Bernie Sanders calls war in Gaza a "genocide"
Bernie Sanders calls war in Gaza a "genocide"
www.axios.com
Just a moment...
137 comments
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There is a big narrative that loves to pick off the left-est of the left people in the US government, and come up with various bullshit reasons to criticize them. You'll see a bunch of them down below in this thread, being negative about Bernie.
You'll never hear this kind of argument applied anywhere else. Like, if Beto O'Rourke said Gaza was a genocide, you wouldn't see all these Lemmy comments saying "TOOK YOU FUCKING LONG ENOUGH YOU PIECE OF SHIT" or whatever. When that handful of countries said they wouldn't do sporting events with Israel, I didn't see anyone commenting "YEAH WHERE WAS THIS TWO YEARS AGO WHERE ARE THE FUCKING WAR CRIMES CHARGES" or anything like that. The extensive nitpicking is only aimed at people like AOC and Bernie who are significant leftist voices in government.
If you want to know what Bernie's been actually saying about Gaza, this is it:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uVDPXtnTXUw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFhcSlrJcAU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dd4cg-t8j8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2_AWLQ4gk4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBZreokpA_s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRrHfsqg990
And so on. He's been doing what most of Lemmy would like to see someone in the US Congress doing: Yelling about Israel, what a fucking horror it is, and trying to stop US military aid. This extensive nailbiting about him calling it "ethnic cleansing" instead of "genocide" is just going to get smoothly replaced by these users with some other reason to nailbite about him, definitely not with any enthusiasm or support for him. I guarantee it.
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The UN just called it one, Bernie has cover to do it now. His situation changed, so did his actions.
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People get mad at Bernie because they expect better and are disappointed it took so long. No one expects better of Beto.
But even so-
Like, if Beto O’Rourke said Gaza was a genocide, you wouldn’t see all these Lemmy comments saying “TOOK YOU FUCKING LONG ENOUGH YOU PIECE OF SHIT” or whatever.
-you absolutely woud lol
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When that handful of countries said they wouldn't do sporting events with Israel, I didn't see anyone commenting "YEAH WHERE WAS THIS TWO YEARS AGO WHERE ARE THE FUCKING WAR CRIMES CHARGES" or anything like that.
Then you must not have been paying attention, because that was everywhere here
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https://lemmy.world/post/35806638
I literally don't see even a single comment saying that the Netherlands is bad for not having done this previously. Let alone anything like this or this.
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What a stupid take. Beto O'Rourke isn't portraid as a civil rights champion or a leftist, he's just a democrat. Bernie was supposed to be more, he's supposed to be the (democratic) socialist, the left, and he's supposedly a champion of human rights.
Except for Palestine. He reminisced his beautiful Kibbutz during an active genocide to justify it, completely ignoring his hypocrisy of building such a community by brutally stealing Palestinian land.
We don't expect Beto to say anything, we had higher expectations for Bernie. He and AOC have let us down in our time of greatest need.
Except for Palestine. They are loud and proud about all their support for human rights and fighting for everyone, except for Palestine.
Bernie will finally call it a genocide, but he'll go with the shifting tide of blaming Netanyahu. He won't admit that there's something fundamentally wrong with a religious ethno supremacist genocidal state and that the rot comes from deep within society, because his priority will be to save Jewish ISIS.
Free Palestine, from the river to the sea. Let me know when he says that.
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He and AOC have let us down in our time of greatest need.
Except for Palestine. They are loud and proud about all their support for human rights and fighting for everyone, except for Palestine.
I feel like there are a whole bunch of YouTube links up in the parent comment that you need to watch
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Here we go, everyone.
This is what OP is talking about
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He’s been doing what most of Lemmy would like to see someone in the US Congress doing
He has focused more of his time criticising the Nentayahu government specifically, rather than the fundamental concept of running a settler colony. He has only recently starting naming the full israeli government. He still believes in sending weapons, aid and trade to the occupation ensuring the continued murder of the Palestinians can continue.
is just going to get smoothly replaced by these users with some other reason to nailbite about him
Because ultimately Bernie still supports the conditions that will continue the genocide. He is still a liberal zionist. He will still buy a beachfront property in Gaza once it is cleansed but I guess its ok if he cries the entire time.
