The senator disagrees with Kamala Harris on Gaza, as do millions of voters. But he’s been arguing that “Trump and his right-wing friends are worse.”
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks at a labor rally for Harris-Walz in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on October 27, 2024.(Nathan Morris / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Senator Bernie Sanders has been an active surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, telling crowds at dozens of stops in battleground states that “we must do everything we can to see that [former president] Donald Trump is defeated.” But that does not mean that the Vermont independent approves of the way in which the Democratic candidates have addressed particular issues—especially when it comes to the Israeli assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 44,000 Palestinian men, women, and children.
Sanders has been an outspoken critic of US support for Netanyahu and the war on Gaza, which began after the October 7 attack by Hamas but has since stirred an international outcry because of the overwhelming number of Palestinians that Israeli forces have killed. And no matter who wins the election, the senator is determined to continue leading the charge “to block US military aid and offensive weapons sales to the right-wing extremist Netanyahu government in Israel.”
Sanders is far from alone in that view. Polls show that, among American voters, there is strong support for cutting arms shipments. Polls also show that there are many Americans who are angry about the failure of the Biden administration to stand up clearly and effectively to Netanyahu.
As the 2024 campaign concludes, Sanders has encountered voters across the country who share his frustration with the administration’s stance, and with the Harris campaign’s approach to the issue. He knows, from polling data and personal experience on the campaign trail, that Gaza is a top issue for millions of voters nationwide—and especially in the battleground states that will decide the election.
Recalling a late-October visit to Millersville University in Pennsylvania’s hotly contested Lancaster County, Sanders said, “I was in a classroom and I was with about a hundred students. I asked them their views on Gaza.… Ninety-nine out of 100 people in the room were opposed to sending more military support to Netanyahu.”
That struck him, as did a question from a student who told the senator, “You want to stop the US financially supporting for Israel. But the Harris campaign hasn’t wavered on this topic, at least to what I’ve seen. They continue rhetoric that supports the Israeli government. And if I care about this issue: Why should I vote for Harris?”
Sanders answered the question. But he did not want to stop there—so he released a six-minute video last week addressing the issue head-on.
Echoing a concern widely expressed by progressives, he explained in a conversation with The Nation, “What I worry about for this campaign is that the Biden-Harris administration support for Netanyahu will dampen the voting of young people, Muslim Americans, and many others who otherwise would be supportive of Harris. So I thought it was important to make a short video statement and say, ‘Look, you disagree with them on continuing support for Israel’s all-out war against the Palestinian people, and I agree with you. But I think two things. Number one, we will have a better chance to change US policy with Harris in the White House than with Trump in the White House. Trump is a close ally of his right-wing extremist friend Benjamin Netanyahu. And, number two, in politics we have to recognize the real truth that there is more than one issue. If you are interested in women having a right to control their own bodies, you gotta vote for Harris. If you are concerned about the future of the planet and whether we can address the existential threat of climate change, you gotta vote for Harris, because Trump thinks climate change is a hoax. If you are concerned about income and wealth inequality and don’t think, as Trump does, that we should give massive tax breaks to billionaires, you gotta vote for Harris.”
In addition to addressing his disagreements with the administration’s response to the crisis, Sanders’s video details his concern that a Trump administration would be even more supportive of Netanyahu’s war on Gaza — which the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, and many other observers and experts, have long decried as genocidal.
“Donald Trump and his right-wing friends are worse,” Sanders says in the video. “Trump has said Netanyahu is doing a good job and has said Biden is ‘holding him back.’ He has suggested that the Gaza Strip would make excellent beachfront property for development. And it is no wonder Netanyahu prefers to have Donald Trump in office.”
That’s a reasonably common view among political analysts in Israel, where commentators in liberal publications speculate about how “a Trump-Netanyahu rerun would be a disaster, empowering both the Republican candidate’s overt, serial antisemitism and a corrupt Israeli leader credibly accused of war crimes.”
The video that Sanders made last week went viral, attracting millions of hits on social-media platforms—including 4.7 million views on X—in a matter of days. “We’ve been hearing from folks from all over the country, including folks from the Muslim community,” said Sanders. “This is a message that, I think, people were looking to hear.”
The senator from Vermont is not unrealistic. He knows that, no matter which presidential candidate wins, changing US policy toward Israel and Palestine will be a daunting task. He is determined to keep the pressure on, explaining that, later this month, “I will be offering a joint resolution of disapproval to deny Israel military weaponry made in the United States.” That’s just part of the hard work that lies ahead. If Harris wins Tuesday, Sanders says that he and other advocates for a policy shift “will together do everything that we can to change US policy toward Netanyahu: an immediate ceasefire, the return of all hostages, a surge of massive humanitarian aid, the stopping of settler attacks on the West Bank, and the rebuilding of Gaza for the Palestinian people. And let me be clear, we will have, in my view, a much better chance of changing US policy with Kamala than with Trump, who is extremely close to Netanyahu and who sees him as a like-minded, right-wing extremist ally.”
John NicholsTwitterJohn Nichols is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation. He has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.