Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for denying the food crisis in Gaza.
“He is a disgusting liar,” Sanders said Tuesday night during an appearance on CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins.”
“Israel had a right to defend itself from the terrible Hamas attack. But I think everybody understands that in the last [one] and a half years, they have been waging a brutal, horrific, almost unprecedented type of war, not just against Hamas, but against the Palestinian people,” the Vermont senator added.
The Israeli military said Saturday it would resume aid airdrops in the Gaza Strip. Israel has been accused by a United Nations official, among others, of blocking aid into the region. The military denied reports of starvation as a “false campaign by the Hamas terrorist organization.”
But Sanders said hundreds of thousands are suffering at the hands of the Israeli government.
“They have virtually completely destroyed the entire infrastructure of Gaza, virtually all of the schools, the health care system, over 70 percent of the housing, the water system. And now, as you mentioned, over the last period of time, they have prevented humanitarian aid coming in,” Sanders told Collins.
“And there is now mass malnutrition, and children are starving to death,” he added.
In response to the crisis, Sanders said he would introduce a joint resolution Wednesday to condemn U.S. arms sales to Israel.
“We cannot continue to provide military aid to the extremist, racist, Netanyahu government that is starving the children of Gaza,” Sanders said.
Sanders also slammed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for promoting false narratives about the crisis in Gaza.
“So you have a super PAC called AIPAC that spends hundreds of millions of dollars trying to defend the Netanyahu government. And if you vote for a Sanders resolution or you stand up in other ways in opposition to Netanyahu, they’re prepared to fund a whole lot of money against you,” the senator said.
“But I think the time is now when members of the Senate have gotta start listening to their constituents back home, and the American people do not want to spend billions and billions of dollars supporting this horrific war.”
