In “Bernie Sanders’ Jewish Problem – And Ours,” James Kirchik at Tablet points out a revealing (Kirchik calls it “revolutionary”) statement made by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders last week at the Brooklyn Democratic debate prior to his loss in the New York primary. “As somebody who is 100 percent pro-Israel,” Sanders declared, “we are going to have to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity.”
As someone who claims to be “100 percent pro-Israel,” perhaps Sanders should demand instead that the so-called Palestinian people begin to treat Israeli Jews with respect and dignity. These are the same Palestinians who overwhelmingly favor a one-state solution that includes the genocide of the Jewish people (“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”). These are the Palestinians currently targeting Jews with knives and cars in a vicious new intifada. The same Palestinians who name streets after Jew-killing martyrs and launch fireworks to celebrate the murders of Jews.
The Vermont socialist had more to say in defense of the Palestinians:
Sanders added that Israel’s response to Hamas rocket attacks in 2014 was “disproportionate,” that “we are going to have to say that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is not right all of the time,” and took a swipe at his rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, scolding her for having “barely mentioned the Palestinians” in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Let us first consider the common, ridiculous complaint Sanders is regurgitating about Israel’s supposed use of “disproportionate force” when dealing with Arab terrorists. No sovereign state in the history of the world except Israel has ever been scolded for responding to repeated attacks on its homeland with “disproportionate force.” No military would even consider such an ineffective strategy as the use of “proportionate force.” When your country is attacked – particularly if it is a tiny strip of land surrounded by enemies obsessed with wiping you from the face of the earth – you don’t respond to a measured, perfectly balanced degree; you respond with overwhelming force not only to put an end to the threat, but to make your enemy rue the day it had ever even contemplated attacking you, and to make everyone else think twice about considering it themselves. The notion that “disproportionate force” is somehow immoral (at least, when Israel is presumed guilty of it) is nothing more than a media strategy invented by the anti-Israel left to divert attention from Palestinian Jew-hatred and to keep the spotlight of the world’s disapproval focused on the Israeli military instead.