Former progressive presidential candidate Bernie Sanders issued a second statement yesterday (12 October 2023) on the hecatomb in Israel and Gaza. The gist of what he had to say was that, before October 7th, everything was going along more or less swimmingly in the struggle for justice:
For years, people of good will throughout the world, including some brave Israelis, have struggled against the blockade of Gaza, the daily humiliations of occupation in the West Bank, and the horrendous living conditions faced by so many Palestinians.
But then, along came “Hamas’s terrorist assault,” which constituted “a major setback for any hope of justice for the Palestinian people” and “will make it much more difficult to address that tragic reality.”
Here is a reality check. “For years,” no one was doing anything to end the blockade of Gaza. Not Bernie. Not me. Not anyone. The people of Gaza—70 percent of whom are refugees (from the 1948 war) and half of whom are children—had been left to languish and die in what Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling called “the largest
— source normanfinkelstein.com | Norman Finkelstein | Oct 12, 2023