Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

On Monday, the only Jewish candidate in the Democratic presidential race stood in front of an audience of Jews in Washington, D.C., and suggested cutting U.S. aid to Israel. And they applauded him. “I would use the leverage, $3.8 billion is a lot of money, and we cannot give it carte blanche to the Israeli government or for that matter to any government at all,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said at the annual convention of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel advocacy group. It isn’t the first time Sanders has discussed deploying foreign aid as “leverage” over the Jewish state. Back in the fall of 2017, in an interview with me for The Intercept, the Vermont senator described the United States as “complicit” in the illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and said he would consider voting to reduce U.S. aid to Israel. At J Street, however, he went much further. “What is going on in Gaza right now is absolutely inhumane, it is unacceptable, it is unsustainable,” the Democratic presidential candidate told his interviewers, Pod Save the World hosts — and former Obama aides — Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes. “My solution is to say to Israel: You get $3.8 billion every year. If you want military aid, you’re going to have to fundamentally change your relationship to the people of Gaza.” Then came the kicker: “In fact, I think it is fair to say that some of that should go right now into humanitarian aid in Gaza.”

"My solution is to say to Israel: you get $3.8 bil every year, if you want military aid you're going to have to fundamentally change your relationship to the people of Gaza, in fact I think it is fair to say that some of that should go right now into humanitarian aid" #JSt2019 pic.twitter.com/z5WmEEjbxI — People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) October 28, 2019

“I can’t think of any presidential contender from either party who’s said anything comparable,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution and the author of the recently published book “Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, From Balfour to Trump.” Diverting money away from the Israeli military and toward hungry Gazans may not sound radical as a policy, Elgindy told me, but “from a political standpoint it’s an earthquake.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the usual suspects on the right have lined up to bash Sanders — and, in the process, have revealed their own anti-Palestinian racism. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who once claimed “Israelis like to build” while “Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage,” accused Sanders of linking “American aid to Israel” to “concessions to the terrorist group Hamas.”

In which Bernie Sanders conditions American aid to Israel on concessions to the terrorist group Hamas.



So, quid pro quo? https://t.co/0aJGgkCpId — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 28, 2019

Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, who once blocked a respected Palestinian official from being appointed as a U.N. envoy, accused Sanders of wanting “to take money we give to Israel to defend itself from terrorists, and give it to Gaza, which is run by terrorists.”

Just when you thought Bernie Sanders couldn’t get any more radical, he outdid himself. He wants to take money we give to Israel to defend itself from terrorists, and give it to Gaza, which is run by terrorists?? Unreal. Why isn’t every other Dem pres candidate saying he’s wrong? — Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) October 29, 2019

Knesset speaker and Likud politician Yuri Edelstein, who has led the effort to prevent Israel from being defined as a “state for all its citizens,” accused Sanders of “talking nonsense” and suggested foreign aid was used by Hamas to “attack the state of Israel.”

. @BernieSanders, stop talking nonsense.

Just yesterday, I met with representatives of the EU during their visit to the Knesset, and I told them about the absurd claims regarding the economic situation in the Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/Ng5pGA7f5F — Yuli Edelstein ?? (@YuliEdelstein) October 29, 2019

Notice the common thread to their claims? Gaza = Hamas. The people of Gaza = terrorists. This is racism, plain and simple. The Gaza Strip, home to nearly two million men, women, and children, is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. Blockaded by Israel, with Egyptian assistance, since 2007, and bombarded by the Israeli air force in 2008, 2012, and 2014, Gaza is often described as an open-air prison. The majority of Gazans live in poverty; almost half of them are unemployed, and one in five pregnant women in the Strip are malnourished. I asked the independent senator to respond to these attacks on him, and on the people of Gaza, from the right. “Gaza is experiencing a humanitarian and environmental crisis,” Sanders told me. “Conflating an effort to address that crisis with ‘support for Hamas’ is part of an effort to dehumanize Palestinians and continue the conflict.” “As I have said many times,” he continued, “we need an even-handed policy in the Middle East which guarantees Israel’s right to exist in peace and security, and which treats the Palestinian people with respect and dignity.”

“Conflating an effort to address [the humanitarian] crisis with ‘support for Hamas’ is part of an effort to dehumanize Palestinians and continue the conflict,” Sanders told me.