One day after calling for an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, US Senator Bernie Sanders met on Tuesday, February 28, with MK Ayman Odeh (Hadash), the leader of the Joint List faction in the Knesset, to discuss the situation of the Arab population of Israel as well as diplomatic issues.
MK Odeh with Senator Bernie Sanders (Photo: Al Ittihad)
Odeh presented Sanders with data on institutional discrimination against Arab-Palestinians in Israel, and the situation of residents of unrecognized Arab-Bedouin villages in the Negev. Sanders and Odeh also discussed the political potential of Arab voters in Israel as a major voting bloc representing 20 percent of the country’s population.
The Hadash MK later met with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, comprised of a portion of the Democratic Congressmen to discuss the situation of Arab population and the ties between President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Odeh took issue with Trump’s wavering commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, calling it a critical issue. On Monday, Sanders told the 2017 J Street National Conference that Israeli occupation runs against both American and Israeli vales and called for its end.
The continued occupation and settlement construction, Sanders said, undermine peace efforts. Sanders applauded the administration of former President Barack Obama for its decision in December to abstain from vetoing United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which censured Israeli settlement construction. “Those of us who support Israel, have got to tell the truth about policies that hurt the chances of a peaceful resolution,” he said. Sanders said the vision of peace in the Middle East was one that progressives “cannot give up on.” He added: “our job is to oppose all the political forces, in our country and around the world, who are trying to tear us apart. This is a global phenomenon.”
On Sunday evening, in a speech before J Street’s 2017 National Conference in Washington, MK Odeh severely denounced the Israeli Labor Party, accusing it of betraying its principles and failing to stand up to the country’s right-wing coalition government. He called on the American Jewish left to form a coalition with his own political union of Hadash and the Arab parties. “You showed up today because we know we cannot rely on the opposition we have, the one that is ready to sell out our values in exchange for power,” he told the audience of J Street delegates in Washington DC’s Convention Center.
“The Labor Party did nothing to stop the order to destroy Umm al-Hiran and leave its residents homeless,” he said. “It has abandoned the human rights organizations and civil society groups that the right-wing parties attack. And it has failed to provide any real leadership toward ending the occupation and resisting the extremist agenda of the right-wing government.” He went on: “They have called themselves the ‘Zionist camp.’ The right wing calls itself the ‘national camp.’ We, Arabs and Jews together, are building a new camp, a democratic camp that has already begun to show the world what real, principled, and strong opposition looked like. “This is the time for a real opposition, principled, fearless,” he said. “An opposition led by a Labor party that is a shadow of the right is no opposition at all.”
The lawmaker also sought to link Netanyahu with US President Donald Trump — both of whom are intensely unpopular with his audience. “In Israel, around the world, and here in the United States, those who sit in the halls of power care only about their own power,” he accused. “Trump and Netanyahu have cemented their power in the same way regimes have throughout history: with the language of fear and a slow-burning hate, by turning us against one another instead of reminding-us of our shared values and our mutual interests.”
