Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Sanders: ‘I Hope Netanyahu Loses His Election’

Sen. Bernie Sanders weighed in on the Israeli elections while campaigning in Iowa, and he did not hold back on his criticisms of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“When election time comes in Israel, he always tries going even further to the right by appealing to racism within Israel, I think it’s unfortunate,” the independent senator from Vermont told NBC. “I’m not a great fan of his, and, frankly, I hope he loses his election.”

Israel’s election is being held on Tuesday.

Sanders is currently leading the polls among declared candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. He is one of the harshest critics in the Democratic caucus of Israeli policy, slamming Israel’s nation-state law and spearheading a Senate letter calling for better humanitarian conditions in Gaza, which is blockaded by Israel and Egypt.

Sanders also pointedly refused to attend last month’s conference of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, with his policy director saying that the senator is “concerned about the platform AIPAC is providing for leaders who have expressed bigotry and oppose a two-state solution.”

Other Democratic candidates also have criticized the Israeli prime minister recently, NBC reported. South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg said that Netanyahu’s pledge to annex West Bank settlements was a “provocation,” and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke said in Iowa that Netanyahu is a “racist.”

“The U.S.-Israel relationship is one of the most important relationships that we have on the planet, and that relationship, if it is to be successful, must transcend partisanship in the United States, and it must be able to transcend a prime minister who is racist as he warns about Arabs coming to the polls, who wants to defy any prospect for peace as he threatens to annex the West Bank and who has sided with a far-right racist party in order to maintain his hold on power,” O’Rourke told reporters.

Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor for the Forward. You can reach him at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

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.