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He still believes in sending weapons, aid and trade to the occupation ensuring the continued murder of the Palestinians can continue.
Watch the YouTube videos I posted where he is repeatedly introducing bills to stop ensuring exactly that, and yelling with pictures on the floor of the Senate about how important it is.
You're talking pure shit.
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BREAKING NEWS " Sanders calls genocide a "genocide"
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Wow, a big step for Sanders. This shows it is becoming more mainstream to acknowledge the genocide. I know it's common sense for us here, but mainstream acceptance is extremely important here. A long way to go, but this is good news
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Maybe he was waiting for the UN commission to officially call it a genocide.
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It's a shame some people still call that genocide a "war".
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It is. How is that bad? A country is doing stuff in another with military force without consent. That's war. (If prolonged)
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It's bad because it suggests two matched belligerents. It's like the difference between a boxing match with a skill gap, and a boxer violently murdering a child with a pretext. Also the child has been rendered physically and mentally disabled by the boxer's previous activity. Also the boxer locks the child up and deprives it of food and water and shelter.
Not all that comparable -
No. One country, backed by all the money and weapons of the west, was given land that was stolen from palestine in 1948, then they proceeded to slowly eradicate and remove the palestinian population. Just look at maps of palestine from 1948 to today, and watch the genocides progression.
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If I pulled a gun and killed an unarmed person, would you call that a fight?
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There's a difference between war and ethnic cleansing.
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A few years ago he said "Criticizing Israel is not antisemitic" - this REALLY HELPED criticism be heard at all.
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yea its been going on since he was like 7 years old. took long enough to say it out loud.
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This
Back then maybe technically it wasn't a genocide just yet, but I recall watching news on tv as an 8 year old, talking about Israeli soldiers shooting and murdering children because they threw rocks at them.
Nothing was done about it
That was over 40 years ago
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba
Definitely was a thing then too
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I saw a horrifying estimate of 680,000 murdered by israel in Gaza. Ten times the official figure. This is almost a third of the pre genocide population. It is a holocaust.
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FYI I believe that’s the estimated casualty list.
Confirmed deaths are slightly below 70,000.
Absolutely horrific stuff, still.
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That 70k barelly changed since Israel destroyed most of the hospitals in Gaza were the counting was done more than 9 months ago.
You see, that is the number of officially counted and identified dead, so to be counted the actual corpse has to be found (often amongst the rubble of bombed out buildings) in good enough condition to be identified, it has to be brough to a hospital were they do the counting and it has to be actually identified by somebody and against the list of Gaza residents.
For all those things to actually happen to a corpse in a highly urban war zone where entire families are wiped out when 2000lb bombs are dropped on buildings (so, who is going to identify the corpses?) the corpse has to be transported all the way to a hospital within a rubble-strewned city were over 70% of the buildings are destroyed, large parts are occupied by an enemy with a shoot on sight policity and which often targets ambulances, and the aggressor has activelly targetted the very places where the counting of dead is done, all of which by now adds to a very low probability combination, hence why that official number massivelly slowed down its increase around 9 months ago, when Israel destroyed most Gaza hospitals - it was hard enough to have all those events around a corpse happen when Gaza was still mainly intact, barelly occupied and Israel hadn't been activelly suppressing the counting, and by now is very low probability.
Meanwhile in a letter of a researcher to the Lancet Medical Journal (edit: per the reference from another poster)
over 6 months agoin July 20, 2024, they estimatedaroundnear 200k dead and this was before the man-made famine.The IDF themselves have recently admitted having killed over 220k people.
All put together means that 600k estimate is very likely to be way closer to reality than the official 70k and might even be lower than reality.
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That number is a very conservative estimate.
In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.
The Lancet vol. 404, Issue 10449 p237-238July 20, 2024
Applying that now would suggest around 300k deaths, close to one in seven Palestinians in Gaza killed by the IDF.
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Its difficult to confirm casualties at the bottom of a collapsed apartment blocks in a kill zone.
