Progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday called for an “even-handed approach” to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and said the U.S. must lead the world in bringing people together instead of “supplying weapons to kill children.”
CBS’s “Face the Nation” John Dickerson asked the Vermont senator how an even-handed approach could be accomplished when dealing with groups like the militant group Hamas, which the U.S. considers to be a terrorist organization, and seeks to destroy Israel.
“You have a very difficult situation. You have Hamas, a terrorist group. You have a right-wing Israeli government and the situation is getting worse. And all I’m saying is that the United States of America has got to be leading the world in bringing people together, not simply supplying weapons to kill children in Gaza,” Sanders told Dickerson.
“This last series of attacks killed 64 children, and destroyed a large part of the infrastructure of Gaza in a community that has already been one of the most uninhabitable territories in the world,” he added.
Dickerson noted that Joel Rubin, who handled Jewish outreach for Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, has said that accusing the Israeli government of creating an apartheid state has contributed to antisemitism and asked Sanders if use of that language should be avoided.
“Well I think we should tone down the rhetoric. I think our goal is very simple: it is to understand that what’s going on in Gaza today is unsustainable. When you have 70 percent of the young people unemployed, when people cannot leave the community, when hospitals and wastewater plants have been destroyed — that is unsustainable,” Sanders said.
More than a week of violence that resulted in the deaths of more than 200 of Palestinians and a dozen Israelis ended with a ceasefire announced last Thursday.