“The tide is popping,” says Bernie Sanders. “The American folks don’t wish to spend billions to starve youngsters in Gaza.”
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Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT makes his strategy to a vote on the US Capitol on July 17, 2025.
(Francis Chung / Politico through AP Pictures)
In the summertime of 2024, Democratic Social gathering leaders refused to let even a single Palestinian American speaker deal with their presidential conference about Israel’s horrific assault on Gaza. However virtually precisely a 12 months later, a strong majority of Democratic members of the US Senate has voted to dam arms shipments to Israel in response to an “all-out, unlawful, immoral and horrific struggle of annihilation towards the Palestinian folks” that Senator Bernie Sanders informed the chamber is being waged by the federal government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sanders has tried to dam arms shipments earlier than. However up to now, he’s gotten solely a handful of his colleagues to affix his effort. This week, the Vermont impartial had the assist of 26 different members of the Senate Democratic Caucus. They didn’t win their battle to stop a Republican-controlled Senate from authorizing one other $675 million in weapons gross sales to Israel. However they did transfer the Democratic Social gathering slightly additional towards the correct facet of historical past, confirming that the relentless campaigning from college students on campuses throughout the nation, in addition to activism by teams comparable to Jewish Voice for Peace, the Arab American Institute, the If Not Now Motion, the American Associates Service Committee, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and so many others, is having an influence.
Present Situation
“The tide is popping,” stated Sandersafter the vote on Wednesday. “The American folks don’t wish to spend billions to starve youngsters in Gaza.”
In truth, the American folks have been opposed for a very long time to the Israeli assault on Gaza, which Amnesty Worldwide, Medical doctors With out Borders (Medical doctors With out Borders)the Israeli human rights group B’stselemand Physicians for Human Rights-Israel have all recognized as genocidal. Whereas People are nicely conscious of the small print of the October 7, 2023, assault by Hamas, they’ve additionally lengthy since acknowledged that Israel’s ensuing destruction of Gaza—which has left greater than 60,000 Palestiniansmost of them ladies and kids, useless, and is now resulting in mass hunger—is indefensible.
Within the newest Gallup ballot, greater than 60 p.c of People now disapprove of the Netanyahu authorities’s ongoing assault on Gaza, whereas solely 30 p.c are supportive—the bottom stage of pro-Israel sentiment since Gallup started asking in regards to the subject. Extra importantly, there’s an consciousness that the Trump administration’s assist for Netanyahu has made this nation complicit in insurance policies and actions which have left Gazans with out the meals they should survive.
“(It) is totally a violation of worldwide regulation to ban meals from stepping into ravenous folks, and america is complicit on this,” says Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). “I imply, america is now spending $30 million to fund this non-public group supported by non-public mercenary contractors, as an alternative of permitting the worldwide help, humanitarian organizations to offer meals into Gaza. It’s completely sickening that america authorities is complicit in what’s taking place.”
Common
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Trump and his administration have been and proceed to be morally, virtually, and politically within the improper. The query is whether or not Democrats, who’re speculated to be the opposition occasion, shall be in the correct. They weren’t in 2024, on the conference or through the ensuing presidential marketing campaign, and that price them politically.
Sanders has been a longtime, but usually lonely, advocate, for strikes to dam army help to Israel. He sees progress in the truth that 27 senators have rejected complicity—usually in blunt phrases, as when Vermont Democratic Senator Peter Welch stated Wednesday“The mass hunger in Gaza is attributable to weapons offered by America and paid for by US taxpayers,” and when Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley declared“Not one other greenback. Not one other bomb.”
The Senate Democratic Caucus members who joined Sanders, Van Hollen, Welch, and Merkley in voting to cease the arms shipments included Maine impartial Angus King, who stated“I had simply had it. I saved anticipating that Israel would get up and notice what an terrible factor they had been perpetuating, and that certainly they might at the least open up humanitarian help. They only continued to not do it, and I simply reached the purpose the place sufficient was sufficient.”
Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, the rating Democrat on the Senate Armed Providers Committee, additionally supported the Sanders decision, as did New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the rating member of the Senate Overseas Relations Committee. However Senate minority chief Chuck Schumer (D-Y) continued to again the arms shipments, as did 18 different Democrats and all of the Republicans who participated within the vote.
(Right here’s a hyperlink to a full breakdown of the 27–70 vote. And right here is a hyperlink to a 24–73 vote on a second decision by Sanders, which might have blocked the sale of absolutely automated assault rifles to the Israeli army. )
So there’s progress to report. However within the face of a worldwide outcry over hunger in Gaza, it’s not sufficient, on the Democratic facet—or within the full Senate.
“Whereas a majority of Democrats voting to dam army help to Israel is actual progress, it’s nonetheless shameful {that a} majority of the Senate voted towards,” explains veteran overseas coverage observer and advocate Matt Duss. “If the physique precisely represented People’ views on Gaza the resolutions ought to’ve handed simply.”
John Nichols
John Nichols is a nationwide affairs correspondent for The Nation. He has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on subjects starting from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Social gathering to analyses of US and international media techniques. His newest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Instances bestseller It is OK to Be Offended About Capitalism.
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