Bernie Sanders blames conflict between Israel and Hamas on ‘government-allied right-wing extremists’

Senator Sanders voiced his concern over the situation, then went on to say "Once again we are seeing how the irresponsible actions of government-allied right-wing extremists in Jerusalem can escalate quickly into devastating war."

In subsequent tweets, he added that "Israeli children should not have to spend the night scared in bomb shelters", and that "Palestinian children should not have to grow up under the constant violence and oppression of occupation."

He requested that the United States "call for an immediate cease-fire and end to provocative and illegal settlement activity."

The "provocative and illegal settlement activity" in question is at the center of recent events across the region. Protests erupted earlier this week in response to the Israeli government's decision to evict eight Palestinian families in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem.

Protestors clashed with Israeli police, who at one point stormed Al Aqsa Mosque.

The fighting escalated, and by Monday night, Israel and Hamas were exchanging rocket-fire. Hamas fired 130 rockets indiscriminately into densely packed Tel-Aviv and the surrounding areas, and Israel aimed for targets in the Gaza Strip. According to CBC, "as the rockets rose into the skies, mosques across Gaza blared with chants of 'God is great', 'victory to Islam' and 'resistance'."

It was reported that 32 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, the vast majority being Hamas terrorists, while 3 people were killed in Israel.

Bernie Sanders is, himeslf, Jewish, however he has frequently associated himself with anti-Israel figures such as Linda Sarsour. As The Daily Wire states, his "only connection to Judaism is an accident of birth." He spent time in Israel when he was younger, once at a communist-inspired kibbutz, and again as a reporter. As a reporter, he was asked to leave after just a few days because all the residents wanted to do was sit around and talk politics with him instead of actually working.

Sanders' decision to lay the blame of the current conflict at the feet of right-wing extremist Israelis was not well received by those actually impacted by the events.

Some even went so far as to call Sanders a "Hamas shill" for his apparent inability to call out the terrorist organization's response to the situation in Sheikh Jarrah.

This is not the first time Sanders has been lambasted for his take on the Israel-Palestine conflict. According to Mosaic Magazine, in the run-up to the 2016 Democratic nomination, Sanders "claimed that Israel had killed over 10,000 innocent Palestinians, launched indiscriminate attacks in the Gaza Strip, and shelled hospitals in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge in 2014." They add that he "not only inflated the numbers by several orders of magnitude, he even outdid the Hamas spokespersons in creating a false narrative that the IDF was intentionally attacking the civilian population."