United States Senator Bernie Sanders has slammed US lawmakers over the “absurd” hypocrisy of expressing concern over the suffering of Palestinians while continuing to support Israel’s incursion in Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.

In withering remarks directed at his colleagues in Congress, Sanders said lawmakers were engaging in the “fiction” that they are powerless to stop the death and suffering.

“It is absurd to criticise Netanyahu’s war in one breath and provide another $10bn to continue that war in the next. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about this disaster is the fiction we tell ourselves here in Congress, and that is that there is nothing, just nothing that we can do,” Sanders said.

“Everybody knows what is happening,” Sanders added.

“We see it every day in the news and see the pictures of the emaciated children, of people bombed while they sleep. And yet Congress pretends as if we are powerless to stop it.”