Sen. Bernie Sanders: ‘Not another nickel for Netanyahu’ if he keeps up ‘wholesale slaughter’ in Gaza

In an interview on MSNBC on March 2, 2024 , Sen. Bernie Sanders said the U.S. needs “a new approach to Israel” and vowed to continue to vote against additional aid to the country. “My view, not another nickel for Netanyahu’s government if he’s going to continue this wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people.”

In an interview on MSNBC on March 2, 2024 , Sen. Bernie Sanders said the U.S. needs “a new approach to Israel” and vowed to continue to vote against additional aid to the country. “Recently there was a vote. I voted against it, to give them another $14 billion,” Sanders told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner. “My view, not another nickel for Netanyahu’s government if he’s going to continue this wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people.”

President Biden announced this week that the U.S. would begin airdrops of food and humanitarian supplies into Gaza—a move Sanders described as “totally absurd” when the relief comes alongside military supplies to Israel. “You can’t reconcile it,” Sanders said. “It’s totally absurd. And on top of that, look, the airdrops are very important. But that is not as important as opening up the borders because you’re gonna need hundreds of trucks every single day. And our message to Netanyahu, you know what? You’re not gonna get another nickel unless you open those borders and prevent the starvation, which is imminent.”

“We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of children facing starvation,” Sanders said. “We’re talking about Israeli bombs making it impossible for humanitarian aid to get to places that is needed, that the borders are being blockaded, and aid is unable to get through.”

The threat of starvation is believed to be most intense in the bomb-scarred remains of northern Gaza, where by January, nutrition screenings found that more than 15 percent of children ages 6 months to 23 months were acutely malnourished, a condition rarely seen in Gaza before the current war.

“So, I think what the president is doing is an important step forward, but we need to do more. We need to tell Netanyahu and his right-wing government that they’re going to have to open those borders. The United States of America and I think the rest of the international — the rest of the world is not going to allow hundreds of thousands of kids to starve to death.”

Forbes/ MSNBC