Bernie Sanders: Democrats ‘not speaking up’ on Gaza due to fear of pro-Israel lobby

US Senator Bernie Sanders on Thursday accused pro-Israel lobby groups, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), of muzzling his Democratic colleagues’ criticisms of the war in Gaza by threatening to fund primary challenges against them.

“I happen to believe that what is going on in Gaza is horrific, that we are seeing children, right now as we speak, starving to death,” said the independent socialist from Vermont on The Late Show with comedian Stephen Colbert. “But why do you think more Democrats are not speaking up on that issue?”

“If you speak up on that issue, you’ll have super PACs like AIPAC going after you in the same way Elon Musk goes after Republicans” who fail to toe their party line on issues such as health care, said Sanders, referring to the richest man on Earth, who contributed massively to US President Donald Trump’s election campaign.

In US politics, a “super” public affairs committee (PAC) is an organization that is entitled to spend unlimited funds in favor of a candidate for public office as long as it does not coordinate directly with the candidate’s campaign. Regular PACs, by contrast, may spend up to $5,000 on a single candidate.

AIPAC, which was founded in 1954, did not fundraise for individual candidates until the 2022 US midterm elections, when it formed an affiliated PAC and super PAC. Last year, AIPAC reportedly spent $14.5 million, the highest such sum ever, to unseat Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York, who had accused Israel of genocide in Gaza.

The existence of super PACs in the US was made possible by the American Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. the US Federal Election Committee. That ruling determined that political spending is akin to political speech and is therefore protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression.

Sanders, who has railed against American “oligarchy” in the wake of Trump’s reelection, blamed the ruling for making the US government unresponsive to “the needs of ordinary people.”

“Why are the richest people becoming richer while 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck, and 800,000 people sleep out on the streets?” Sanders asked Colbert. “The answer is, as a result of Citizens United, we have a corrupt campaign finance system.”

Sanders, who is Jewish and volunteered on an Israeli kibbutz in his youth, has been one of Israel’s fiercest critics in the US Congress, which he first entered in 1991 as a representative, becoming a senator in 2007.

He rose to national prominence in his insurgent 2016 campaign for the Democratic US presidential nomination. Sanders was the only US presidential candidate in that campaign who did not show up at the AIPAC conference.

The senator, who caucuses with the Democrats in Congress despite not being a member of the party, disappointed some of his far-left supporters by rejecting calls for a ceasefire in Gaza following the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, which killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, sparking war in the Strip.

Sanders grew increasingly critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the war dragged on, and has called on the US to stop sending arms to Israel. Legislation he introduced to that effect has been roundly rejected in the US Senate.

In a speech at the Senate after the legislation was last rejected, in April, Sanders voiced the same criticism he aired on Colbert’s show Thursday.

“If you are a Republican, and you vote against the Trump–Musk administration in one way or the other, you’ve got to look over your shoulder and worry that you are going to get a call from Elon Musk,” he said. “If you are a Democrat, you have to worry about the billionaires who fund AIPAC.”

“History will not forgive us for this,” he said. “The time is long overdue for us to tell the Netanyahu government that we will not provide more weapons of destruction for them.”

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says more than 52,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far. The toll cannot be verified, and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught. The IDF has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and accuses Hamas of using Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

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