WASHINGTON

US Sen. Bernie Sanders demanded the US end support for Israel’s "illegal war” in the Gaza Strip, with mass starvation and civilian casualties.

"After 21 months of brutal war, the Netanyahu government’s extermination of Gaza is entering a new and terrible phase. America and the world cannot continue to look away. We must reckon with what is being done with our taxpayer money, our weapons and the support of our government.

"More than that, we must act to stop it," Sanders said in a statement.

Sanders condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for blocking humanitarian aid, and pointed to data from humanitarian groups and the UN that indicate one-third of Gaza’s population is going days without food, with children dying from malnutrition and hospitals collapsing under starvation.

"When mass death from starvation begins, it is difficult to reverse. Aid groups say Gaza faces a tidal wave of preventable death. This is the direct result of the Israeli government’s policies," he said.

Stressing that Israel did not allow a single shipment of aid into Gaza from March 2 to May 19, Sanders said more than 1,000 Palestinians have been shot down while trying to get food aid in the last two months.

"Most of these deaths are the result of Israel’s replacement of the established United Nations distribution system with the untested Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose few distribution points have become death traps for Palestinian civilians, with near-daily massacres," he added.

The GHF aid distribution sites, launched May 27 in Gaza, which also have US backing, have been described as “death traps” by critics.

"This is the reality: Having already killed or wounded 200,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, the extremist Israeli government is using mass starvation to engineer the ethnic cleansing of Gaza," said Sanders.

Sanders said the US has provided more than $22 billion in military aid to Israel since the war began in 2023, despite the rising death toll.

"In other words, American taxpayer dollars are being used to starve children, bomb civilians and support the cruelty of Netanyahu and his criminal ministers.

“Enough is enough. The White House and Congress must immediately act to end this war using the full scope of American influence. No more military aid to the Netanyahu government. History will condemn those who fail to act in the face of this horror," he added.

Israel has killed more than 59,700 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, collapsed the health system, and led to severe food shortages.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.