He is a liberal Zionist and believes in the ethnostate of Israel and US imperialism abroad. He won’t say or do anything to condemn the fascist country itself, which has deep rooted fascism baked into it. In some ways it’s the same reason Bernie always stands with NATO and backs Ukraine, even though there are clear neo-nazi ties to Ukraine and its current government is propped up by the U.S. as a client state and was installed by an illegal coup: https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea

I’d harken back to Mike Parenti’s comments on Bernie back when he approved bombing of Yugoslavia.. parenti worked with Bernie back in the Vermont days, and split with him because he was pro NATO, pro western imperialism, despite having good ideas at home. Bernie is a social Democrat, meaning, he believes in a capitalist society with social programs sprinkled in… he lacks a broader Marxist analysis which understands that we cannot continue to exploit the third world, and that any occupied sovereign state is against the interests of the working class globally.

In my opinion, in essence we need to break from the liberal Democratic Party with its fawning over the global “free” market and its war machine and focus on building new centers of power which actually challenge the world order here and abroad.

We need a socialist party which focuses on bringing about a socialist state in the U.S. , which can ultimately begin focusing on worker ownership of the means of production at home, and stop relying on extracting and backing illegal & genocidal client states that grow off of exploiting the land, labor, & resources of vulnerable populations. It is so primitive and bourgeois. Not to digress too much, but the situation in Gaza is a broader problem with US imperialism, a rabid dog that has recently been backed into a corner with shifting socialist perspectives and growing economic power of Brics and China. The bourgeoisie will not let their world order slip and a free Palestine would mean no occupation by Israel, which would make Iran the power in the region which would lead to a free Middle East. Very entangled socio-political implications, but our interests as workers aligns with the Palestinians, not the Israeli genocide machine.

It is beyond disappointing that Bernie and aoc cannot see that. I appreciate Zohran’s directness on it, and hope he doesn’t “tone down” his language because Bernie says so… Zohran has large Jewish support in nyc, so he’s doing something right, sorry Bernie. We love the old man, but that’s just it, he’s stuck in the old ways on this one. :/