Major American Jewish groups slammed an allegation about Israel made by Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders.

During an interview with the editorial board of the New York Daily News, Sanders argued that “over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza” – during Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s war against Hamas in the summer of 2014 — when “a whole lot of apartment houses were leveled” and “hospitals… bombed.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) blasted Sanders for his “misstatements regarding the 2014 conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas.”

In a statement, ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt declared: “Even the highest number of casualties claimed by Palestinian sources that include Hamas members engaged in attacking Israel is five times less than the number cited by Bernie Sanders. As Mr. Sanders publicly discusses his approach to key US foreign policy priorities, including Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, accuracy and accountability are essential for the voting public, but also for US credibility in the international community.”

Sanders also said on Monday that if Israel wanted to have a positive relationship with the United States, it would have to improve its relationship with the Palestinians.

When pushed by the Daily News to elaborate on his past calls for Israel to pull back from West Bank settlements, Sanders said that "long-term, we cannot ignore the reality that you have large numbers of Palestinians who are suffering now, poverty rate off the charts, unemployment off the charts, Gaza remaining a destroyed area."

The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) and B’nai B’rith also decried Sanders’ allegations.

“The road to Senator Sanders’ repetition of this outrageous slander started with Hamas lies and the failure of an intimidated media in Gaza to do little but publish the original blood libel in their dispatches and mouth them on air,” SWC Associate Dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper said.

“But that is no excuse for a veteran senator, running for the presidency of the United States, who always had access to the real story. Secondly, his narrative doesn’t include the thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilians from Gaza, and Hamas’ ongoing strategy of using its civilian infrastructure as a shield against Israel.”

Cooper was referring to the terrorist organization’s inflated death-toll numbers, and its use of populated apartment buildings, hospitals and even UN-run schools as bases for weapons caches and rocket-launching pads – both to prevent Israel from attacking the sites and to incur civilian casualties to present as statistics for foreign consumption.

He called on Sanders to “immediately acknowledge that he made a huge error and apologize to the people of Israel.”

B’nai B’rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin was equally harsh in his criticism of the candidate.

“It appears that Sanders has accepted the Palestinian narrative on the Gaza war whole cloth,” he told The Algemeiner. “But let’s not even start with the wild inaccuracy of his number. Let’s talk about the fact that he didn’t even mention Hamas’ use of the population it rules in Gaza as human shields in those hospitals and apartment buildings he was referring to. Nor did he point out that Israel sent unprecedented warnings to the civilian population in Gaza to evacuate areas it was going to target, by dropping leaflets, sending emails and making phone calls – a practice unique to Israel during wartime.”

By failing to provide the context, Mariaschin said, Sanders was presenting the Hamas narrative, something that is “unacceptable.”

“We have had enough problems on this score without presidential candidates engaging in discourse that is full of wild inaccuracies on what happened during Operation Protective Edge. He should have educated himself before speaking about it, and it is now important that he do so for the future.”

Sanders’ spokesman Michael Briggs responded to requests for clarification by claiming: ”There is no candidate for president who will be a stronger supporter of Israel’s right to exist in freedom, peace and security,” and then going on the offensive.