For nearly a decade now, Bernie Sanders, a veteran senator from Vermont, has been considered the face of the so-called “Progressive” movement within the United States.

Igniting a voter base that was once turned off from political participation, the 83-year-old left-wing politician has cemented his public image by being a supposed outsider when possible, but a willful Democrat when needed.

In his self-created image, Sanders poses as an outsider or populist to his voter base, invoking the style of Eugene Debs from the United States’ early labor movement. He even calls himself a “socialist,” which is an otherwise forbidden word in the arena of American politics.

Sanders is officially an independent, which creates a political card that insists he isn’t a Democrat or Republican. In reality, he is a controlled opposition for the ruling class of the United States, sheepdogging millions of voters to eventually accept the Democratic Party as the alleged opposition to the Republicans.

His recent tour with so-called “Squad” member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as his recent statements regarding the ongoing genocide in Gaza, makes it perfectly clear what his orientation as a so-called progressive really is: preserving imperialism and its allies.

Since October 7, 2023—and ramping up in the previous weeks since Trump’s reelection—Sanders has been rehabilitating the image of the Israeli occupation by attributing its genocidal war crimes and crimes against humanity solely to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

Sanders insists that Netanyahu’s “right-wing government” is responsible for the genocide, while stopping short of naming the Israeli occupation itself as the main culprit.

In speeches and online statements, Sanders never condemns the occupation and apartheid—and only mentions Netanyahu. Time and time again, he has refrained from commenting on decades of Israeli war crimes against Palestinians both in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank and only raises Netanyahu as a talking point.

It is easy to see why this political strategy is being deployed. In a survey conducted recently (April 2025) by the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans now have an unfavorable view of the Israeli occupation. This is not just an unfavorable view of Netanyahu, or Gallant, or any specific figure—this is a view of the regime itself—which is an 11-point increase since 2022.

The genocidal war on Gaza carried out by Israel with the backing of the United States has significantly diminished overall support for Israel, despite a heavy-handed media campaign and political effort to rehabilitate and sanitize the Zionist occupation and its crimes.

The student movement within the United States has become a globally recognized powerful movement—so much so that both the Biden and Trump administrations have brought on aggressive crackdowns against students exercising their rights to suppress it.

At the same time, the protests for Palestine have remained consistent with weekly demonstrations, teach-ins, and events relating to Palestine solidarity and condemning Israel.

Divestment from Israel has become a popular topic, with groups exploring legal and social arenas to divest from the Israeli occupation.

Sanders’ role, therefore, is quite clear—counterinsurgency. The raw, organic and legitimate Palestinian solidarity movement has evolved to a level that has never been seen before in the United States.

The movement is not just about showing compassion and solidarity with the Palestinian cause—but it has grown to fully condemn Israel, with multiple political and social groups calling for the dismantlement of the Israeli occupation and the rejection of a so-called “Two-State Solution.”

Sanders aims to stifle this movement, dull its revolutionary edge, and return public sentiment to an imperialist-friendly “status quo.” His objective is to bring the public perception of Israel back to a level that is agreeable with imperialist interests.

Sanders himself is a committed Zionist. In 1963 (he would have been 22 years old), the Vermont senator actually lived within the occupation—at a newly established Kibbutz on stolen Palestinian land.

Palestinians were not permitted to enter the Zionist-occupied land that Sanders lived in. In his time there, he learned about Israeli “socialist” (westernized, empire-friendly “socialism”) practices and contributed to the development of the Kibbutz.

It's no surprise that over 60 years later, Sanders is still defending the Zionist project—his loyalty to Zionism was cemented early on in his political career.

While it may be true that Sanders has drafted and led resolutions calling for an arms embargo on Israel, these are not rooted in American realpolitik. Sanders knows that with the loyalty to Israel within the Senate, these bills would have no chance of gaining any steam, let alone passing the Senate.

Instead, one must examine what Sanders endorses—and more often than not, these endorsements line up exactly with the US imperialist agenda, shared by both Democrats and Republicans.

Sanders has aligned with imperialism’s demands to disarm and dismantle Hamas—a group that, by international standards, not only has the right to run and rule political arenas but also has the internationally recognized right to armed resistance against occupation.

Instead of upholding international law, Sanders has joined the long list of imperialist villains that reject international law in favor of the so-called American-Israeli “rules-based order.”

Sanders has time and again invoked the farcical argument that Israel has “a right to defend itself." He again said this at a rally in Los Angeles this week while addressing a gathering.

While he has been outspoken about economic sanctions against Russia or the strangulation of Yemen, he does not favor the same for the child-murdering Israeli regime, even after over 250,000 cold-blooded murders in 18 months, most of them children and women.

Sanders also brazenly condemned Iran’s Operation True Promise 1 and 2—again, both of which were legitimate military operations protected by international law, as a state has the right to defend itself after facing external aggression.

Furthermore, Sanders has also supported US attacks on Yemen for its solidarity with Palestine. Yemen’s naval blockade of Israel is rooted in the objective of genocide prevention—which, again, is encouraged under international law.

Instead of praising Yemen’s bold and courageous operations, Sanders, in a CNN interview, stated that “the president [Biden] has a right to respond on an emergency basis to the disruption of international shipping brought about by the Houthis.”

For Sanders, Israeli imports and exports are more crucial to be secured than the lives of Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

American progressives who stand in solidarity must reject Sanders and see him for what he is—the empire’s favorite sock puppet to dull a revolutionary movement.

Much like in 2016, and again in 2020 when Sanders ran as a supposed socialist looking to redistribute wealth (only to sheepdog voters back to the Democratic Party)—Sanders is being rolled out to capture the energy of a movement, subvert its potential, and revert it back to something palatable for the ruling class of the United States.

Sanders, however, isn’t alone in this. A new generation of progressive politicians is also being forged in order to carry on political counterinsurgency now and in the future.

Americans should challenge those who do not recognize the internationally recognized right to resist occupation. This benchmark test separates imperialists from true freedom fighters and progressives.

The alternative to this is never evolving politically, maintaining the status quo that has enabled genocide, and further deepening the crises brought out by imperialism.

Musa Iqbal is a Boston-based researcher and writer with a focus on US domestic and foreign policy.