ByIDAN ZONSHINE
Updated:

During an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday, Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said the new Israeli coalition - which is expected to be sworn in next Wednesday - was "very strange," though he said he "will not be mourning" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"They have people on the left, people on the right, people in the middle. So we will see what happens in terms of that coalition," he added.

Regarding the likely removal of Netanyahu from the role of prime minister however, Sanders' views were drastically more certain.

"It is no great secret that I am not a great fan of Benjamin Netanyahu," he said. "I think, over the years, the coalition that he has put together has become more right-wing, and in some cases, part of that coalition is overtly racist."

He concluded his answer with a message of hope for cooperation, saying "I will not be mourning the departure of the prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu, and I hope that Israel will have a government that we will be better able to work with."

The twice former presidential candidate has long been a critic of Netanyahu and his policies.  

During a 2019 presidential debate, Sanders said that “right now, Israel is under the leadership of Netanyahu, who has recently been indicted for bribery, who in my view, is a racist.”

He has also been a long-time critic of the military blockade of Gaza, which has been in place in it's current form since June of 2007.

In the same debate, he said  "...we need an even-hand proposal for both people. What is going on in Gaza right now, for example, is absolutely inhumane. It is unacceptable. It is unsustainable.”

Last October, in a speech about the dangers of bigotry at a memorial for the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Sanders included Israel in a list of countries where authoritarianism is rising.
“They don’t just hate Jews,” he said of white supremacists. “They hate the idea of multiracial democracy. They hate the idea of political equality. They hate immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ people, women and anyone else who stands in the way of their bigotry and racist ideology," He said.

"All over the world — in Russia, in India, in Brazil, in Hungary, in Israel and elsewhere, we see this rise of a divisive and destructive form of politics. We see intolerant authoritarian political leaders attacking the very foundations of democratic societies.”