Senator Bernie Sanders: The extremist Israeli government is using mass starvation to ethnically cleanse Gaza

US Senator Bernie Sanders said on Friday that the extremist Israeli government, after killing and wounding 200,000 Palestinians, is using mass starvation to orchestrate ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip.

In a statement, the US senator called on the United States to end its support for Israel’s “illegal war” on the Gaza Strip and the resulting mass famine and civilian casualties.

Sanders said, “After 21 months of brutal war, the Netanyahu government’s genocide of Gaza is entering a new and horrific phase… America and the world cannot continue to look the other way… We must reckon with what is being done with our taxpayer dollars, our weapons, and our government’s support”.

“More than that, we must act to stop this,” he added in the statement.

Sanders condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for obstructing humanitarian aid, citing data from humanitarian organizations and the United Nations indicating that a third of Gaza’s population goes days without food, with children dying of hunger and malnutrition, and hospitals collapsing.

In this context, the US senator stated: “Once mass deaths from starvation begin, they are difficult to reverse… Aid organizations say Gaza is facing a massive wave of preventable deaths… This is the direct result of the Israeli government’s policies”.

Sanders confirmed that Israel did not allow a single shipment of aid into Gaza between March 2 and May 19, and stated that more than 1,000 Palestinians were killed while trying to obtain food aid over the past two months.

He continued, “Most of these deaths are the result of Israel’s replacement of the existing UN distribution system with the Gaza Humanitarian Facility, whose few distribution points have become death traps for Palestinian civilians, with near-daily massacres occurring”.

He explained that critics have described the aid distribution sites of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which launched in Gaza on May 27 and receives US support, as death traps.

“This is the truth… After killing or wounding 200,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, the extremist Israeli government is using mass starvation to orchestrate ethnic cleansing in Gaza,” Sanders said.

He pointed out that the United States has provided more than $22 billion in military aid to Israel since the war, adding, “In other words, American taxpayer money is being used to starve children, bomb civilians, and support the brutality of Netanyahu and his criminal ministers”.

The US senator concluded his statement by saying, “Enough is enough… The White House and Congress must act immediately to end this war, using the full power of the United States…  No more military support for the Netanyahu government… History will condemn those who fail to confront this horror”.