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Good for Bernie.
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So did the UN as of two days sgo, for those who missed it. More here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds
For the leaders hiding behind the shield of "we don't know", well, now we know. Now get off your ass and do what you're obligated to do.
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So does anyone know what actually comes of this? Does this realistically change the trajectory at all or will Israel just carry on like nothing changed?
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Well, if you want my optimistic view I'd say that signatories to the agreement to prevent genocide will now be compelled to act. If you want my pessimistic view it's that nothing will change.
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They'll just keep carrying on
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I love Bernie. I think he's one of the greatest people we have in this world. That being said it's about goddamn time. He's been avoiding saying that for a very very very long time.
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Because he is or was sponsored by an Israeli party or whatever. He was even pro israel at the start of the genocide.
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He made it pretty clear. If it's a genocide, that's an argument for the courts, and the thing that needs something done about it is the starving people and indiscriminate killing of civilians.
The "is it or isn't it" debate is a bullshit distraction from the fact that isreal is killing it's citizens.
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No centrist will ever call it a genocide, but people are sure angry that a man who introduced multiple bills to cease or condition weapons sales didn't say the word as soon as they wanted.
These are the same people who called people trumpers when they said that harris should show some daylight between herself and biden's "whatever netanyahu-senpai wants" policies.
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I'm more concerned about the people who don't want to condemn genocide than the people who are cautious about using the term.
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I’m sure his office is getting some phone calls from some very powerful people today
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Hopefully they'll all be politely refused
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Finally
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Well he took his time with that one.
AOC next?
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"If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes."
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Berni called a genocide, a genocide. Shocking.
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He doesn't "call" it genocide, it is factually genocide.
But hey. Remember Israel is a democracy! -
Fuck me…and they said that this guy is a huge leftist.
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It's almost like he's a fully fledged, complex human being and not an avatar of one side of a highly simplified model of political thought.
He's quite "left-wing" (from a US Overton Window) on most issues. MTG was relatively early speaking out for Palestine. That doesn't make her a leftist, either
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Hes basically the most left person in US government
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Yeah but he was a HUGE VOICE for saying "Criticizing Israel is not antisemitism" a few years back, which did A LOT towards others being able to be heard when calling it a Genocide.
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Here he is in 1988:
It seems kind of tame by today's standards. I think that has more to do with the fact that he's super-Jewish, he was completely comfortable with talking about socialism and Cuba and things in a way that was so far off the left side of the map at the time that it was out of the building. But by the standards of that time it was absolutely insane. This was years before the Rodney King jury said "not guilty," this was back when we were doing our own Gaza-lite operations in Central America, it was a time when America could do no wrong and anyone who didn't like us was a terrorist. He actually talks about that in one other interview which I think I posted in another comment, how he met with the Sandinistas and how the media in the US made it totally impossible for them to get any message that was at all friendly to them to anybody in the US.
More recently, here's a video of him yelling (for the however-manyth time) recently on the Senate floor about what a fucking horror we are enabling in Gaza, showing pictures. "This is an effort to destroy a people."
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You have to remember that Sanders grew up in Brooklyn in the 40s/50s. He would have encountered holocaust survivors on a daily basis. For guys like that, Israel represented a safeguard against the possible extermination of their people. The fact he's gone from being broadly supportive if Israel (though being pretty critical of the Netanyahu government) to admitting that this is a genocide shows pretty huge growth.
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It's certainly his biggest weakness and blindspot. He's Jewish and has always been a liberal zionist. This isn't to excuse the bad position, but the genocide really puts it into sharp contrast.
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A quick search will reveal that Sanders has been critical of Israel's actions in Palestine since at least 2014 but okay.
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137 comments
The bar is in hell
I legitimately have no idea how that man keeps going. Pretty sure I would've hung my hat up after the first 3 or 4 decades when things kept getting worse.
Honestly, when you're fighting for what's right, it makes it more bearable when it's hard. There's not this extensive hesitation or heavy weight, like when you're struggling with some frustrating task that isn't really what needs to be done in the first place.