. Children coming down with disease, terrible. Terrible. Nothing we can do.”

“Really? Everybody knows what is happening,” said Sanders. “We see it every day in the news and we see the pictures, the emaciated children, of people bombed while they sleep. And yet Congress pretends as if we are powerless to stop it. If we had the courage to stand up to some very powerful special interests, yes, we could stop it. We could stop the destruction and we can make sure that these kids do not starve to death.”

Sanders argued that ending the war and addressing the humanitarian emergency would require the Biden administration and Congress to “use the incredible leverage we have over the Israeli government to secure a fundamental change in their disastrous policies.”

“Of course we have the leverage,” Sanders said. “We are funding the war.”

Other members of the Senate Democratic caucus have joined Sanders in recent days in criticizing the Israeli government’s restriction of badly needed humanitarian aid and demanding that the Biden administration cut off weapons shipments to Israel if it refuses to end its suffocating blockade.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said in a floor speech earlier this week that he asked the State Department why it is not applying a U.S. law that prohibits military exports to a country that is blocking the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

“I haven’t gotten an answer to the question I posed about three weeks ago,” said Van Hollen. “There is no good answer.”

Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said Wednesday that “we must face the contradiction of what we are doing.”

“We are airdropping food to famine-stricken Gaza today and supplying bombs for Israel to drop on devastated Gaza tomorrow,” said Welch. “We call for humanitarian relief, but how can that call be meaningful when aid workers are killed in their effort to deliver it and Palestinians are killed in their effort to retrieve it?”

In a social media post late Wednesday, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) wrote that she hopes President Joe Biden will listen “to his close friends in the Senate even if he won’t listen to his voters.”

“This is a catastrophe and he can’t keep going down this path,” Omar added. “Grateful for these senators who are pushing him to act like a president with serious leverage.”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Continue ReadingSanders Rips ‘Fiction’ That There’s Nothing US Can Do to End Gaza Carnage

‘Starvation Is Taking Place’: Sanders Demands Biden Cut Off All Military Aid to Israel

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Original article by JON QUEALLY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A baby, hospitalized due to malnutrition and dehydration, lie in an incubator at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, Gaza on March 2, 2024. Palestinians are not able to obtain basic food supplies since the embargo, imposed by the Israeli forces, continues. (Photo by Mahmoud Issa/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The independent Senator said arming a nation that is actively “prohibiting aid convoys from delivering desperately needed food and water” represents a clear violation of U.S. law.

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday accused Israel of standing in clear violation of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act by creating the conditions for mass starvation within the Gaza Strip as he called on the Biden administration to halt all military aid to the country until Palestinians are granted the life-saving humanitarian relief they urgently need.

“Starvation is taking place in Gaza,” Sanders said in a statement. “Israel is prohibiting aid convoys from delivering desperately needed food and water.”

While the U.S. government initiated airdrops over the weekend with the aim of providing tens of thousands of meals for those starving and suffering malnutrition in the besieged territory of Gaza, relief agencies said the effort was only a drop in the bucket of what is needed to stem what the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on Sunday called a “hell on earth” situation.

Sanders on Friday was supportive of airdrops—an effort he said would “buy time and save lives”—but added that “there is no substitute for sustained ground deliveries of what is needed to sustain life in Gaza.”

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Sanders, “must open the borders and allow the United Nations to deliver supplies in sufficient quantities. The United States should make clear that failure to do so immediately will lead to a fundamental break in the U.S.-Israeli relationship and the immediate halt of all military aid.”

On Sunday, as Common Dreams reported, UNICEF issued a warning to the world that ten child deaths from starvation had already been documented, that others had likely occurred, and many more should be expected if conditions on the ground were not immediately addressed.

“Horrific reports confirmed that, over the last few days only, at least 10 children died of malnutrition in Gaza,” the agency said. “These deaths are man-made, predictable, and entirely preventable.”

Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, called the situation in Gaza an “engineered famine” created by Israel and its international allies who have stood aside or provided backing to Netanyahu.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunda all pressed the Israelis to increase military aid as she pressed by both Netanyahu and Hamas leaders to accept a cease-fire deal. [sic]

“People in Gaza are starving,” Harris said during an event in Alabama. “The conditions are inhumane and our common humanity compels us to act.”

“The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses,” she added, but notably did not say what, if any, consequences the Israelis would face from the White House if they refused.

