The Independent US Senator that rows with the Democrats and (is Jewish) is NOT happy about Israel’s leveling Gaza to get rid of Hamas …And agree’s with Biden pushing for a ‘Two State’ goverance of the territory ..
One would think he’s NOT happy with his President getting played by the Israel Prime Minister….
He is not alone….
He’d be doing President Biden a favor with his poolling numbers and other things if Biden listened and and went along with Sanders…..
Bernie Sanders has been thinking a lot these days about what public pressure can accomplish when it comes to the war in Gaza. We were talking less than 24 hours after Joe Biden had struggled to make it through a Virginia rally that was meant to be focused on abortion rights. Fourteen times, the president been interrupted by protesters chanting “Genocide Joe” or demanding a cease-fire. Young people, progressives, activists — “They have a right to be upset at the administration,” Sanders said.
He was matter-of-fact about the president’s situation, having just spoken with a pair of Biden aides about Gaza. Sanders has been friendly with and supportive of Biden, but “we are doing our best to turn the administration around, we’re doing our best to turn my colleagues here in the Senate around,” he said. Outside pressure, he argued, was working even if the results weren’t yet visible. Now, he continued, “one of the things that has got to be done is public pressure has got to be put on the Senate.”
Sanders, a longtime leader of the progressive movement, was not among the most prominent voices responding to the crisis for months. Soon after the October 7 attack, progressives across the country and in Washington called for a bilateral cease-fire with Sanders a prominent exception. Like nearly all lawmakers, he said Israel had a right to defend itself, but he otherwise hung back compared to some of his colleagues, arguing that Hamas, which is still holding hostages and is devoted to destroying Israel, can’t be trusted. By the end of that first month, as other progressives on Capitol Hill were looking to him for guidance, his position began to stick out. He was still working out how exactly to reach an acceptable outcome, both within his own mind and behind the scenes in the Senate. A handful of his loudest fans, especially online, were open in their frustration — no matter that he was among the first elected officials to back a pause in fighting to allow humanitarian aid to Gaza. An open letter signed by hundreds of his former campaign staffers urged him to introduce a cease-fire resolution in the Senate and to cut off military aid to Israel….
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Now, ahead of another presidential election, Sanders has concluded this is the time for Biden to squeeze Netanyahu, to scale back the bombardments, bring more aid into Gaza, and keep open the path to an independent Palestinian state. The president’s pressure on the prime minister, Sanders said, “is nowhere near enough. In fact, I think Netanyahu is playing games with the president. He’s listening, but he ends up doing what he wants to do and is ignoring what the president is asking him to do,” he continued. “He comes out and says, ‘There’ll never be a two-state solution as long as I’m prime minister,’ comes out with ambivalent statements about displacing people, Palestinians from Gaza. He is continuing this terrible war of destruction, all in contradiction to what Biden is asking him to do. I think the time is over for asking. Now it’s the time for telling, and saying, ‘Guess what? You ain’t going to get a nickel more if you continue this immoral and, I suspect, illegal war against the Palestinian people.”’….
image….France 24 (2020)