(April 1, 2025 / JNS) In a tweet dated March 27, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote: “Next week, I will force votes to block $8.8 billion in new arms sales to Israel.” The Vermont senator also stated that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s illegal war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip has killed 50,000 Palestinians.

Sanders is wrong. There is nothing illegal about Israel’s war against the terrorist group. This is not Netanyahu’s war; it is Israel’s war. Israel did not start this war; Hamas invaded Israel. Israel is acting in self-defense. There is nothing immoral in a nation’s right to defend itself against terrorists.

The senator’s other claim is wrong, too. The death toll figures from Gaza are supplied by Hamas, an internationally recognized foreign terrorist organization that, among other things, denies the Holocaust. Holocaust-deniers are not usually considered a reliable source of information. 

Nearly half of the Hamas number are made up of armed terrorists—the same ones who committed the mass murder of 1,200 men, women and children in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The Hamas death toll includes not only thousands who died of natural causes but also civilians killed by terrorist rockets that—fired at Israeli cities and towns—fell short and exploded within the Strip.

Of course, it would be preferable if Israel could fight a war in which no civilians were harmed. But in the real world, Israel is pursuing thousands of killers and rapists who are hiding in school buildings, hospitals and hundreds of miles of tunnels underneath Gaza. 

Inevitably, some bystanders will be harmed. However, that doesn’t make Israel any guiltier of conducting an “illegal war” than former President Barack Obama is for launching the Battle of Mosul in 2016. According to an Associated Press investigation, the battle resulted in 9,000 to 11,000 Iraqi civilian deaths.

Sanders’s efforts will fail, as they should. Afterward, he will continue maligning Israel since he suffers from something that can only be called “Blame Israel First Derangement Syndrome.”

Another aspect of this syndrome is seen in individuals and organizations that argue that the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (referred to as settlements in the West Bank) pose a threat to Middle East stability.

The Washington Jewish Week on March 27 ran a front-page feature story about Michael Koplow, chief policy officer of Israel Policy Forum. The reporter wrote that “Koplow spoke about the dangers of Israel annexing the West Bank” as if those “dangers” are something universally agreed upon. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The WJW wrote that Koplow said, “IPF is a nonpartisan organization.” Is it?

It’s worth noting that when Koplow’s organization was created and funded in 1993 by liberal U.S. Jews at the behest of the Israeli Labor Party, led by Yitzhak Rabin, Rabin and his party opposed the creation of a Palestinian state. 

In his final address to the Knesset on Oct. 5, 1995, Prime Minister Rabin said that he favored creating “a Palestinian entity” that would “run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority” but should be “less than a state”—which is exactly what the Palestinian Authority is; 98% of the Palestinian Arabs today reside in the areas that the Palestinian Authority governs. In its more than 850-word portrait of Koplow, the WJW never mentioned the IPF’s origins.

Back in 2013, current Israeli President Isaac Herzog was elected chairman of Israel’s Labor Party, making him the head of the left-wing opposition. Just 10 days after he won that race, he met with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and publicly pledged his support for creating a Palestinian state.

However, this past January, Herzog said at a session at the World Economic Forum in Davos: “The idea of the two-state solution is something which, on record, I supported in the past, many times, but I would say that I had a wake-up call following Oct. 7, in the sense that I want to hear my neighbors say how much they object, regret, condemn and do not accept in any way the terrible tragedy of the terror attack of Oct. 7 and the fact that terror cannot be the tool to get there.”

Herzog was changed by the horror of Oct. 7. So, why hasn’t Koplow changed? 

There’s another reason to look differently at the future of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria in our post-Oct. 7 world than Koplow would have us. Now, let’s assume for the sake of argument that a Palestinian state is established in Judea and Samaria, as Sanders, the Israel Policy Forum and the United Nations are always demanding. A city called Tulkarem would certainly be part of it since it’s the sixth-largest Palestinian Authority city. There is no way that the P.A. is going to turn Tulkarem over to Israel.

What would Israel have looked like on Oct. 7 if it had been less than 10 miles wide at its strategic middle? Why isn’t the WJW asking Koplow that?

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Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel (www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.