by Jose Nino at bigleaguepolitics.com
In an appearance on Face the Nation on December 10, 2023 , Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders talked about the current Hamas-Israel war that kicked off on October 7 after Hamas launched a brutal attack on the state of Israel. Sanders declared the following on the Face the Nation:
“I don’t know how you can have a permanent ceasefire with Hamas who has said before October 7 and after October 7 that they want to destroy Israel and they want a permanent war. I don’t know how you have a permanent ceasefire with an attitude like that.”
On a previous occasion, Sanders indicated his support for only a humanitarian pause
Sanders noted earlier that he is only in favor of a humanitarian pause.
Sanders has generally been a critic of Israel but mainly on leftist grounds, specifically calling out the reactionary nature of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government.
He does not really criticize Israel on America First grounds. In other words, he doesn’t call for the wholesale reduction of military aid, much less completely reconsidering the United States’s special relationship with the Jewish state. This is what the likes of Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul have traditionally advocated for since the end of the Cold War.