“Many legal experts have now concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,” US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) said Wednesday.
In an article published on his personal website, he cited several human-rights groups and international organizations that said the Israel-Hamas War qualified as a genocide. They include the International Association of Genocide Scholars and Israeli groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.
Sanders' previous criticisms never extended to genocide allegations
Sanders, who is Jewish, had previously refrained from saying that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinians.
“Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this war with its brutal attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages,” he wrote. “Israel, as any other country, had a right to defend itself from Hamas. But, over the last two years, Israel has not simply defended itself against Hamas. Instead, it has waged an all-out war against the entire Palestinian people.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his “extremist government” has been granted “full support” from the US President Donald Trump’s administration to “ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank,” Sanders wrote, and is aiming for “‘voluntary’ migration of Palestinians to neighboring countries to make way for President Trump’s twisted vision of a ‘Riviera of the Middle East.’”