Hey Bernie Sanders: Fix Detroit Before Gaza

The Times of Israel has had a runaway viral hit with a shock piece about Bernie Sanders that focuses on his inability to remember a number from 2014. Here’s the exact piece they focused on.

Sanders: Look, why don’t I support a million things in the world? I’m just telling you that I happen to believe…anybody help me out here, because I don’t remember the figures, but 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.

Clearly Sanders didn’t remember the numbers, doesn’t claim to remember the numbers and in the end he gives a number for dead that is close to the wounded number (which is from Gaza “health ministry” AKA Hamas AKA unreliable). Others can go into how awful it is for him not to realise how careful Israel is or all the other blood libels he throws at the Jewish state with his casual lies. That was the low hanging fruit, there’s something much worse a paragraph or two before.

Sanders: Here’s the main point that I want to make. I lived in Israel. I have family in Israel. I believe 100% not only in Israel’s right to exist, a right to exist in peace and security without having to face terrorist attacks. But from the United States’ point of view, I think, long-term, we cannot ignore the reality that you have large numbers of Palestinians who are suffering now, poverty rate off the charts, unemployment off the charts, Gaza remaining a destroyed area. And I think that for long-term peace in that region, and God knows nobody has been successful in that for 60 years, but there are good people on both sides, and Israel is not, cannot, just simply expand when it wants to expand with new settlements. So I think the United States has got to help work with the Palestinian people as well. I think that is the path toward peace.

Gaza World Bank factsheetLet’s start with poverty rate and unemployment rate in Gaza. According to the World Bank in 2014, 39% poverty and 41% unemployment. Guess what, Democrat controlled Detroit is the same (Detroit News). And to the best of my knowledge, downtown deprived Detroit has not launch any military Grad missiles toward the suburbs or built tunnels to carry terrorists into the homes of more well off residents.

“Gaza remaining a destroyed area”: well as we know from Israellycool’s groundbreaking research, the damage to Gaza was highly specific and not widespread. We proved that conclusively. He’s also, obviously, not aware of just how nice some of Gaza really is.

Again he’s counting history from 1967: he’s yet another one ignorant of the continuous and relentless Jihad terrorism since one hundred years before the re-establishment of Israel.

But we knew all this about Sanders back last year when I wrote something similar about him.

Here’s the full part of the transcript as it relates to Israel:

Daily News: Good, thank you. So I want to focus you on some international issues, starting with Israel. While speaking forcefully of Israel’s need for security, you said that peace will require an end to attacks of all kinds and recognition of Israel’s right to exist. Just to be clear, does that mean recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state?

Sanders: Of course…that’s the status quo.

Daily News: Okay. You’ve called not just for a halting construction of so-called settlements on the West Bank, but you’ve also called for pulling back settlements, just as Israel did in Gaza. Describe the pullback that you have in mind.

Sanders: Well, that’s the Israeli government’s plan, but I think that right now…I’m not going to run the Israeli government. I’ve got enough problems trying to be a United States senator or maybe President of the United States.

Daily News: No, but if you are President, you will, I assume, become deeply enmeshed in attempting the peace process.

Sanders: I assume that’s something…

Daily News: And where you start on the negotiations is important.

Sanders: Here’s the main point that I want to make. I lived in Israel. I have family in Israel. I believe 100% not only in Israel’s right to exist, a right to exist in peace and security without having to face terrorist attacks. But from the United States’ point of view, I think, long-term, we cannot ignore the reality that you have large numbers of Palestinians who are suffering now, poverty rate off the charts, unemployment off the charts, Gaza remaining a destroyed area. And I think that for long-term peace in that region, and God knows nobody has been successful in that for 60 years, but there are good people on both sides, and Israel is not, cannot, just simply expand when it wants to expand with new settlements. So I think the United States has got to help work with the Palestinian people as well. I think that is the path toward peace.

EDITORIAL: BERNIE SANDERS’ REVEALING SIT-DOWN WITH THE DAILY NEWS

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.

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.

Daily News: Okay, but I’m just talking about, you’d be getting involved in the negotiations, and this would be setting a benchmark for the negotiations that you would enter the talks, if you do, having conveyed to both parties, including the Palestinians, that there’s a condition here that you want Israel to remove what you described as “illegal settlements.” That’s going to be the baseline. Now, if you’re really…

Sanders: Well, there’s going to be a lot of things on the baselines. There are going to be demands being made of the Palestinian folks as well. When you sit down and negotiate, obviously…

Daily News: And what are those demands?

Sanders: Well, for a start, the absolute condemnation of all terrorist attacks. The idea that in Gaza there were buildings being used to construct missiles and bombs and tunnels, that is not where foreign aid should go. Foreign aid should go to housing and schools, not the development of bombs and missiles.

Daily News: Okay. Now, you have obviously condemned Hamas for indiscriminate rocket attacks and the construction of the military tunnels. But you’ve also criticized Israel for what you described as a disproportionate response.

Sanders: Yep.

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. Look, we are living, for better or worse, in a world of high technology, whether it’s drones out there that could, you know, take your nose off, and Israel has that technology. And I think there is a general belief that, with that technology, they could have been more discriminate in terms of taking out weapons that were threatening them.

Daily News: Do you support the Palestinian leadership’s attempt to use the International Criminal Court to litigate some of these issues to establish that, in their view, Israel had committed essentially war crimes?

