The Electronic Infitada has a video of a press conference that Bernie
Sanders held when he was supporting Jessie Jackson for President. It is
instructive to listen to. I should have kept the link for you. Sanders
supports Jackson although Jackson had made an anti-semitic slur at the time
regarding, I think, New York City. His only criticism of Jackson was that he
thought Jackson should run on a third party ticket rather than the
Democratic ticket because the Democrats and Republicans were too similar to
each other. Ironic, because that's Hedges' criticism of Sanders now.
Sanders is questioned a lot about Israel Palestine. This was during the
First Infitada. He is very critical of the violence that Israeli soldiers
use against Palestinians, whom he insists on calling Arabs. Like all pro
Israelis, he really doesn't recognize Palestinians as a people because he
insists that the "problen" can be solved by Arab countries fulfilling their
responsibilities. He wanted the US to use its economic clout with Arab
countries and Israel to force a peaceful solution so that Israel would be
recognized and allowed to live in peace and so that Arabs could have their
own state. Questions on this topic were repeated and he kept repeating, "I
have no magic solutions". There was a note on the website after the video,
reminding us that in the summer of 2014, Sanders was confronted by many of
his constituents on his continued support of Israel while it was attacking
Gaza, and that his insistance that Israel had a right to defend itself
because of Hamas rockets, was adamant. I remember watching a video of that
meeting and it was extremely distressing. I came away from watching this
latest video with the feeling that Sanders' Progressive supporters are
fooling themselves if they think that he would have a Progressive and
peaceful foreign policy.
Miriam
