A Very Painful Open Letter to Bernie Sanders on His Refusal to Call Gaza a Genocide
I cannot think of a single American politician that I have loved and trusted and worked harder for than Bernie. That's why it's so painful for me to write this letter.
Dear Bernie,
Before I wrote this I reached out to countless members of your staff, I reached out to your wife, Jane, to your son, Dave, and to several of your most trusted campaign advisors and friends. I was told that you agreed to meet with me to discuss this, but days turned to weeks, which turned to months. And eventually I was told by your family that it was unlikely you would budge on this issue.
So here I am.
You are my friend. My children call you Uncle Bernie.
My entire family has spent precious time with yours - both on the campaign trail and in your home. We ate pizza and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream with you and watched you go into town and buy yourself a big pack of tube socks! You wrote the foreword to my book. I was proudly chosen as an inaugural Fellow for the Bernie Sanders Institute.
I introduced you at your presidential campaign kickoff events in Brooklyn in front of over 15,000 people in the snow and then back in Vermont for you as you kicked your campaign off at home. At that point, it was one of the biggest honors of my life to do so. You believed in me and I believed in you. I still do.
I recorded countless campaign ads for you, including with Spike Lee and the late Harry Belafonte in 2016 and then all over the country in 2020. I moved my family to California to campaign for you there and we literally won every single county in the state against Joe Biden. I campaigned for you anywhere you asked and never received a single penny in compensation. That was my choice. It was important to me to be able to say that I wasn’t being paid to support you.
Almost nothing meant more to me when you literally came and spoke at my own civil rights events as we were fighting hard against police brutality. You allowed me to edit and improve your platform on police violence. Our civil rights event together in Los Angeles was a highlight of my life.
I could write an entire article about what I learned from you on the campaign trail and how you were just as earnest and sincere behind the scenes as you are on the main stage.
And I write this open letter to you - not to burn a bridge, but to try to build one that you have actually burned with millions of your supporters as well as millions of Palestinians who saw you as one of their most trusted allies in the entire American government. It hurts me to say this, but I am now in that group that you have burned a bridge with. And I sincerely don’t know if you fully understand the damage that has been done. Please allow me to address it here.
For a staggering 709 days a genocide has been underway in Gaza. And for 709 days, for reasons that I do not fully understand…
You have refused to call it a genocide.
Let me tell you why this matters, Bernie.
Yes, what’s happening in Gaza is wrong. Yes, it’s evil. Yes it’s atrocious.
I’ve seen you use those words and many more.
But Bernie - those words aren’t crimes.
Evil can’t be prosecuted until you name the crime.
Bernie, genocide is a crime. It has a legal definition. It can be prosecuted. It has consequences not just for the victim but the perpetrators.
In 2024, Human Rights Watch, which you personally told me you respect, declared Gaza to be a genocide in this 179 page report. Did you read this report? If so, how did you conclude that they were wrong and you are right?
Then Amnesty International issued this devastating 293 page report declaring Gaza to be a genocide. I ask again - did you read this report? If so, how do you justify still denying the genocide?
This July, the Israeli-based human right organization, B’Tselem, issued their own devastating report declaring it “Our Genocide” - in effect taking responsibility for the genocide being committed by their own nation against the Palestinian people. These are Israeli-based Jews openly accepting responsibility for it and calling it a genocide? How can you deny even them?
Bernie - those 3 reports, and your own 2 eyes, should have been enough for you to declare Gaza a genocide, but they clearly didn’t.
However, it’s the next 2 reports that you have ignored, that have deeply troubled me about your judgement, and the judgment of those around you, on this issue.
If the first 3 reports somehow were not enough for you, these next 2 should have ended the debate forever.
1. The International Association of Genocide Scholars
On September 1st, the leading union of over 500 genocide scholars in the world declared Gaza a genocide. Here is their binding, official resolution. I wrote all about it here.
Bernie - these men and women have dedicated their lives to being the foremost experts in the world on genocide. They aren’t politicians. Many of them are literal Holocaust survivors and children of Holocaust survivors. At least a third of them, if not more, are Holocaust scholars.
What right, or expertise, or knowledge on this issue do you have to override them?
What worries me about this is that I know you as a logical thinker. I know you as someone who wants research to back his ideas. But even after this declaration was made, you have still refused to call it a genocide? Why?
2. The United Nations Declares Gaza a Genocide
Today, the foremost experts in the world within the United Nations declared Gaza a genocide in a meticulously documented 78 page academic report, with copious footnotes.
Here is the report, Bernie. It’s so damning. It’s also very, very late. It took way too long for this report to be issued, but it’s here. And that creates an opportunity for you today.
I am asking you to finally join the United Nations, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Amnesty International, and so many more of the leading experts on this topic, and declare what is happening in Gaza to be a genocide.
For most of your life, you’ve been early. In the 60s, you were early on civil rights. In the 1970s and 80s, you were early on Apartheid.
But Bernie, on the genocide of the Palestinian people, you are late. And it hurts.
Here is what cuts the deepest… you taught us to say things others would not. To call out billionaires. To call out corruption. To call out injustice no matter the consequences. But when the gravest crime in international law is happening in real time — when tens of thousands of children have been slaughtered, when families are being starved, when the future of an entire people is being erased — you have pulled back. You hedge. You say “tragedy” or “conflict.” You call for humanitarian aid but not for accountability. You say “ceasefire” but not “genocide.”
Bernie, that gap between what you once inspired in us and what you say now is devastating.
And here is the truth: your own supporters are already far ahead of you.
Nearly 90% of the people who supported you in 2016 and 2020 say this is genocide. 78% of Democrats say the same. Even half of all Americans now see it for what it is. But not you. You are behind your people. Behind history. Behind the movement you helped build.
I am not writing you this letter out of anger. I am writing it out of grief. Out of disappointment. Out of love for a man I still believe has the ability to stand on the right side of history. You always told me it wasn’t about you, it was about us. But Bernie, right now it is about you. About whether you will summon the courage to name what the world’s leading scholars, legal bodies, and now the United Nations itself has said. About whether you will side with justice, or with silence.
History does not remember the clever. It remembers the courageous. When the genocide in Rwanda unfolded, the world’s leaders ducked the word. When Srebrenica fell and tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered, they danced around the truth. And they were condemned for it. Gaza will be no different. Someday your grandchildren will ask you what you did when the UN declared genocide, when Palestinians begged for survival, when children starved in front of the cameras. And what will you say, Bernie?
I do not want you to go down as the man who could name billionaires but not genocide. The man who stood up to Wall Street but not to the bombs that buried children alive. The man who taught us to be brave, only to shrink when it mattered most.
You are my friend. You will always be my friend. But friendship does not mean silence - certainly not on genocide. I actually feel like I would be betraying my friendship with you not to say this. Friendship means truth. Friends tell each other hard things.
And the truth is this: you are running out of time to stand where you once stood — with justice, with the oppressed, with history.
My brother, you still have that chance. Please take it. I am begging you.
With love,
Shaun
Comments are open to all. Be respectful or you will be banned. This was very hard for me to write. I let it sit in my drafts for weeks until today. The UN has declared it a genocide and Bernie hasn't. It's time.
Well written. I also hope Bernie addresses the genocide for what it is.