US Senator Bernie Sanders said his country should withhold sending Israel “all offensive military aid” after the Israeli prime minister attacked the pace at which the US was supplying him bombs to use in Gaza.

Israel has a right to defend itself, Sanders said, but it “does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people”.

“Yet that is exactly what has happened,” Sanders said.

“The right wing extremist Netanyahu government has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and injured nearly 85,000. 60 percent of whom are women, children or elderly,” he said.

“It is absurd that Netanyahu has been invited to address Congress. We should not be honoring people who use the starvation of children as a weapon of war,” he added.