On Wednesday, Sanders introduced six resolutions blocking six sales of different weapons contained within the $20 billion weapons deal announced by the Biden administration in August. The sales include many of the types of weapons that Israel has used in its relentless campaign of extermination in Gaza over the past year.
“Sending more weapons is not only immoral, it is also illegal. The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Arms Export Control Act lay out clear requirements for the use of American weaponry – Israel has egregiously violated those rules,” said Sanders. “There is a mountain of documentary evidence demonstrating that these weapons are being used in violation of U.S. and international law.”
This will be the first time in history that Congress has ever voted on legislation to block a weapons sale to Israel, as the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project pointed out. This is despite the U.S. having sent Israel over $250 billion in military assistance in recent decades, according to analyst Stephen Semler, as Israel has carried out ethnic cleansings and massacres across Palestine and in Lebanon.
The resolutions are not likely to pass; even if they did pass the heavily pro-Israel Congress, they would likely be vetoed by President Joe Biden, who has been insistent on sending weapons to Israel with no strings attached.
However, Sanders’s move is in line with public opinion. Polls have consistently found that the majority of the public supports an end to Israel’s genocide; a poll by the Institute for Global Affairs released this week found, for instance, that a majority of Americans think the U.S. should stop supporting Israel or make support contingent on Israeli officials’ agreement to a ceasefire deal. This includes nearly 80 percent of Democrats.
Fellow American Jew here. Very much agreed. Israel doesn’t represent us, even if it tries to say it does.
Texan Jew here. I’m surrounded by a sea of monsters.
I’ve made documentaries, art projects, and memorials for family members who were in the Holocaust. A few survived (literally, like, 3 of them), but multitudes more were killed. My family and community has praised me for my passionate interest and attempts to teach younger generations the dangers of complacency and compartmentalizing. One of my relatives even helped pass a law adding Holocaust Remembrance Week as part of the curriculum for every grade level in Texas.
We’ve seen this kind of destruction before, we’ve lived this oppression and violence before. We have discussed how our family might have changed had over 90% of them not been killed.
HOW THE FUCK IS MY FAMILY AND COMMUNITY OKAY WITH ANOTHER GENOCIDE???
The self-delusion, what-abouts, stereotypes, and straight-up racist insults.
“They’d kill us if given the opportunity”
YOU’RE ALREADY KILLING THEM
“These are really bad, violent people”
THEY ARE CHILDREN AND CIVILIANS AND THEY ARE DYING
“It’s not comparable to the Holocaust. Germany killed 6 million…”
THAT’S YOUR FUCKING CUTOFF???
WE GOTTA WAIT FOR 6 MILLION PEOPLE TO DIE BEFORE WE CAN EMPATHIZE WITH VICTIMS OF GENOCIDE??? Where was this sense of calm and nonchalance when Nazis were posting propaganda around town? How many of your kids need to be dismembered and vaporized before you say “this is more than upsetting, this is WRONG”??!
I swear, I’m probably less than a month away from hearing someone I once respected say “the Palestinian cries out in pain as they hit you.”
Omfg I feel you so hard on this with a few people, but am fortunate to not be in Texas.
“Never again,” my ass. Those types of people mean only “never again for me and mine.” Genocide is genocide is genocide, regardless of whether we’re the victim or not.
Israel learned the wrong lesson from the Holocaust. They decided that the next time somebody gets stepped on, they’re going to be the boot, not the bug.
There are always amoral opportunists. Unfortunately, they are pulling the strings in Israel right now.
If good people don’t vote in the US in November, we will be no better.
There are fewer than 6 million people in all of Palestine. If that’s their cutoff, they can eradicate everyone and “it still wouldn’t be as bad.” That’s probably their thought process.
It wasn’t OK when the Egyptians and Germans did it to the Jews, and it’s not OK when the Jews are doing it to others too.
Thank you for sharing your experience.
Well there’s your problem
Beau of the fifth column (now it’s Belle on cam) is from the south and quite the interesting critter.
I don’t discount there being good people in Texas or elsewhere in the south, I just know there are a whole lot of bad people as well, who tend to be more likely to hold political power.
If you like hip-hop, listen to Anne Braden by Flobots
Another American Jew chiming in. Israel has never represented me. I’m from Indiana. I have far more in common with a Palestinian-American from Tuscon, Arizona than I do any Jew in Haifa.
no, you MUST identify with the vision of a Jewish ethnostate, it is after all supposed to be your ethnostate… you know, the one whose existence is, for a lot of people, literally justified by the 14 words (but replace white with Jewish)? /s.
i sorta inferred this about american jews because doesn’t israel give economic incentives to jewish people moving to israel? so the fact that you don’t live in israel says something
And within israel as well.