Bernie Sanders protesting the furlough of federal workers, October 2013 Image by Getty Images

By Naomi Zeveloff May 4, 2017

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders came out swinging against the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel in an interview with Al Jazeera which aired on Wednesday.

I asked @SenSanders about Palestine, the BDS movement targeting Israel, and whether he supports a one state solution pic.twitter.com/xOQmxMelFp

— Dena Takruri (@Dena) May 3, 2017

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Al Jazeera senior presenter Dena Takruri pushed Sanders on the fact that he added his signature (along with every other senator) to a letter to the United Nations secretary general accusing the institution of bias against Israel and denouncing BDS.

Sanders said he doesn’t accept BDS as a way for Palestinians to pressure Israel to comply with international law.

“No, I’m not a supporter of that,” he told Takruri.

“I mean, look, I respect people who do what they want to do. But I think our job as a nation is to do everything humanly possible to bring Israel and the Palestinians and the entire Middle East — to the degree that we can — together.”

Sanders called for a more even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and called into question supplying “endless amounts of money, of military support to Israel.”

He said a one-state solution to the conflict would spell peril for Israel. “I support Israel’s right to exist.”

Contact Naomi Zeveloff at zeveloff@forward.com or on Twitter @naomizeveloff

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