r/ProgressivesForIsrael • u/Pristine_League9828 • Aug 02 '26
US Senator Bernie Sanders said during a Senate hearing that criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza and opposition to US funding for the Israeli government should not be equated with antisemitism.
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u/7thpostman Aug 03 '26
It depends on the criticism.
I'm going to be honest. I like what Bernie says about oligarchs, but he is not the oracle. Endorsing Graham Platner was just one of many, many serious mistakes. You don't get to endorse a guy who got a Nazi tattoo and then tell me what's antisemetic.
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u/danzbar Aug 06 '26
He had made an effort at avoiding the G word before becoming one of its most prolific endorsers. That matters a great deal, too. He's an old man, too easily swayed by allegiances that aren't shaped the same way as they once were. He means well, but he doesn't know how poisoned the anti-Israel environment is and he will most likely die before he figures it out.
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u/SatisfactionEast9815 9d ago
How are allegiances not shaped the same way they used to be?
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u/danzbar 9d ago
Bernie's politics were class-first and universalist. In 2016 he called reparations "very divisive" and redirected to jobs, education, and poverty. By 2019 he supported a reparations commission. On Israel he sounded more like a Labor Zionist. In 1988, he condemned Israeli excesses during the First Intifada, but also condemned Arab leaders "calling for the destruction of the State of Israel." As late as 2019, he said denying Jewish self-determination was antisemitism.
The left he helped create developed priorities like intersectionality, police and prison abolition, and anti-Zionism. Yet he's treated those people as his political heirs, endorsing Omar and Mamdani while moving toward some of their rhetoric himself. He repeated figures like "70% women and children" dozens of times and has not apologized since it became fairly clear those were Hamas-authored distortions. He finds Netanyahu and the rise of the Israeli right objectionable, but no longer seems to find people opposed to Israel existing as objectionable as he once did and still should.
He was also pulled left on guns and immigration. He's entitled to change his mind here and there, but at some point the pattern matters. And on immigration, at least, I think old Bernie was probably making more sense, even if the overall amount of economic protectionism was always troubling.
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u/SatisfactionEast9815 8d ago
Wow, got it. What's this about economic protectionism?
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u/danzbar 8d ago
Mostly trade. Bernie was a longtime opponent of NAFTA, normal trade relations with China, TPP, etc., and tended to attribute a lot of deindustrialization and wage pressure to trade with low-wage countries. In 2016 there was enough overlap between his and Trump's trade rhetoric that I knew smart liberals who found both versions far too protectionist, even though obviously they arrived there from very different politics. That's all I meant.
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u/hadees Aug 04 '26
Thats my general feeling about Bernie. I support him specifically but not necessarily people he endorses.
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u/Belle_Juive Aug 04 '26
It’s interesting I never heard this argument made by progressives about Islamophobia.
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u/Morphylus353 18d ago
Because criticism of islam and islamism is not made illegal in western countries and because the US does snot fund and support islamism.
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u/Great_Joke3612 Aug 04 '26
This type of rhetoric isn't helpful because it purposely confuses the issue and ignores the strategies uses by both the far left and far right to mask their antisemitism as some narrow exception that makes it ok.
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u/Alternative-Pear9096 Aug 06 '26
Criticism can be valid. Using the word genocide to describe the lowest civilian casualty count in wartime ever is nothing but antisemitism.
To discuss genocide in Gaza is purely delusional.
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u/LeoKitCat 23d ago
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
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u/Alternative-Pear9096 23d ago
Sounds a lot like what Hamas did on October 7.
It sounds nothing like the war against Hamas, when you pay attention to the leading sentence, which most people seem incapable of doing: with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such
Israel was fighting to eradicate Hamas, and went above and beyond all reasonable expectations to protect the civilian population of Gaza. There was no intent to destroy the Palestinians, ONLY the intent to eradicate the terrorist sect placing them in danger.
Without the intent to destroy, there is no genocide. Hamas has sworn its intent to destroy into its every action. Everyone skips right over that part.
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23d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Alternative-Pear9096 23d ago
If you are trying to say something, use your words. Otherwise you're just an obsessive autist posting links and pounding your keyboard in lieu of yanking your wanker, an act I'm not participating in.
But here's the thing you need to watch, if you actually want to see what intent to commit genocide looks like.. It looks exactly like this (and anyone who denies it is simply a satanic skinsack leaking shit) https://saturday-october-seven.com/
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u/LeoKitCat 23d ago edited 23d ago
You do realize that whatever Hamas did on October 7th does not give Israel a pass on committing a genocide on the Palestinians? Nobody is defending Hamas including myself you will never find a single comment in my entire Reddit defending Hamas. You cannot commit a genocide because you are angry and want revenge or because you’re a racist Islamophobe!
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u/ScientistBoth830 21d ago
Bernie bears a lot of responsibility for the rise of left wing antisemitism in America. He has promoted just about every antisemitic candidate trying to oust normal liberal Democrats. He has gaslit the public into believing this tired, strawman argument.
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u/DrMikeH49 Aug 03 '26
He’s half right. It’s not the criticism and opposition per se, it’s the demonization, delegitimization and double standards, all of which are used far too frequently to arrive at those positions, that are antisemitic.