As Sanders’ office noted in its Sunday statement, Israel’s ongoing blockade of food, water, medical supplies, and fuel as the civilian population suffers at such levels is a clear violation of Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, which states:

No assistance shall be furnished … to any country when it is made known to the President that the government of such country prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.

“Today,” said Sanders, “I urge President Biden to implement this law and make it clear to Israel that, if aid access is not immediately opened up, he will impose consequences under the Foreign Assistance Act and stop military assistance to Israel.”

Original article by JON QUEALLY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading‘Starvation Is Taking Place’: Sanders Demands Biden Cut Off All Military Aid to Israel

Biden’s Complicity in Gaza Is Making It More Likely Fascist Trump Will Win

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Original article by NORMAN SOLOMON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event at Mother Emanuel AME Church on January 8, 2024 in Charleston, South Carolina.  (Photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

The electoral base that Biden is going to need for re-election is heavily against his support for Israel’s war on Gaza. There is no way to hide from that fact.

For more than four months, President Biden has been the main enabler for Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian people in Gaza. Every day, hundreds of civilians are killed by U.S. weaponry and, increasingly, by hunger and disease. The cruelty and magnitude of the slaughter are repugnant to anyone who isn’t somehow numb to the human agony.

Such numbing is widespread in the United States. Some factors include ethnocentric, racial, and religious biases against Arabs and Muslims. The steep pro-Israel tilt of news media runs parallel to the slant of U.S. government officials, with language that routinely conveys much lower regard for Palestinian lives than Israeli lives.

And while the credibility of the Israeli government has tumbled, the brawny arms of the Israel lobby—notably AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel—still exert enormous leverage over the vast majority of Congress. Few legislators are willing to vote against massive military aid that makes the carnage in Gaza possible.

Instead of candor, the routine choices have been euphemisms and silence. But—morally and politically—that’s a big mistake.

A chilling example is Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. On Monday night, he took to the Senate floor and condemned Israel in no uncertain terms. “Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food,” he said. “In addition to the horror of that news, one other thing is true. That is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime. And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals.”

Watching video from Van Hollen’s impassioned speech, you might assume that he would vote against sending $14 billion in further military aid to those “war criminals.” But hours later, he did just the opposite. As journalist Ryan Grim noted, “the senator’s speech pulsed with moral clarity—until it petered out into a stumbling rationale for his forthcoming yes vote.”

In contrast, three senators in the Democratic caucus—Jeff Merkley, Peter Welch, and Bernie Sanders—voted no. Sanders delivered a powerful speech calling for decency instead of further moral collapse from the top of the U.S. government.

While the Senate deliberated, the White House again made clear that it wasn’t serious about getting in the way of Israel’s planned assault on the city of Rafah. That’s where most of Gaza’s 2.2 million surviving residents have taken unsafe refuge from the Orwellian-named Israel Defense Forces.

An exchange at a White House news conference on Monday underscored that Biden is determined to keep enabling Israel’s continuous war crimes in Gaza:

Reporter: “Has the president ever threatened to strip military assistance from Israel if they move ahead with a Rafah operation that does not take into consequence what happens with civilians?”

Spokesman John Kirby: “We’re going to continue to support Israel. They have a right to defend themselves against Hamas and we’re going to continue to make sure they have the tools and the capabilities to do that.”

Later this week, Politico summed up: “The Biden administration is not planning to punish Israel if it launches a military campaign in Rafah without ensuring civilian safety.” Citing interviews with three U.S. officials, the article reported that “no reprimand plans are in the works, meaning Israeli forces could enter the city and harm civilians without facing American consequences.”

Biden continues to serve as an accomplice while mouthing platitudes of concern about the lives of civilians in Gaza. Month after month, he has done all he can to supply the Israeli military to the max.

With just eight months until the voting starts that could propel Donald Trump back into the presidency, the prospect of his return to power is all too real.

Under an apt headline—“Biden Is Mad at Netanyahu? Spare Me.”—The Nation senior editor Jack Mirkinson wrote this week: “In the real world, Biden and his legislative partners have continued to arm Israel; the Democratic leadership in the Senate actually brought people in on Super Bowl Sunday to take a vote on a bill that would, along with rearming Ukraine, send Israel another $14.1 billion for what is euphemistically dubbed ‘security assistance.’”

