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full screen Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders in the state of Virginia earlier in April. Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP/TT
US student-led war protests create political feuds. It is not anti-Semitic to protest Israel’s warfare, claims Senator Bernie Sanders in a jibe at Israel’s prime minister.
The Democratic senator launches a fierce attack on Benjamin Netanyahu, after the Israeli leader claimed that American universities are “flooding” with anti-Semitism.
In a video posted on X, Sanders, who is Jewish, accuses Netanyahu of “insulting the intelligence of the American people.” Netanyahu is using the accusations of anti-Semitism to deflect attention from his “extremist and racist” government’s actions in Gaza, Sanders claims.
– No, Mr. Netanyahu, it is not anti-Semitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in just over six months your extremist government has killed over 34,000 Palestinians and injured over 78,000, 70 percent of them women and children, he says in the video referring to figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run authorities.
Sanders’ move is in response to a video Netanyahu shared on X this week. In it, the prime minister compared the ongoing US student protests to the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany.
– Anti-Semitic gangsters have taken over leading universities, Netanyahu said, among other things, and called for worldwide condemnation.
Jewish students at several universities in the United States have expressed fear and concern over the growing wave of protests. The protesters’ songs and slogans often turn into divisive, hateful messages and pure anti-Semitism, they say. At the same time, other Jewish students have joined the protests.
– It is not anti-Semitic to hold yourself responsible for your actions, Sanders says to Netanyahu now.