Bernie Sanders issues scathing statement directed at Netanyahu over campus protests

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is pushing back after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused US college students protesting against the war in Gaza of being antisemitic.

On Wednesday, Netanyahu’s office released a video of the US-born Israeli leader attacking the student-led protests that have taken over campus spaces at numerous universities. In the video, Netanyahu referred to the protesters as “antisemitic mobs” and accused them of physically attacking Jewish students and faculty.

The Israeli leader added: “This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. It’s unconscionable. It has to be stopped.”

Senator Sanders — one of America’s highest-profile Jewish lawmakers — responded in a statement on Thursday in which he directly refuted Netanyahu’s accusations and addressed him by name.

“No, Mr Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 – seventy percent of whom are women and children. It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless – almost half the population,” Mr Sanders said.

The Vermont Senator — an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats — continued that it was “not antisemitic” to say that the Israeli government “has obliterated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure – electricity, water, and sewage” or “to realize that your government has annihilated Gaza’s health care system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing more than 400 health care workers”.

“It is not antisemitic to agree with virtually every humanitarian