Thursday, February 11, 2016

Bernie Sanders and the question of Palestine

Senator Bernie Sanders makes a victory speech after defeating Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, at Concord High School, 9 February.
Keiko HiromiPolaris

At a March 1988 news conference endorsing Jesse Jackson’s candidacy for president, Bernie Sanders blastedIsrael’s brutal treatment of Palestinian protesters as “an absolute disgrace.”

“The sight of Israeli soldiers breaking the arms and legs of Arabs is reprehensible. The idea of Israel closing down towns and sealing them off is unacceptable,” the then mayor of Burlington, Vermont, said to a gaggle of reporters.

Sanders was referring to the television images that shocked the world in those early months of the first intifada, of Israeli soldiers methodically breaking the limbs of Palestinian youths on the orders of then defense minister Yitzhak Rabin.

A year later, Palestine solidarity activists were thrown out of a Sanders campaign rally in Boston and threatened with arrest for bringing a sign that read, “Will ya #FeelTheBern 4 Palestine?”