Our new issue, “After Bernie,” is out now. Our questions are simple: what did Bernie accomplish, why did he fail, what is his legacy, and how should we continue the struggle for democratic socialism? Get a discounted print subscription today !

You could be forgiven for having fallen asleep early during the last snoozer of a Democratic Party debate. But among the nonsense, garbage, and jingoism was an important marker for the movement for justice in Palestine. Following a pile-on of nationalist talking points from several Democratic nominees, the moderators turned to Senator Bernie Sanders on the question of US partnerships. After discussing the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, Bernie unexpectedly pivoted to Palestine: And by the way, the same thing goes with Israel and the Palestinians. It is no longer good enough for us simply to be pro-Israel. I am pro-Israel. But we must treat the Palestinian people as well with the respect and dignity that they deserve . . . What is going on in Gaza right now, where youth unemployment is 70 percent or 80 percent, is unsustainable. So we need to be rethinking who our allies are around the world, work with the United Nations, and not continue to support brutal dictatorships. It was the first time a major presidential contender brought up the issue of Palestine unprompted at a debate. In the past, Palestine has been the third rail nobody would touch with a ten-foot pole, certainly not willingly. But the times are changing. A shift in public opinion about the Israeli occupation, and the success of the Palestine movement in pushing the visibility and humanity of Palestinians to the fore, have created the context in which Sanders, and more so representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, are able to take up Palestinian rights in mainstream political discourse. That shift is, in turn, being advanced dramatically by Sanders, Omar, and Tlaib, and opening up a much wider base of support for the movement for justice in Palestine. As James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute and close Sanders ally, put it, the question of Palestine is a generational “smell-test issue. If you go to young people, they know you stink if you don’t talk about it right.” It is this new reality that led multiple Democratic nominees to sit out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in 2019. Past conferences have been all-but-required attendance for presidential hopefuls. (In 2016, Bernie was the only candidate to skip the conference. There, Hillary Clinton accused Trump of not being pro-Israel enough because he had previously indicated that he would remain “neutral” in negotiations between Israel and Palestinians.) Bernie’s position on Palestine could be much stronger. He could have talked about the current bombing of Gaza, which has killed dozens of men, women, and children in a matter of days, rather than only highlighting the dire economic reality there. Military assault and economic strangulation are two faces of the humanitarian crisis, which has its roots in Israel’s colonial occupation of Palestine. And he has often reiterated his support for Israel and its “right” to self-determination. This position wrongly equates the experience of the occupied with those of their occupiers, and it confuses more than it explains. Palestinians have been struggling against decades of ethnic cleansing and apartheid, and it is their internationally recognized right to resist. Nevertheless, his position on Palestine is not only the most progressive among the candidates (admittedly a low bar); more important, it is a decisive break from the staunchly pro-Israel consensus on Capitol Hill, and a sign of a shifting political discourse on Israel-Palestine more generally.