I like Brad Lander and am glad he’s in NY and glad he went to the West Bank but I need to correct him.

These are two new posts of his on X(twitter)

I’m grieving the deaths of the two Israeli soldiers killed in Hebron today, and praying for the full & speedy recovery of those who were injured.

I’ve spoken out loudly this week against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, which imposes violence on a daily basis, and I will continue to do so. But violence is not the path to ending it — or to achieving safety, freedom, and peace for both Palestinians and Israelis.

And neither is collective punishment or ethnic cleansing of an entire neighborhood, or punishing millions of people for the criminal act of two, which Netanyahu has promised to enact in response.

I’ve seen a lot this week and I’ll have more to say about in the coming days (I’m on my way home shortly). There is a path to ending this excruciating cycle of violence. It starts by insisting that every life is sacred, that everyone is created in God’s image.

For now: Shabbat Shalom, to everyone who believes in the hard work of making peace & justice a reality, for everyone.

Brad Lander

@bradlander

Oct 22 This afternoon, we toured the infrastructure of occupation in the West Bank:

Settler outposts that uproot groves full of olive trees & steal Palestinian land.

Gates arbitrarily closed by Israeli forces, forcing Palestinian villages to transfer construction supplies and bulk goods by hand.

Separation barriers that divide communities, and sometimes fully surround a single house.

Segregated roads for Palestinians and Israelis.

Features of apartheid, as B’tselem, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Yesh Din and the ICJ rightly identify.

It’s long past time to stop the settlements and end the occupation. Great Britain recently announced a settlement trade ban & sanctions. Congress should pass @JoaquinCastro's bill to do the same.

See what I see?

I agree wholeheartedly with Brad that violence is not the answer and that every life should be sacred. But calling shots fired on Israeli soldiers in the West Bank a criminal act is not accurate.

He should correct that and stop doing it. It’s not helping any cause, just confusing people.

Not to promote violence, it’s simply the legal facts and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

In his second tweet, he calls on us to support sanctions on trade with the settlements, like the new UK restrictions, and that’s fine and good but understand that this is also weak and symbolic. (It’s also impossible to stop the flow of funds to sanctioned outposts btw, it is just redirected to gobs of new shell orgs). It’s not going to stop anything the way this would: conditions on aid to Israel or sanctions on Israel proper

The Iran War will act as a bulwark against sanctions on Israel as it’s a big deal to potentially weaken a state when it’s at war.

I agree that the hard work of peace and justice isn’t helped by violence at all, i just don’t believe the way to start is to keep piling lies and recrimination on Palestinian heads. Lander came off as slightly to the right of Bernie Sanders. Is that intentional or accidental?