Washington, DC – Prominent United States Senator Bernie Sanders has described Israel’s assault on Gaza as a genocide, renewing his call for ending Washington’s “complicity in the slaughter of the Palestinian people”.
Sanders’s statement on Wednesday came a day after a United Nations Commission of Inquiry released an extensive report that concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
The US senator cited the statements of Israeli officials calling for the destruction and erasure of Gaza, as well as the growing death toll and famine in the territory.
“The intent is clear. The conclusion is inescapable: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,” Sanders said.
The former presidential candidate, who remains a leading figure in the progressive movement, is the first US senator to call the Israeli offensive a genocide. Several members of the House of Representatives have previously done so.
The UN defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
The charge implies not just that Israel is violating the laws of war but that it is trying to wipe Palestinians out of existence – one of the gravest offences under international law.
Becca Balint represents Vermont’s at-large district in the US House of Representatives [File: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/AP]
On Wednesday, Congresswoman Becca Balint, who – like Sanders – is Jewish and represents the northeastern state of Vermont, also accused Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza.
“As I write this, babies and young children are starving while the extremist Israeli government continues to withhold aid and commit acts of violence against civilians,” Balint said in an op-ed.
“The suffering goes beyond the tragic loss of life inherent to war; at this point, the [Benjamin] Netanyahu government’s actions appear to be a systematic, intentional destruction of the Palestinian people.”
In his statement, Sanders – who has been leading repeated efforts to block the transfer of US weapons to Israel – called for ending Washington’s military aid to Israel.
“The United States must not continue sending many billions of dollars and weapons to Netanyahu’s genocidal government,” he said.
“Having named it a genocide, we must use every ounce of our leverage to demand an immediate ceasefire, a massive surge of humanitarian aid facilitated by the UN, and initial steps to provide Palestinians with a state of their own.”
He also warned that the atrocities unfolding in Gaza go beyond the region.
“The challenge we now face is to prevent the world from descending into barbarism, where horrific crimes against humanity can take place with impunity,” he said.
An independent who caucuses with Democrats, Sanders previously refused to call the Israeli war a genocide, arguing that the accusation is a legal term.
“The important point is not what you call it – it is horror – the answer is what the hell do we do about it?” Sanders told CNN last month.
That evasive answer angered large parts of his base.
UN report
But Wednesday’s statement comes amid growing consensus among experts, academics and rights groups that Israel is indeed pushing to destroy the Palestinian people – a conclusion that the UN Commission of Inquiry has backed.
The commission found that the Israeli military – at the orders of the Israeli government – is carrying out four of the five methods of genocide cited by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Its report said Israel is: Killing members of the group [Palestinians]; 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; and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
It also showed – through the public statements of Israeli officials – that Israel has dolus specialis of genocide, “specific intent” to destroy Palestinians as a people.
“The victims of the bombing were not singled out or targeted as individual civilians. On the contrary, victims were targeted collectively due to their identity as Palestinians,” the report read.
“The Israeli authorities intended to kill as many Palestinians as possible through its military operations in Gaza since 7 October 2023 and knew that the means and methods of warfare employed would cause mass deaths of Palestinians, including children.”
Israel rejected the findings and accused the authors of the report of anti-Semitism.
The Israeli military has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza, repeatedly displaced the territory’s population and turned most of the enclave into rubble.
Despite the growing body of evidence, only around 20 members of Congress – out of 535 in the House and the Senate – have recognised that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.
Still, Israel has been facing growing criticism in Congress, especially on the Democratic side, shaking the decades-long bipartisan support it has enjoyed in Capitol Hill.
In July, 27 senators – the majority of the Democratic caucus – backed Sanders’ proposed legislation to block weapons to Israel.
Last week, Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley, two Democratic senators, released a report after a visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank that accused the Israeli government of imposing starvation on Palestinians in Gaza as part of a plan to ethnically cleans the territory.
“The findings from our trip lead to the inescapable conclusion that the Netanyahu government’s war in Gaza has gone far beyond the targeting of Hamas to imposing collective punishment on the Palestinians there, with the goal of making life for them unsustainable,” they wrote.
