Vermont’s congressional leaders said Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza for the first time in public on Wednesday, after avoiding using the term for almost two years of the Israel-Hamas war.
U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch appear to be the first senators to use the description for Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip, which Palestinian authorities say has killed more 60,000 people since Oct. 7, 2023, and the United Nations says has displaced 90% of the area’s population. The health ministry in Gaza is controlled by Hamas, which attacked Israel that day in October 2023.
U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch during a March 18, 2024, press conference about federal funding.
Sanders and U.S. Rep. Becca Balint are also the first Jewish congressional delegates to call the campaign a genocide, according to a press release from Balint’s office.
“The conclusion is inescapable: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,” Sanders, an independent, said in a press release on Wednesday, adding that the U.S. “must end our complicity in the slaughter of the Palestinian people” and “end all arms sales to the extremist Netanyahu government.”
Both Sanders and Balint first labeled Israel’s actions a genocide in separate opinion essays on Wednesday, while Welch used the term — albeit with less emphasis on the word — during a speech on the Senate floor the same day.
“There are many labels that could apply to what is happening in Gaza today,” Welch, a Democrat, said. “And whatever the label is used — a war crime, crimes against humanity, or ethnic cleansing, or genocide — one thing is clear: This must end.”
UVM student protests at a pro-Palestine rally on April 29, 2024.
The trio’s statements come a day after the release of a report from a United Nations commission concluding Israel has committed four acts of genocide against Palestinians: killing members of a group, causing the group serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately creating conditions that could result in the group’s destruction and imposing measures to prevent birth.
Israeli officials have condemned the report as false and biased, according to Reuters.
Balint, a Democrat, said “it’s not easy” for her to call Israel’s actions a genocide as the granddaughter of a Holocaust victim and because of her “emotional connection” to the nation, which served as a refuge for Jews after World War II.
Megan Stewart is a government accountability reporter for the Burlington Free Press. Contact her at mstewartyounger@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Sanders, Welch, Balint say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
