Bernie Sanders Wants to Cut Aid for Israel and Give It to Hamas [Part 1] by Hugh Fitzgerald

The appalling tale is here.

Addressing a meeting of the left-wing J Street, a Jewish organization devoted to pressuring Israel to meet Palestinian demands, Bernie Sanders outdid himself:

“My solution is to say to Israel: you get $3.8 billion dollars every year, if you want military aid you’re going to have to fundamentally change your relationship to the people of Gaza,” Sanders said. “In fact, I think it is fair to say that some of that should go right now into humanitarian aid in Gaza.

Sanders denounced the situation in Gaza as “absolutely inhumane,” “unacceptable,” and “unsustainable.”

“The Palestinian people have a right to live in peace and security as well. It is not anti-Semitism to say that Netanyahu’s government has been racist,” Sanders continued.

If the situation in Gaza is “absolutely inhumane,” “unacceptable,” and “unsustainable,” as Bernie seems to think – it’s not nearly that dire — that is due entirely to the corrupt lords of misrule in Hamas, whose top leaders have stolen up to $7.5 billion of that aid (see the discussion below) and spend what is left not on things which benefit the people of Gaza, such as residential housing, power plants, and water treatment plants, but on amassing an expensive armory of rockets to use against Israel.

It is up to the Palestinians in Gaza to chose whether to live in “peace and security.” It is they who have been making war, while Israel is only responding to their attacks. Israel has been the target of thousands of Hamas rockets, not the other way round. Israel never initiates attacks; it responds to them. Israel wants nothing more than to live, with its neighbors in Gaza, in “peace and security,” but it has discovered that the only way to end the attacks from Gaza is to respond with decisive force. This buys a certain period of “peace and security,” then the Gazans renew their rocket attacks; Israel again responds; the Gazan rockets again stop being sent into Israel, and “peace and security” is again reestablished, until the next time Hamas decides to break both the peace and the security.

How has Netanyahu’s government “been racist”? Presumably by defending itself against Hamas, the terrorist group that runs Gaza, when it sends rockets by the hundreds into Israeli civilian centers, or lets loose incendiary kites to set Israeli farms on fire, or attempt to breach Israel’s security fence, with Molotov cocktails, grenades, and sometimes live fire, in order to kill Israeli soldiers and civilians? In attempting to defend itself from those who attack it and call for its destruction, is Israel being “racist’? The only “racism” is that directed by the Muslims at the Jews, all Jews, and not just those in Israel. Hamas has repeatedly called on Palestinians to kill all Jews. This past summer, Hamas official Fathi Hamad told Palestinians that “there are Jews everywhere! We must attack every Jew on planet Earth — we must slaughter and kill them, with Allah’s help. Enough warming up!” Is Sanders familiar with Hamas’s murderous rhetoric? Does he know of any Israeli who talks about Palestinians in such a way? Does he know that Fath Hamad’s virulent Jew-hatred can also be found on Palestinian children’s shows, and in Palestinian textbooks?

And when Sanders attacks the “racist” Israelis, he overlooks how Arabs fare in Israel. Does he realize that Israeli Arabs serve in the Knesset, on the Supreme Court, as senior diplomats, even – as volunteers – in the IDF, where they rise high in the officer corps? Does he know that Arabs study at Israeli universities, that in Israeli hospitals Jewish and Arab doctors and other medical personnel work side by side treating both Jewish and Arab patients? Does he know that Arabs and Jews work together in factories, on farms, in service industries? And all this in “racist” Israel.

Sanders appears not to realize that Israel does not occupy Gaza; that not a single Israeli has remained there since the final pullout in 2005. Nor does he mention – does he know and not think it matters? — that Gaza is run by Hamas, a terrorist organization which has sent thousands of rockets indiscriminately into Israel. Even the left-wing Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both defined these Hamas attacks as “war crimes.” Hamas is murderous not just towards Israelis, but toward its Arab opponents as well; it has crushed Fatah in Gaza, killing hundreds of its members.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza is only a response to Hamas attacks. It is mainly directed at preventing construction material, such as concrete and iron, from being imported into Gaza, that can be used to reinforce Hamas military emplacements. Is Sanders aware that Israel allows fuel into Gaza precisely, as one Israeli spokesman said, to “prevent the civilian-humanitarian deterioration of the Strip”? Is he aware that Israel also allows humanitarian agencies to provide Gaza with millions of liters of diesel fuel and gasoline, fruits and vegetables, wheat, sugar, meat, chicken and fish products, dairy products, animal feed, hygiene products, clothing and shoes? Somehow one doubts that Bernie Sanders has been paying attention. And of course Gazans who cannot find suitable medical care in the Strip are allowed to use Israeli hospitals. Among them have been the relatives of several Hamas leaders, including Ismael Haniyeh and Khaled Meshaal, who have sought and been given treatment in Israel – that, too, would surely come as a surprise to Bernie Sanders.

The true enemy of the people of Gaza are not the Israelis. When they left Gaza, they handed over the greenhouses, then worth $14 million, that Israelis had built, as part of a thriving multi-million- dollar business in flowers that, it was hoped by Israel, could eventually bring the Gazans as much as $200 million in income. Israel had assumed the Gazan Arabs would continue to operate and expand the business, but instead, the Arabs destroyed the greenhouses completely, grabbing irrigation hoses, water pumps, and plastic sheeting in a blow to this fledgling efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip.

Israeli employers have also given work to tens of thousands of Gazans, both in Gaza and in Israel itself. In response to Hamas rocket attacks, some of those who used to travel to Israel for work can no longer do so. Should Israel then be blamed for taking such security measures?

Hamas has organized the “Great March of Return,” which every Friday since March 2018 sends Palestinians marching toward Israel’s security fence, to attempt to breach it in order to kill Israeli soldiers and civilians. It is the Palestinians who are attempting to attack Israelis in their own land; Israel has merely been defending its security fence. The Palestinians throw Molotov cocktails, grenades, incendiary kites, and sometimes use live fire. Meanwhile, the Israeli soldiers first use tear gas and rubber bullets, to head off the rioters, and if that doesn’t deter sufficiently, they use live fire, ordinarily aiming at the legs and then, and only as a last resort, when some rioters have actually breached the fence, they will aim above the waist. If there were no marchers with Molotov cocktails, grenades, incendiary bombs, and other explosives, relentlessly attempting to breach the security fence, there would be only peace from the Israeli side.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

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