Possessed by the dybbuk of liberal guilt, Sen. Bernie Sanders is trying to expunge his sins and cleanse his soul of his recent transgressions—chiefly that brief period of time when he refused to take Hamas’s side in its global war of annihilation against the Jewish people.

He’s very sorry he did that, apparently. So today he’s forcing to the Senate floor a vote to “freeze all U.S. security aid to Israel unless the State Department produces a report within 30 days examining whether the country committed human rights violations in its conduct of the war,” the New York Times reports. “If the Biden administration misses the deadline, the aid would be restored once Congress receives the report, or takes separate votes to ensure the assistance continues uninterrupted.”

Sanders talked to the Times about why he was forcing the bill to the floor, given that it almost surely won’t pass. He made the following accusation, and it’s worth paying special attention to it:

“There is growing concern among the American people and in Congress that what Israel is doing now is not a war against Hamas, but a war against the Palestinian people. That with American military aid, children are starving to death, is to me—I mean, I just don’t know what adjectives I can use. It’s disgraceful. And I think I’m not the only one who feels that.”

“There is growing concern” is basically “people are saying.” Sanders is generally more honest than most when it comes to justifying his legislative intentions. But here he’s at a total loss. He’s forcing a bill to the floor based on the toxic libel that Israel is deliberately killing Palestinian children under the cover of waging war on adult terrorists.

Sanders knows that if Israel wanted to wage “a war against the Palestinian people,” it could very easily do so. Instead of telegraphing its attacks by designating noncombatant zones for people to get out of the way; instead of spending hours on the phone with individual Gazans explaining to them why Hamas has put their building in harm’s way and therefore that the IDF is going to attack right in their neighborhood; instead of pausing offensives for the provision of humanitarian aid and suspending surveillance; instead of sending its soldiers in on the ground to fight house-to-house when it could flatten the entire strip from the air—it could just, you know, not do those things.

Perhaps Sanders doesn’t read the New York Times. Right next to the story about his move to freeze aid to Israel is a very informative one about the extent of the tunnel system Hamas has dug, and how the whole thing is more of a threat than even the most hawkish Israeli defense officials thought. “In December, the network was assessed to be an estimated 250 miles. Senior Israeli defense officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, are currently estimating the network is between 350 and 450 miles—extraordinary figures for a territory that at its longest point is only 25 miles.”

Indeed it is extraordinary. A nearly thousand-foot-long tunnel was found beneath a hospital. Another was seven stories underground, accessible by a staircase from the surface.

Millions of dollars were poured into these tunnels, turning Gaza into, in the words of one CIA analyst, a “fortress.” The tunnels used only by Hamas commanders even include ceramic tiling, because Hamas military leaders spend so much time in them and want to feel at home. One thing everyone in the story agreed on is that there’s simply no way to end the threat without dismantling the tunnel system.

Israel has discovered lists of tunnel entrances “hosted” by civilian homes. Another soldier said he oversaw the dismantling of about 50 tunnels, and every one of them had bombs hidden in walls or remote-detonating explosives waiting for the IDF. Another tunnel shown to journalists had a munitions elevator.

All of which is to say that Senate Democrats’ murmurings about Israel supposedly making war on Palestinian children are risible and obviously false. All this information is available in a newspaper for people like Bernie Sanders to read. And yet, it goes unread. Why? Because the campaign to freeze aid to Israel is something out of an alternate dimension. It has no basis in reality here on earth. And all of these cynical senators know that.

But look, people are saying.