b. traven
Interviewed on MSNBC’s All In, Bernie Sanders responded to Israel’s revocation of visas previously issued to Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. He suggested that if Israel does not want US Congresspeople to visit, then perhaps they can also do without the billions in aid the US sends them every year. Referring to Israel’s Netanyahu, Sanders said:
if Israel doesn’t want members of the United States Congress to visit their country, to get a first-hand look at what’s going on, and I have been there many, many times, but if he doesn’t want members to visit maybe he can respectfully decline the billions of dollars that we give to Israel…
This is big time for Sanders to throw down the gantlet: opening the floodgates for reassessing our Israeli-Saudi relationships. As the Washington Post reported, this will rocket through the Democratic Party and force other presidential candidates to clarify their stand on Israel – are they ready to support fellow Congresspeople or will they continue to cravenly support Israel against their own Party Members.
More of the text of what Sanders said on the show is here on Huffington Post. Even Thomas Friedman has piled on, pointing out that Trump’s intervention will not, and was not intended to, help Israel.
The Contrary Perspective 
Somehow Mainstream Media failed to alert me to Sen. Sanders’s comments on this topic. I guess they were more concerned with his supposed promise to reveal what the Federal Government really knows about space aliens having visited our planet. (It’s plain to see, of course, that some alien life form has occupied the US Presidency for 2 1/2 years now. This thing is exceedingly hard to even classify!) The safest outcomes one may predict in the coming days, months, years are: 1.) Trump will accuse Sanders, who is at least nominally Jewish, of “anti-Semitism”; 2.) most, maybe all, of the other Democratic candidates will cower in a corner (will Tulsi Gabbard prove an exception? That would be interesting) on the issue of US’s unconditional support of Israeli domestic and foreign policies; 3.) the Members of US Congress who have taken money from AIPAC in past will continue to do so; 4.) the people of Palestine will continue to suffer and find nary a friend here in a position to help them. I wish I could predict otherwise, but I’m “trapped” in the World of Reality!
I know Sanders was balancing political realities at home but his statement felt so subservient to Israel. He put Israel in the driver’s seat of decision-making. No wonder that genocidal State has no fear of the US. If Sanders is to sound strong enough to defeat the GOP election charade he needs to sound as strong as Trump. Afterall that is what the public responds to–brute strength. And I have seen self-defined Liberals and Progressives react the same in both local and national politics.
But we have also seen how Sanders has changed the positions of many in Dem camp–at least on the campaign trail. Interested in seeing what Marianne Williams says on the issue. She did the same thing with the vaccine issue–a very weak questioning and the press was all over her protecting the drug corporations.
Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone also has interesting comments on Bernie. Could he be surging? BERNIE/TULSI ticket?
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/bernie-sanders-washington-post-media-complaint-872349/
I pulled this quote from the Rolling Stone article, which I admit I only took time to skim: “Media companies run by the country’s richest people can’t help but project the mindset of their owners, and they are naturally incompetent when it comes to viewing their own role in society.” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels pointed out c. 150 years ago that the ideas that dominate a given society are those put before the collective public mind by the Ruling Class, in service to that class. Financial commentator Richard Russell (now deceased) frequently commented on Bezos’s constant smile when in public view. “What does he have to smile about? Amazon still hasn’t turned a profit after ‘X’ number of years in operation.” Well, that finally changed, didn’t it?