(Headline USA) Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., this week defended anti-Israel students on college campuses across the country, arguing they were protesting “for the right reasons.”
During an interview with CNN, Sanders admitted that some of the campus protests have gone too far, but he insisted there was a distinction between those intimidating Jewish students and blocking them from accessing certain spots on campus, and those protesting against the Israeli government.
“We don’t want protests that are violent. And we absolutely will not tolerate anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia or any form of bigotry,” Sanders said.
“But it is important to understand why these protesters are out there and they are out there not because they are pro Hamas,” he continued. “They are out there because they are outraged by what the Israeli government is now doing in Gaza.”
Sanders went on to praise the protesters for arguing against “U.S. continued military aid and money to a right wing extremist Netanyahu government, which is in a destructive war against the Palestinian people.”
Hundreds of students and outside agitators were arrested at Columbia University, the University of California, Los Angeles and other schools this week as local law enforcement cracked down on the illegal student encampments. Those arrested were charged with trespassing, harassment and other misdemeanors.
Sanders is not the only congressional leftist who has defended the protests. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-N.Y., also railed against law enforcement for removing the encampments, insisting that the protesting students were “peaceful” and that university officials were participating in “asymmetric crackdowns on Palestinian human rights protests.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., whose daughter was one of the lead student organizers of the original Columbia University protests, actually joined the students at one point as they rallied against the school administration and demanded its divestiture in companies that were supporting the Israeli military response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.
However, other Democrats had reportedly begun to get nervous over the optics of the student acts of destruction and blatant hate speech, which drew unfavorable comparisons with the Jan. 6 uprising at the U.S. Capitol and other right-wing protests for which participants had faced serious consequences.
Despite fears that they may be reliant on the support of those radical student activists in the November election, Democrats are attempting to toe a delicate line lest moderate Americans be put off by the extremism and flock to the GOP in response.
Even President Joe Biden reluctantly condemned the behavior and rhetoric of the student protests in a statement on Sunday.
“This blatant anti-Semitism is reprehensible and dangerous—and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country,” Biden said.