Ever since October, inspiring protests and activism in the United States have challenged U.S. support for Israel’s military assault on Gaza. However, boosted by revulsion at the atrocities that Hamas committed against Israeli civilians on October 7, the usual rationales for supporting Israel’s violence against Palestinians have been hard at work.

In this election year, an additional factor looms large. With just eight months until the voting starts that could propel Donald Trump back into the presidency, the prospect of his return to power is all too real. And with Biden set to be the Democratic Party’s nominee, countless individuals and groups are careful to avoid saying much that’s critical of the president they want to see re-elected.

Instead of candor, the routine choices have been euphemisms and silence. But—morally and politically—that’s a big mistake.

The electoral base that Biden is going to need for re-election is heavily against his support for Israel’s war on Gaza. Polling shows that young people in particular are overwhelmingly opposed. Most have seen through the thin veneer of his weak pleas for Israel to not kill so many civilians.

No amount of evasions, silences or doubletalk can make Biden’s policies morally acceptable. But—while the administration combines its PR hand-wringing with military arms-supplying—Biden apologists go on and on with evasion and verbal gymnastics to defend the indefensible.

A far better course of action would be actual candor about current realities: Joe Biden’s moral collapse is enabling the Israeli government to continue, with impunity, its large-scale massacre of Palestinian people. In the process, Biden is increasing the chances that the Republican Party, led by fascistic Donald Trump, will gain control of the White House in January.

Original article by NORMAN SOLOMON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Comment by dizzy: Depose senile cnut Genocide Joe.

Continue ReadingBiden’s Complicity in Gaza Is Making It More Likely Fascist Trump Will Win

To End ‘Nightmare’ in Gaza, Sanders Moves to Block Funding for Israeli Weapons

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, speaks during a hearing on March 30, 2022.  (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

“Twenty-seven thousand dead—two-thirds of them women and children,” said the senator. “This is unacceptable.”

Calling on the United States to “end its complicity in the nightmare unfolding in Gaza,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday said he would introduce an amendment to remove more than $10 billion from the foreign aid supplemental requested by President Joe Biden.

The $10.1 billion has been proposed to pay for offensive weaponry funding for the Israeli government, which has killed at least 27,131 Palestinians in Gaza so far—including at least 11,500 children—and displaced 1.9 million.

“Twenty-seven thousand dead—two-thirds of them women and children,” said the Vermont Independent. “Sixty-seven thousand wounded… 70% of housing units damaged or destroyed. And now, hundreds of thousands of children facing starvation.”

“This is unacceptable,” added Sanders. “The United States cannot be complicit in this humanitarian disaster. That is why I will be offering an amendment to the supplemental bill to ensure zero funding for the continuation of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s illegal, immoral war against the Palestinian people.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) indicated Thursday that lawmakers are close to finalizing the text of the national security supplemental, which also includes funding for Ukraine and security at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Schumer said he would file cloture on a motion to proceed with the supplemental on Monday, “leading to the first vote on the national security supplemental no later than Wednesday.”

Politico congressional reporter Burgess Everett said Sanders’ amendment “will spark debate” but has little chance of passing.

Despite the International Court of Justice’s finding last month that it is “plausible” that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza and Americans’ growing opposition to the U.S. government’s support for Israel, the majority of federal lawmakers continue to claim that Israel is only acting in self-defense against Hamas as it bombards Gaza.

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingTo End ‘Nightmare’ in Gaza, Sanders Moves to Block Funding for Israeli Weapons

Biden Admin Signals Arms Will Keep Flowing as Netanyahu Rejects Palestinian State

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken talks with spokesperson Matthew Miller and others after he departed from Manama for Tel Aviv on January 10, 2024.  (Photo: Evelyn Hockstein/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

“I don’t think we need to offer any kind of pressure” on the Israelis to accept a Palestinian state, said a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson signaled Thursday that American weaponry will continue to flow to the Israeli military even after the nation’s prime minister ruled out calls for a sovereign Palestinian state, openly defying the Biden administration’s push for a two-state solution to the crisis.

“Our support for Israel remains ironclad,” the State Department’s Matthew Miller said during a press briefing on Thursday in response to a question about how the U.S. intends to react to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position.

