For many people, the earth moved when Bernie Sanders said “We are gonna have to treat the Palestinian people with respect & dignity.” But it only shows the poverty of political thinking in the US when people laud that rhetorical sentiment & ignore his preceding comment suggesting Palestinians are terrorists. He said, “Of course Israel has a right not only to defend themselves but to live in peace & security without fear of terrorist attacks. That is not a debate.”
In case it’s not absolutely clear to Sanders, Israel is not defending itself against Palestinian terrorists when it razes homes & playgrounds in the West Bank to make room for Zionist settlers from all over Kingdom Come; when it summarily executes dozens of Palestinians & plants knives on them; when it kidnaps & incarcerates hundreds of kids who it tortures in its gulag; when it bombs homes, schools, hospitals, mosques & marketplaces to smithereens in Gaza; when it destroys tunnels for smuggling in foods, medicines, supplies necessary to human life in Gaza. Any concession on that score is absolutely unacceptable.
It’s a problem when people only hear what they want to hear & tune out the rest. It’s a political malady combining wishful thinking & cognitive dissonance. But the problem isn’t really what Sanders did & did not say or mean. Rather it’s our understanding of what the office of US president stands for & whose interests does it serve. The earth will finally move when people begin to understand the elementary truth that the president presides for corporations & bankers, not for working people.
(Photo of Sanders is screen shot from video of debate)