Philissa Cramer
Bernie Sanders has become the first U.S. senator to label Israel’s conduct in Gaza as a “genocide,” in an essay posted Wednesday to his Senate website .
“The intent is clear. The conclusion is inescapable: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,” Sanders wrote.
The essay came the same day that another Jewish member of Vermont’s delegation in Congress, Rep. Becca Balint, published her own op-ed calling Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide .
“As the granddaughter of a man murdered in the Holocaust, it is not easy for me to say that,” Balint wrote in the Courier, a nonprofit outlet focused on democracy. “But the trauma of the Holocaust serves as a reminder of the power of speaking out.”
Sanders and Balint, both progressives, are the first Jews in Congress to use the “geno