“I don’t think we need to offer any kind of pressure” on the Israelis to accept a Palestinian state, Miller said. “The pressure is reality. The pressure is the reality that I just laid out, that without a tangible path to the establishment of a Palestinian state, there are no other partners in the region who are going to step forward and help with the reconstruction of Gaza.”

Asked whether the U.S. will “continue to supply weapons and other support to an ally that is not listening to the warnings that you’re giving,” Miller acknowledged “differences with all of our allies” but said that “this is not a question of the United States pressuring them to do anything.”

“This is about the United States laying out for them the opportunity that they have,” Miller added. “There is a path for real security assurances—but again, we can’t make those choices for anyone. They have to make them for themselves.”

In an indication of its unflagging support for Israel’s war assault on Gaza, the U.S. State Department has twice bypassed Congress to expedite weapons sales to the nation’s government since the Hamas-led attack on October 7. Earlier this week, the U.S. Senate rejected a resolution from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would have required the department to produce a report on Israel’s human rights practices in Gaza—which by virtually all accounts are atrocious.

The Biden administration, which could soon be facing a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice over its complicity in Israeli war crimes, opposed the Sanders resolution and has refused to formally assess whether Israel is adhering to international humanitarian law.

The Guardian reported Thursday that the State Department has “in effect been able to circumvent the U.S. law that is meant to prevent U.S. complicity in human rights violations by foreign military units—the 1990s-era Leahy law, named after the now retired Vermont senator Patrick Leahy—because, former officials say, extraordinary internal state department policies have been put in place that show extreme deference to the Israeli government.”

“No such special arrangements exist for any other U.S. ally,” the newspaper added.

The administration is currently working to exempt U.S. arms transfers to Israel from a “mandatory congressional notification process that applies to all other foreign arms sales,” The Washington Post reported last week.

Overall, the Biden administration has sent more than 10,000 tons of weaponry to Israel over the past three and a half months, declining to place conditions on the arms even as the Israeli military openly flouts U.S. officials’ entreaties to protect Gaza civilians, attacking homes, schools, bakeries, hospitals, and refugee camps.

“If Biden was truly as dissatisfied or impatient or whatever other terms are being fed to the media about his supposed handwringing over Bibi’s war, he could have acted. But he didn’t.”

Israel’s unrelenting bombing campaign and ground invasion have killed nearly 25,000 people in Gaza since October, and much of the territory is in the grip of famine as the Netanyahu government restricts the amount of aid allowed to enter the besieged territory.

Ajith Sunghay, head of the United Nations human rights office in the occupied Palestinian territory, expressed horror Friday at conditions on the ground in Gaza, calling the situation “a major, human-made, humanitarian disaster.”

“People continue to arrive in Rafah from various places in their thousands, in desperate situations, setting up makeshift shelters with any material they can get their hands on,” said Sunghay. “I’ve seen men and children digging for bricks to be able to hold in place tents made with plastic bags.”

“It is a pressure cooker environment here, in the midst of utter chaos, given the terrible humanitarian situation, shortages, and pervasive fear and anger,” he added. “The communications blackout has continued for a sixth consecutive day, adding to the confusion and fear, and preventing Gazans from accessing services and information on areas to evacuate.”

In a column on Thursday, The Intercept‘s Jeremy Scahill noted that “over the course of the past 100 days of Israel’s bloody rampage in Gaza, Biden has had an infinite series of events that each could have justified ceasing U.S. political and military support for Israel’s explicitly offensive war.”

“There is no nation on Earth that wields more influence over Israel and no politician who holds more sway than Biden. The U.S. is the arms dealer and defender of this entire enterprise,” Scahill wrote. “If Biden was truly as dissatisfied or impatient or whatever other terms are being fed to the media about his supposed handwringing over Bibi’s war, he could have acted. But he didn’t.”

“Instead, the White House made sure no cease-fire took hold, offered a public defense of Israel’s conduct in the face of clear evidence of its genocidal intent submitted before the world court, circumvented Congress to keep the arms flowing, and then publicly opposed a resolution that sought to uphold U.S. law aimed at ensuring U.S. weapons and other aid are not used to commit human rights abuses. Those are the relevant facts,” he continued. “There is no need for media outlets to serve as conveyor belts for the administration’s disingenuous posturing. Biden’s actions are the only evidence that matters. And that evidence is damning.”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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Continue ReadingBiden Admin Signals Arms Will Keep Flowing as Netanyahu Rejects Palestinian State