And while the lion’s share of attention is paid to Israel-hostile figures such as Reps. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), they’re not the only ones. Vermont’s small congressional delegation has, collectively, proven among the most indifferent to Israel’s national security needs for a defensive war against Palestinian terrorism.

Its members have called for a “ceasefire” between Hamas and Israel, intending to end civilian deaths in Gaza, even if freeing remaining Israeli hostages and dealing a crushing military blow to Hamas have to go by the wayside.

Vermont’s three-member congressional delegation also is united in its harsh criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jerusalem’s prosecution of the war, and its seeming determination to end certain offensive weapons sales to the Jewish state.

Vermont’s situation is complex, to say the least. It’s a liberal bastion with two Jewish members on Capitol Hill, and it’s the home of a skyrocketing rise in antisemitism.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), though light on legislative successes, commands outsize attention as a progressive icon and a Jewish one at that. Sanders is an independent but caucuses with Democrats and has run for president as a Democrat.

Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) was a longtime member of the House before filling Patrick Leahy’s vacant seat in 2023 following the 48-year Democratic senator’s retirement. Coincidentally, Welch, together with Sanders, has been seeking to invoke the so-called Leahy Law to bar funding for Israel’s military due to alleged human rights abuses. Leahy announced his support for the move.

Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT), whose grandfather was murdered in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, took over Welch’s seat in the House — the only one for the 650,000-person Green Mountain State. Balint became the first Jewish member on Capitol Hill to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas after coming under direct pressure in her home state. Balint has also come out in support of curbing military aid to Israel.

The trio’s post-Oct. 7 response to Hamas, and then Hezbollah, terrorist attacks on Israel alarms many Vermonters.

“The congressional delegation over the past year has exhibited a one-sided reflexive bias towards condemning Israel,” Rachel Feldman, a community organizer for the Vermont-based Shalom Alliance, told the Washington Examiner.

The Washington Examiner reached out to the offices of Sanders, Welch, and Balint for comment multiple times for this story but received no responses.

Quick pivot to ceasefire calls

Welch and Balint initially supported additional aid to Israel in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s massacre, and Sanders condemned the attack. But all of their condemnations focused more on the harm it brought to a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

Feldman says her organization was built in the wake of the massacre as a way for the Vermont community to be able to stand up against antisemitism and disseminate accurate information about Israel. While also serving as a base for education, understanding, and collaboration with other communities.

She said the congressional delegation is essentially ignoring Iran and its Middle East terrorist proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, in their statements, even when calling for ceasefires or hostage deals.

“This puts Vermont Jews in a very difficult position,” Feldman said.

Vermont has sat stubbornly high on antisemitic hate crimes charts. According to the Anti-Defamation League, it’s grown worse.

In 2023, Vermont experienced the second-highest increase in the nation in antisemitic hate crimes per capita. Some say the one-sided rhetoric, such as that of Vermont’s congressional delegation, helps fuel the demonization of Jews and Israel. That, in turn, sends the messaging and actions of the delegation’s constituencies into overdrive.

“When they use the words they use, I don’t think they understand how and how those words affect Vermonters,” Republican state Rep. Casey Toof, the assistant House minority leader, told the Washington Examiner.

Toof said the delegation is “missing the point of what a ceasefire means: that you’re asking for Israel not to be able to defend itself within these conflicts.”

After two months of pressure and amid harsh criticism from the left, in December 2023, Sanders switched from calling for a humanitarian pause to demanding President Joe Biden force a full-on ceasefire and withdraw support for pending emergency military aid legislation working its way through Congress.

Sanders labeled Israel’s defensive actions “immoral” and has been unrelenting since.

“There is a want to pander to certain people,” Toof said. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease. There’s a lot of people that are really loud about this on one side, and I think the people that are on the other side don’t really speak up about it because they don’t really know what’s going on.”

Broader problem in Vermont

It’s hard to compare the post-Oct. 7 reactions of Vermont’s tiny At-Large Congressional District to other states. Larger population states yield a range of views, as in New York, with its 26 House seats. In the Bronx section of New York City, there’s a wide chasm in Israel support even among House members in neighboring districts. Ocasio-Cortez, representing the northern Queens and eastern Bronx 14th Congressional District is a prominent Israel critic. Next door, in the central Bronx 15th Congressional District, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) is a stalwart Israel supporter.

Still, there’s no comparable Israel animus with Vermont in other small-population states with one House member and two senators — Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

Part of the problem is local. Toof asserts that the anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment in his state is borne of a lack of knowledge and education and not necessarily ill will.

He pointed to an incident on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre when four city council members from Burlington, Vermont’s largest city and home to some 3,000 Jews, wore keffiyehs to a meeting. The traditional scarf has come to represent the Palestinian “liberation” movement and, on the Oct. 7 anniversary, would have carried extra significance.

“I think that there’s no understanding of what that symbolizes and what that means — that you’re behind a terrorist organization,” Toof said, pointing to a longer history of antisemitic displays throughout Vermont.

Toof filed a bill last year to implement mandatory Holocaust education within Vermont’s schools. Twenty-three states, both red and blue, already have such legislation on the books. Toof’s bill failed, but if reelected, he plans to submit a bill next year to help curb antisemitism in the state.

Disappointment with lawmakers in DC

Pro-Israel Vermonters are eager to show that their federal representatives in Washington don’t represent the views of everybody in the state when it comes to supporting Israel.

“I believe that it is reflective of a very well-funded and well-organized effort to overwhelm people with an anti-Israel message,” said Feldman, of the Shalom Alliance.

“What we are seeing nationwide is that the anti-Israel movement is very vocal and very organized and calls these (congressional) offices in droves, and the Jewish community, in our response, has been seeking conversations and meetings,” Feldman said.

Those conversations with Welch, Balint, and the Shalom Alliance have entailed a large portion of the Jewish community, with representatives from all points of the political spectrum and different levels of religious observance, Feldman claims.

Welch and Balint have both taken meetings, she says. The Shalom Alliance has not reached out to Sanders because “his public anti-Israel position is not the first place we wanted to take our desire to build bridges for dialogue in Vermont.”

When asked whether the meetings held have had any tangible impact or even led to a change in tone, Feldman pointed to an Oct. 22 letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Attorney General Merrick Garland. The letter, led by Sanders and joined by Welch, Balint, and nine others, called for an investigation into a reported Israeli strike that injured a Vermont journalist in Lebanon in the early days of the Israel-Hamas war, which Lebanese-based terrorist group Hezbollah joined.

“And yet there has never been a joint statement by this delegation about American citizens murdered or kidnapped at the hands of Hamas,” Feldman said, curious as to why the delegation isn’t asking questions about whether the journalist, along with others hit by the strike, may have been embedded with Hezbollah.

Mike Wagenheim is a senior U.S. correspondent for the i24NEWS television network, covering American government, diplomacy, religion, business, and culture.