Worse than the slipshod hyperbole that characterizes much of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign was his recent statement about fatalities in the Israel-Hamas Gaza War of 2014. Sanders’ statement was false. Worse, when he was called on it, his spokesman denied he said it. The spokesman of the famously honest Bernie Sanders tried to wiggle, slipping into the type of politics that Sanders self-righteously rails against and holds himself to be above. Sanders didn’t mean it. He didn’t say it. And if he did say it, he corrected it. Besides, “bringing peace between Israel and the Palestinians will not be easy. It would help if candidates’ positions on this issue are not distorted.”
Sorry, Bernie, the distortion is all yours. You said what you said. Plain as day. Worse, your people acted like every other politician caught in a lie — it wasn’t your fault. Blame the critics — shades of Richard M. Nixon.
Here’s the transcript of Sanders’ grossly inaccurate remark: “Anybody help me out here, because I don’t remember the figures, but my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?”
Sanders was interviewed by the editorial board of the New York Daily News, where the above was published on April 4.
JTA reports that one of Sanders’ interviewers checked while they talked and said the number was closer to 2,300 killed and 10,000 wounded. There is no record of Sanders’ reaction to these facts.
Needless to say, one does not expect anyone to be a walking encyclopedia. Bernie Sanders can get a fact wrong the same as the rest of humanity. However, no matter how much understanding one extends to Sanders, the fact remains that he claims to be qualified to be the commander-in-chief. For such a person to have his facts off not just a wee bit, not just a digit or two, but drastically — by nearly 8,000 fatalities — calls into question Sanders’ attentiveness to foreign affairs. After all, this is Israel — which Sanders claims to care deeply about. This is a 2014 war — not even two years ago. This is a war that dominated world headlines for 50 days — and Sanders’ recollections bear no relation to reality.
The response of Bernie Sanders’ spokesman, Michael Briggs, on April 7: “Understanding that his [Sanders’] recollection about the total number of casualties, not the death toll, the senator immediately accepted that correction and the discussion moved on to other topics.”
Notice the inherent contradiction in this spin? If, in fact, Sanders had referenced the total number of casualties, and not the death toll, there was nothing to correct!
In fact, Sanders did reference the death toll: the total number of “innocent people killed” (his word) in Gaza. If the recollections of a potential commander-in-chief can’t distinguish between deaths and casualties, this is more than worrisome.
This isn’t presidential. It takes more than obsessive condemnations of billionaires to be president of the United States. To adapt a phrase, foreign affairs count.
Copyright © 2016 by the Intermountain Jewish News
