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Wednesday, April 06, 2016

Feel the Bern: 'Israel killed 10,000 innocent people in Gaza'

Greetings from a British Airways lounge somewhere in Central Europe on a cloudy, rainy, dreary day (yes, it's travel day yet again). What an appropriate time to talk about Democratic Socialist Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' claim that Israel killed 10,000 'innocent people' in Gaza. This is from Daniel Greenfield.
Bernie Sanders is wrong. This isn't even in dispute.
Sanders:... 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.
Even assuming that every Hamas terrorist and accessory was "innocent", that's four times the number of total people killed in the last conflict.
But while the 10,000 figure is the banner headline, the real story seems to be an incoherent interview which reveals that Bernie Sanders knows little about what's going on and has no actual policy. Trump gets blasted for this often enough while Sanders gets a pass when he quotes imaginary figures and really seems not to know what he's talking about.
I have criticized Bernie Sanders for being anti-Israel, and there's a dose of that in the interview, but mostly it's dominated by a kind of 'meh-ness'. Bernie isn't interested in foreign policy and it shows. In some ways he seems less interested in pressuring Israel or having any kind of plan than some Republicans.
Does anyone recall another Presidential candidate who seemed uninterested in foreign policy? How has that worked out? Bernie is far less competent than Hillary Clinton, but he's at least as dangerous.
[I]n practice, Bernie Sanders wants to forcibly evict Israeli Jews from their homes, but leave it up to Israel whom to evict? This is borderline incoherent. And it doesn't get any better...
Daily News: I was talking about something different, though. Expanding settlements is one thing; coming into office as a President who said as a baseline that you want Israel to pull back settlements, that changes the dynamic in the negotiations, and I'm wondering how far and what you want Israel to do in terms of pulling back.
Sanders: Well, again, you're asking me a very fair question, and if I had some paper in front of me, I would give you a better answer. But I think if the expansion was illegal, moving into territory that was not their territory, I think withdrawal from those territories is appropriate.
Daily News: And who makes the call about illegality, in your mind?
Sanders: Well, I think that's based on previous treaties and ideas. I happen to think that those expansions were illegal.
What defines illegality? Bernie Sanders has no idea. Treaties? At some point his advisers will tell him the UN and then it will get truly messy. Bernie Sanders is against "illegal settlements", which are actually just Jews living in territory conquered by Muslim invaders in '48 and liberated by Israel in '67, but has no idea what they are or what defines Israeli territory.
Daily News: Okay, so if we were to find Israeli settlements, so-called settlements, in places that has been designated to be illegal, you would expect Israel to be pulling them back?
Sanders: Israel will make their own decisions. They are a government, an independent nation. But to the degree that they want us to have a positive relationship, I think they're going to have to improve their relationship with the Palestinians.
Except of course Israel hasn't been allowed to make its own decisions and there's no way to fix that relationship with terrorists.
For those of you who think Bernie won't be the nominee anyway, he won the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday. And the US isn't Israel and generally finds a way to stop candidates who have been indicted from running. Another Clinton scandal may be on the way

This is perhaps a good summary of the Democratic race as seen by supporters of Israel:
Hillary Clinton will certainly be on a "Get Israel" mission. Bernie Sanders is signaling more anti-Israel views, but ones that he isn't committed to or especially invested in. This is the Democratic Party now. Stick your hand in the box. Find the lesser of two evils.
That's true. The problem is that on the Republican side, Donald Trump doesn't exactly seem to have a coherent policy either.

Read the whole thing.

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1 Comments:

At 11:23 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"For those of you who think Bernie won't be the nominee anyway...the US...generally finds a way to stop candidates who have been indicted from running..."

And the Democratic Party would then realize that Bernie will not win in November, and somehow they will find someone if Clinton is indicted. Remember, even now Clinton is far ahead in the delegate count, so even if she is out of the race, most likely this will not help Bernie.

As for Trump, I think he will be stopped. It may be Cruz, decided at the convention, or someone else, but I don't think that the Republicans will be willing to commit suicide--I think that, somehow, this process will produce a decent candidate.

 

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