Sanders: No.

Daily News: Why not?

Sanders: Why not?

Daily News: Why not, why it…

Sanders: Look, why don’t I support a million things in the world? I’m just telling you that I happen to believe…anybody help me out here, because I don’t remember the figures, but 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.

Daily News: Okay. We will check the facts. I don’t want to venture a number that I’m not sure on, but we will check those facts. Now, talk about Hamas. What is it? Is it a terrorist organization?

Sanders: Yes.

Daily News: Okay. Hezbollah too?

Sanders: Yes.

25 thoughts on “Hey Bernie Sanders: Fix Detroit Before Gaza”

  1. Jim from Iowa

    Bernie Sanders is not going to win or lose the Democratic nomination for president based on his positions on Israel. Democrats are voting on domestic issues like the economy, income inequality, climate change, and social justice issues. It’s obvious from his answers to the NY Daily News questions on the Israel-Palestinian Conflict that Sen. Sanders hasn’t put much emphasis on that issue.

      1. Jim from Iowa

        It’s called the Democratic Party, just so you know. Only uninformed, right-wing mouth-breathers refer to it as the Democrat Party. It’s a small matter, but it’s just as easy to get these things right.

        1. That shows your ignorance.
          It is the democrat party.
          Definitely nothing democratic about it.
          Feel free to spew your garbage and I am more than willing to call you out for it.

    1. but he can lose based on the fact that he has absolutely no grasp of the issues and his entire understanding of domestic and foreign policy is based on theory and myth

      and how in the world does one sit in the house and senate for over 2 decades and be so clueless about middle east policies?

      1. Jim from Iowa

        I was a bit surprised myself at some of Sen. Sanders’ answers, Walt. With the preponderance of super delegates who will end up voting for HIllary, there is next to no chance of a President Sanders developing Middle East policies in the White House any time soon.

        1. that is a given. i simply find it surprising when anyone who is running for office shows such ignorance of facts.

          most, which simply could have been gleaned by opening a newspaper

          1. What makes you so sure that Sanders said “10,000” accidentally, and not on purpose?

            Go read the transcript again. He said 10,000, when challenged, he reasserted 10,000 and when definitely corrected by the interviewer, he didn’t say “I admit I was wrong.”

          2. It all depends on WHICH newspaper. That’s the problem here. Most Liberals (excepting myself) will be reading the pages of the NYT, The Guardian, LA Times, HuffPo, or Haaretz for “news” about Israel. At best it’s unhelpful.

    2. Norman_In_New_York

      Sanders isn’t even a registered Democrat, and his surge in the polls reflects on the party bosses’ push to foist a deeply flawed, corrupt candidate on the voters because “her time has come.”

    3. The single-greatest national security threat to the United States, and to all of its allies, Israel included, is global jihad.

      Sanders ignorance on the topics is staggering, and should be of gravest concern to all voters.

      It is a mistake to believe that the people in Ankara, Nigeria, Belgium, Paris or New York are any safer than the people in Israel from global jihad.

      1. Jim from Iowa

        Many, many Americans, both on the political Right and Left, have learned the hard lesson over the last 16 years that American lives are lost by the poor decisions made by our political leadership in our military response to perceived threats of radical Islam. If you think there is a longing by the American people to go back to the deployment of hundreds of thousands of American military personnel to the Middle East, then you really don’t have any idea what is going on in this country right now.

  2. It is unfortunate, in the extreme, that both Democratic contenders get their information about Israel from Haaretz and from advisers, mesmerized by those prostituting their “Human Rights Halos”, to bash the National Liberation Movement of the Jewish People.

    Luckily, we have an alternative ! A self-aggrandizing race baiting demagogue hoping to waltz into power dancing in the footsteps of such illustrious exemplars as Herr Schickelgruber and Il Duce; or a Christian theologlodyte who believes that his particular persuasion should be elevated above the US Constitution.
    Oh, goody, goody goody.

    1. Norman_In_New_York

      If Trump doesn’t clinch the delegate count by the time of the Republican convention, look for a political bloodbath as the donorcrat empire strikes back.

    2. OH that burned. OUCH.

      Hate to say it, and I’m not a fan, but this is actually an upside for Hillary. She’s “less ignorant” than Bernie. Her relationship with Blumenthal however makes me VERY nervous. The monies she’s taken make me nervous too. But… The Republicans are simply flay out insane.

      1. With Hilly we can be almost certain she’ll Mybamaize Israel. Which, if you take a broad perspective, has not been a totally unalloyed curse. With Bernie it’s hard to tell if he knows how much like Chaim Rumkowski he sounds. Or, if despite his faimily’s experience of the Shoah and his time on the kibbutz and his family in Israel whether he’s understood the lesson of Lodz

  3. Brian, if the following line you wrote is accurate, it’s news to me:
    “relentless Jihad terrorism since one hundred years before the re-establishment of Israel”
    I would have understood that Islamic aggression against Jewish settlement in the land of Israel has two starting points – when the armies of Mohammed first showed up there in the 7th century, and around 1920 when the political reality and declarations like that of Balfaur proved that the idea of a reestablished Jewish State was actually being taken seriously by the global powers (which then the local Arabs starting acting to prevent).
    Where do you get ~1848? Is it an error?

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