SHINGTON — Massively amplifying even Hamas’s own figures, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders suggested Israel had killed “over 10,000 innocent” Palestinian civilians in Gaza during the war there in the summer of 2014, and said the high casualties were the result of an “indiscriminate” Israeli military offensive. Hamas health authorities in Gaza put the civilian death toll at about a seventh of the figure cited by Sanders; Israel puts it lower still.
In an interview with the New York Daily News editorial board published on Monday, the Vermont senator acknowledged that he did not have the exact figures memorized, but twice said he believed that the Palestinian civilian death count surpassed 10,000, and excoriated Israel for what he deemed its disproportionate use of force.
“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?” he said first.
Told that the number was “probably high,” Sanders responded: “I don’t have it in my number… but I think it’s over 10,000. My understanding is that a whole lot of apartment houses were leveled,” he went on. “Hospitals, I think, were bombed. So yeah, I do believe and I don’t think I’m alone in believing that Israel’s force was more indiscriminate than it should have been.”
Contentious casualty count
Sanders’s estimation far exceeds that of official Palestinian sources. (It was clear from the context that Sanders was referring to the 2014 war; however, the Palestinian civilian death toll from all three rounds of Israeli-Hamas conflict in the years since the terror group seized control of the Strip also falls far short of the figure he cited.)
According to Palestinian figures cited by the UN Human Rights Council, 1,462 civilians were killed out of a total of the 2,251 Gaza fatalities during the 51-day conflict. Israel, for its part, has said that up to half of those killed on the Palestinian side were combatants, and has blamed the civilian death toll on Hamas for deliberating placing rocket launches, tunnels and other military installations among civilians. Seventy-three people were killed on the Israeli side of the conflict.
In the past, Sanders has condemned Hamas for launching rockets at civilian areas and building tunnels into Israel proper, including in a testy exchange with some of his constituents in August 2014, where he simultaneously criticized Israel’s military response.
When asked by the New York Daily News what he would have done in Israel’s place, he said: “You’re asking me now to make not only decisions for the Israeli government but for the Israeli military, and I don’t quite think I’m qualified to make decisions.
“But I think it is fair to say that the level of attacks against civilian areas… and I do know that the Palestinians, some of them, were using civilian areas to launch missiles. Makes it very difficult,” he added. “But I think most international observers would say that the attacks against Gaza were indiscriminate and that a lot of innocent people were killed who should not have been killed.”
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