US Senator Bernie Sanders had some choice words for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday as anti-Israel protests continue to disrupt American universities.
“No, Mr Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 – seventy percent of whom are women and children,” Sanders said in a statement.
“It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless – almost half the population.”
He also accused Netanyahu of “insulting the intelligence of the American people” by trying to distract from his right-wing government’s “immoral and illegal war policies” and by deflecting attention from the criminal indictment he is facing in the Israeli court system.
Sander’s comments come in response to a video released by Netanyahu on Wednesday, in which he attacked the ongoing anti-Israel protests at numerous US universities. In the video, the US-born Israeli leader referred to the protesters as “antisemitic mobs,” evidenced by reports of physical violence against Jewish students and faculty, comparing the situation to what happened in German universities during the Holocaust.
