Democratic candidates say US should end aid to Israel over its policy in Palestine

Several US Democratic presidential candidates have said Washington should withhold military aid to Israel if it continues to annex settlements in the occupied West Bank in Palestine, evidence that the party is moving away from its once-unquestionable loyalty to Israel.

“I would use the leverage, $3.8 billion is a lot of money, and we cannot give it carte blanche to Israel,” US Senator Bernie Sanders, a leading presidential candidate, said Friday at the annual convention of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel advocacy group.

“I would say that some of the $3.8 billion should go right now to humanitarian aid in Gaza,” Sanders added, referring to the annual amount of military aid that the United States currently gives to Israel.

Sanders would become America’s first Jewish president if elected.

This is not the first time that Sanders has suggested using US financial and military aid to pressure Israel. He has repeatedly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has advocated for Palestinian rights.

Other Democratic candidates seeking the presidency have recently echoed Sanders’ criticism of Israel, including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

“It shouldn’t be hard to be against bad policies and to be against anti-Semitism,” Buttigieg said.

The Democratic presidential candidate receiving the most donations from Jewish backers this election cycle has been Buttigieg, even as he has issued sharp critiques of Netanyahu.

Polls show that US President Donald Trump’s close relationship with Netanyahu has weakened sympathy for Israel among Democratic and Jewish voters.

Among liberal Democrats, there is now almost an even split between those saying they sympathize with the Israeli side and the Palestinian one, according to a Gallup poll in February.

And a Pew survey conducted in April found that Jewish Americans were far more likely than Christians to say that Trump was “favoring the Israelis too much.”

PressTV-Israel should not collect US aid: Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders has suggested that Israel should now decline the billions of dollars it receives in US aid in the wake of its ban on Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering the country.

Halie Soifer, the executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said Democratic politicians who are otherwise supportive of Israel have adopted a more critical stance.

Last spring, J Street commissioned a nationwide survey that found among the Democratic electorate, “the political playbook on Israel has changed.”

The poll’s findings revealed that the Democratic electorate is generally supportive of Israel but also concerned about the potential for unfair treatment of Palestinians.

The study found that Democratic voters are far more likely to say the United States should be an impartial broker in peace negotiations, instead of taking Israel’s side.

It showed little support among Democrats for sending military and financial aid to Israel if it continued to annex Palestinian land or for recognizing Jerusalem al-Quds as the Israeli capital, as Trump did in 2017.

US military aid to Israel has skyrocketed over the past several years while the regime’s forces are engaged in blatant human rights violations against Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere.

The United States and Israel signed an agreement in September 2016 to give Israel $38 billion in military assistance over the next decade, the largest such aid package in US history.

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