BERNIE SANDERS’ IGNORANCE ON ISRAEL

BERNIE SANDERS’ IGNORANCE ON ISRAEL

April 10, 2016
by Ken Berwitz

From Mr. Sanders’ interview with the New York Daily News:

Daily News: And I’m going to look at 2014, which was the latest conflict. What should Israel have done instead?

Sanders: You’re asking me now to make not only decisions for the Israeli government but for the Israeli military, and I don’t quite think I’m qualified to make decisions. But I think it is fair to say that the level of attacks against civilian areas…and I do know that the Palestinians, some of them, were using civilian areas to launch missiles. Makes it very difficult. But I think most international observers would say that the attacks against Gaza were indiscriminate and that a lot of innocent people were killed who should not have been killed…. my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?

Daily News: I think it’s probably high, but we can look at that.

Sanders: I don’t have it in my number…but I think it’s over 10,000. My understanding is that a whole lot of apartment houses were leveled. Hospitals, I think, were bombed. So yeah, I do believe and I don’t think I’m alone in believing that Israel’s force was more indiscriminate than it should have been.

Brilliant, Bernie…

except…

-The number killed was a small fraction of 10,000: even the UN, which hates Israel, pegged it at about 2,500;

-The casualties were tremendously weighted toward young military-age men, which suggests that Israel’s bombing, far from being indiscriminate (which would have hit women and children in their proportion of the population) was targeted at the people attacking Israel;

-Israel – unlike any country I have ever heard of in the history of the world – literally WARNED the Palestinian Arab population of where and when it was going to be hitting them, so civilians could get out of the way;

-The attacks, as has been reported by countless sources, were specifically launched from civilian areas, so that Israel would be faced with the choice of either allowing them free rein to kill as many Israelis as they could, or hitting back and killing the civilians Palestinian Arabs – not Israelis, but Palestinian Arabs – put in harm’s way.

If Bernie Sanders had stopped at “You’re asking me now to make not only decisions for the Israeli government but for the Israeli military, and I don’t quite think I’m qualified to make decisions.” he would have given an unsatisfactory answer, but at least would not sound like an Israel-hating ignoramus. He chose sounding like an Israel-hating ignoramus instead.

This is what should be sitting in the Oval Office? God help us.

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