Bernie Sanders on Wednesday described Israel’s war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza as a “genocide” of Palestinians, becoming the first United States senator to make that charge against the Jewish state.

“The intent is clear. The conclusion is inescapable: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,” Sanders said in a statement, after laying out statistics about casualties of the war and then quoting inflammatory remarks by Israeli ministers as evidence of genocidal intent.

“Having named it a genocide, we must use every ounce of our leverage to demand an immediate ceasefire, a massive surge of humanitarian aid facilitated by the UN, and initial steps to provide Palestinians with a state of their own,” said the senator.

The war in Gaza started October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. The war’s stated aims are the return of the hostages, the destruction of Hamas as a military and governing power, and the prevention of any future security threat to Israeli citizens from Gaza.

Israel insists that it fights in accordance with international law, and has rejected allegations of genocide or other war crimes in its campaign against Hamas. It has noted evacuation warnings sent in advance of airstrikes; efforts, throughout most of the war, to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid; and Hamas’s systematic use of human shields.

Sanders’s statement came in the wake of a UN Human Rights Office report, issued Tuesday, that said Israel has violated the Genocide Convention. Like Sanders, the report provided an overview of the war’s casualties, emphasizing the deaths of civilians, and then quoted bellicose statements by Israeli leaders in the first days of the war as evidence of genocidal intent.

Unlike the UN report, Sanders’s statement began with a description and explicit condemnation of........

© The Times of Israel