I’d meant to thank you for sharing this article but lost track of it - so belatedly, thank you.
No more US military aid to Israel
~ Bernie Sanders
I am a proud Jewish American. My father fled Poland in 1921 to escape poverty and antisemitism. Those in his family who stayed were murdered by the Nazis. Since childhood, I have known very well where antisemitism, racism, fanaticism and demagoguery lead.
So let me be clear. Speaking out against the horrific and inhumane actions of Israel, and its extremist leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is not antisemitic. Speaking out about the dangerous and destructive role that Israel plays in shaping US foreign and military policy is not antisemitic. It is, in fact, what every member of Congress and every American should be doing.
On 7 October 2023, Hamas, a terrorist organization, attacked Israel. They killed more than 1,200 innocent men, women and children and took hundreds of hostages. Like any other country, Israel had the absolute right to respond to the Hamas attack. But they did not have the right to violate international law and wage an all-out war of enormous destruction against the entire Palestinian people – in what experts have correctly concluded is a genocide.
They did not have the right, out of a population of 2.2 million, to kill more than 72,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wound over 170,000 - the majority of whom are women, children and the elderly. They did not have the right to destroy almost all of Gaza’s infrastructure, including its water and sewer systems and its supply of electricity.
They did not have the right to demolish every one of Gaza’s 12 universities, along with hundreds of schools – dismantling their entire educational system. They did not have the right to damage or destroy over 90% of the housing units in Gaza, resulting in the vast majority of the population now sleeping in tents.
They did not have the right to damage or destroy 94% of the hospitals in Gaza and kill 1,700 healthcare workers. They did not have the right to impose a blockade, which prevented food, water, fuel and medicine from entering Gaza – resulting in thousands of Palestinians being diagnosed with malnutrition and hundreds actually starving to death.
That carnage has not stopped. Despite the so-called “ceasefire”, humanitarian aid is still far below what is needed and Israel continues to kill civilians.
But it’s not just Gaza. In the West Bank, in direct violation of international law that protects Palestinian territory, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 1,071 Palestinians, including 233 children, since October 2023. During that period, they have demolished more than 6,000 Palestinian homes and established more than 200 new illegal settlements and outposts in Palestinian territory.
This is not just the action of extremist settlers. This is government policy. Netanyahu’s security cabinet has approved the most sweeping changes to the West Bank’s legal status since 1967 – removing nearly all constraints on settlement expansion. Netanyahu himself declared: “There will never be a Palestinian state.” His finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, bragged that new settlement construction would “bury” the idea of a Palestinian state.
Further, we now know that Netanyahu convinced Trump to start an unprovoked and unconstitutional war on Iran. This war, in violation of international law, has already resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians, including hundreds of children in Iran and Lebanon, 26 Israeli civilians and 13 American soldiers. All over the world, billions of innocent people are suffering the economic consequences of this war, with higher prices and scarcity of basic goods.
Given the horrific and illegal behavior of the Netanyahu government, the American people have had enough
But for Netanyahu, Gaza was not enough. Iran was not enough. He is now waging a full-blown war of expansion against Lebanon. That war has not only killed more than 2,000 people, but has resulted in Israel occupying 14% of Lebanese territory.
The Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, has announced that all Lebanese border villages will be demolished – his exact words – following the “model in Gaza”. Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, has warned that Dahiyeh, a suburb of south Beirut, “will look like Khan Younis” – a city in Gaza that Israel reduced to rubble.
These are not threats. They are promises.
Given the horrific and illegal behavior of the Netanyahu government over the last three years, the American people have had enough.
Support for Israel in this country has plummeted. Today, according to a recent Pew poll, 80% of Democrats now have an unfavorable opinion of Israel and 41% of Republicans share that view – and the numbers among young people are even higher. A recent Quinnipiac poll also found that 60% – including three-quarters of Democrats and two-thirds of independents – oppose the US sending arms to Israel.
That is why this Wednesday, I will be forcing the Senate to vote on two Joint Resolutions of Disapproval – the only formal mechanism Congress has to block an arms sale. The first would block the sale of $151.8m in 1,000-pound bombs.
The second would block $295m in bulldozers – the machines used to demolish homes in the West Bank and Gaza and make a Palestinian state physically impossible. These are not defensive weapons. They are the instruments of ethnic cleansing.
The time is long overdue for members of Congress to listen to the American people and end US military aid to the extremist Netanyahu government
I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting these resolutions.
