Bernie Sanders Tells Israeli Leftists: ‘Occupation Must End’
Bernie Sanders Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Jewish former presidential candidate, said “the occupation must end” in a video message to the Israeli left-wing opposition Meretz Party.
The five-minute video was set to be screened at a conference on Sunday marking the end of the Six-Day War in 1967 and “50 years of Occupation.”
In opening the video, Sanders said Meretz, which currently has 5 seats in Israel’s 120-seat Knesset, stands “for many of the same values that progressives are fighting for here in the United States and throughout the world.”
“We are now in the 50th year of Israel’s occupation, an occupation which denies basic Palestinian rights while failing to deliver Israel real security,” said Sanders, an independent politician.
“I know so many of you agree with me when I say: this occupation must end. Peace, real peace, means security not only for every Israeli, but for every Palestinian.”
Sanders, who is Jewish and worked on a kibbutz in Israel for several weeks as a young man, ran for the Democratic presidential nomination against Hillary Clinton and lost, though he garnered a great many supporters.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
