During an interview aired on Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Story Is,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) stated that he wouldn’t say Israel is guilty of genocide “because genocide has a very specific legal meaning. I don’t think this meets the definition of genocide, but I think it’s certainly ethnic cleansing.”

Host Elex Michaelson asked, “There [are] a lot of folks in the Democratic Party, in your caucus, who feel like Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal, who has committed war crimes, that Israel is an apartheid state, and that the United States should not fund any military weapons to Israel because they are funding a genocide. What do you say to that?”

Schiff answered, “Well, I voted against the last two arms requests of the administration for Israel, for a variety of reasons. First, I think they’re using excessive force in Gaza. I also think that the expansion of the war against Iran in Lebanon is not in the interests of either Israel or peace in the region. I also recently led a letter that over 40 of my Democratic colleagues joined, condemning the settler violence in the West Bank, which I think is just contributing to the loss of life and instability. And the proposed settlements, now, in a new settlement block that would effectively prevent a Palestinian state, I am vehemently opposed to. I do think Israel has a right to exist and exist as a Jewish state. I think it has a right to defend itself. But that right doesn’t go further to using excessive force to ethnically cleanse or destroy whole blocks of neighborhoods in Gaza or elsewhere.”

Michaelson then asked, “So you wouldn’t say that Israel has committed genocide?”

Schiff responded, “I would not, because genocide has a very specific legal meaning. I don’t think this meets the definition of genocide, but I think it’s certainly ethnic cleansing. And there should be investigations, because there may very well have been war crimes committed as well.”

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