The one bright spot for anti-war forces in the November 20 votes—the last ended just before 9 p.m.–was that Sanders garnered more support this time than on his two previous aid cutoff tries earlier this year.
But the votes show, again, that the Senate, and Democratic President Joe Biden, have not caught up to the country’s opposition to the Israeli war on Gaza. Voters oppose both U.S. policy that enables the slaughter of Palestinians and the sending of U.S. weapons to Ukraine.
Popular majorities of both parties demand a ceasefire and mandated negotiations for a two-state solution covering both Israel and the Palestinians. But all “no” votes against Sanders were bipartisan.
One Sanders move invoked a 65-year-old law that cuts off all military aid when the State Department reports U.S. allies violate human rights, block humanitarian aid, or both. It lost 18-79.
The second “barred the sale of 50,400 M933A1 120mm High Explosive mortar cartridges with M783 fuzes along with technical documents and engineering” for those weapons, a summary says. It lost by 19-78. The ban on sending the “smart bombs” and the technical aid for them lost 17-80.
“The law is very clear. This is not a complicated issue,” Sanders told his colleagues. “Weapons cannot be provided to nations that violate human rights or block humanitarian aid.
“Israel has a right to defend itself, but it does not have the right to kill more than 43,000 Palestinians and injure more than 103,000” while turning Gaza into a smoking ruin filled with two million refugees, Sanders said.
“And the U.S. cannot be complicit in these atrocities…A ‘no’ vote” against his anti-aid resolutions “allows us to continue breaking the law.”
As for the smart bombs, Sanders said “They’re supposed to be more precise” and cut down on civilian casualties. They are, and Israel has precisely aimed them “at schools” and other institutions “filled with refugees.”
Sanders has waged an uphill battle, citing the two laws, for almost a year, against U.S. arms aid to Israel for its war on Gaza. That war, in turn, has more than a century’s worth of antecedents.
Majorities of both parties opposed Sanders
Majorities of both parties and bipartisan Senate leaders, plus Democratic President Joe Biden, again opposed Sanders’s aid cutoff demands. Biden has kept the Israeli arms aid flowing, even though doing so split younger voters and Muslim Americans away from the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, during the just-concluded campaign.
The right-wing nationalist government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defied U.S. red lines, as Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., pointed out. Harris also publicly slammed Netanyahu over the humanitarian aid blockade. She too called for a cease-fire in the war but did not advocate an aid cutoff.
“The U.S. has insisted our conditions be respected…yet that has been ignored,” said Ossoff. “Judging by his actions 42 years ago,” Republican President Ronald Reagan would have held up arms shipments. “Had these [Sanders] resolutions passed, perhaps Israeli politicians would have received the necessary message… We must be willing to say ‘no,’ even to our closest friends when it is in our interest.”
Netanyahu has used more than $18 billion in U.S. military aid to buy one-ton bombs, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and dozens of warplanes to bomb and strafe Gaza, leveling more than four-fifths of its homes, damaging all its dozen universities and dozens of hospitals and wrecking infrastructure.
The Israeli military has also strafed Israel’s own designated “escape routes” for the Palestinians in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s stated goal is to destroy Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that governed Gaza before the war and invaded southern Israel a little over a year ago, killing 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostages. Hamas still holds approximately 100, but the number still alive is unknown.
Families of the hostages have led large anti-Netanyahu protests in Israel. They charge, rightly, that the Prime Minister ignores the hostages, leaving them to die while he wages an all-out war on Gaza—a war Netanyahu recently extended to Southern Lebanon against another Muslim militant group, Hezbollah, which is also one of that country’s major political parties.
Leading the opposition to Sanders’s moves, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Ben Cardin, D-Md., read Biden’s statement against the aid cutoff. “This [aid cutoff] will only prolong the war and put Israel at greater risk from its enemies,” that statement, read by Cardin, said.
And Cardin later said “JDAMS makes the bombing more precise,” disregarding that smart bombs, as well as dumb ones, kill civilians, not Hamas fighters.
Verifying the attitude for Israeli arms aid from the incoming Republican Donald Trump administration, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a strident supporter of Netanyahu, voted against Sanders and for the arms aid, technical aid, and the smart bombs, every time. Trump has nominated Rubio to be his Secretary of State.
Two factors were left unsaid in the Israeli aid debate. One is that U.S. military contractors benefit from the arms sales to Israel. The other is the right-wing American Israel Political Affairs Committee still holds great sway among lawmakers due to its threats of electoral retribution against legislators who do not kowtow to its fealty to Netanyahu, in or out of power.
In American Jewish public opinion, J Street, the pro-peace, pro-negotiations, pro-democracy, and pro-two-state solution organization, now claims a popular majority. It campaigned for Sanders’s aid cutoffs.
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