Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Bernie Sanders Helps Launch Global Peace Movement

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sen. Bernie Sanders helped launch what purports to be a global peace movement on the anniversary of the Iraq War, which he said precipitated much of the chaos in the Middle East.

Organizers of the Global Call for Peace said 11,000 callers from around the world, including Israel, participated in the Sunday launch.

The emphasis of the call, which was initiated by MoveOn.org, a U.S. left-wing activist group, was on the tensions between the Koreas, but speakers also noted that it was the 15th anniversary of the Iraq War.

Sanders, I-Vt., the first Jewish candidate to win major-party nominating contests when he ran for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, made what he said were the failures of that war the centerpiece of his appeal to join the movement.

“The war in Iraq was a foreign policy blunder of enormous magnitude,” he said, describing the ensuing chaos in Iraq and consequently the civil war in neighboring Syria and the spread of the Islamic State terrorist group, or ISIS.

“Had it not been for the Iraq War, ISIS would almost certainly not exist,” Sanders said. “It undermined American diplomatic efforts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

Sanders was among four speakers who counseled peaceful mass protests and online actions. Two others addressed the Korea crisis, lauding President Trump for agreeing to meet with Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, but also fretting that Trump could make good on his hints that he would launch a war to denuclearize North Korea should talks fail.

Among the groups represented on the call was Zazim, a left-wing activist group in Israel. An email said Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that backs the movement to boycott Israel, was also among the participating organizations, but no representative of JVP spoke up during the call.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.