“There is a mountain of documentary evidence” that Israel uses US weapons to violate the law, Sanders said.
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.
It's easy to rage against the machine on a moral pedestal. It's harder to actually steer the machine in the right direction.
To be clear, I am supportive of putting things to a vote even if there's no chance it succeeds. Get the votes on record. I think that's an important archive that can be used later in election season to hold politicians accountable for their votes.
I like what Bernie and AOC are doing when they push for these kinds of votes.
But make no mistake. They can only do this from a position of being unable to effect any change. Under normal conditions, moves like this poison the well and make others on both sides less willing to work with you.
They have the luxury of grandstanding specifically because they have zero hope of garnering support.
Someone like a president can't really do something like this without completely burning their political capital.
That poll is about opinions on the US's role, and says nothing about Israel.
It's an absolutely bonkers result considering the US's decades of destabilizing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets in other countries like Yemen and Syria, alliance/support of terrorist states like Saudi Arabia and Israel, and imperial/extractive attitude that has been the primary force destabilizing the region in my lifetime.
The idea that ANYONE can look at the middle east and have a positive view of America's role is disgusting. America's disastrous 21st century foreign policy is the primary reason that the entire world has become so destabilized. America is a terrorist state and the US military machine is the single biggest threat to human survival. Stopping the US at all costs is the most important thing that we can do to protect the biological experiment of the current ecosystem upon which we depend.
The only reason I am considering voting for Trump in the fall (compared to the handful of reasons why I am considering Harris) is that four more years of chaos may finally destroy the American War Machine and the disaster that is American foreign policy.
Four more years of Trump directly puts my life in danger, but if it leads to this country self-destructing I'm personally willing to make that sacrifice. Anything to cripple our criminal war machine. What good are our rights and liberties if the depend on a war machine that is willing to risk the habitability of our planet? If America collapses, with it will fall the major fuel of the arms race. If the leopards have to eat my face for my country to finally get put in its place, I'll proudly try to pet the kitty.
Ideally, I want America to be a functional democracy that respects and promotes civil rights and liberties around the globe. I have never had the option to vote for such an America. In my lifetime I have never seen America take actions that imply that these are the values of our government. The options are to vote for the competent criminal who will directly and purposefully undermine the habitability of our planet, or the incompetent one who may cause more damage in the short-term due to his bumbling but may be better in the long run by removing America's destructive influence on the world's stage as we turn inwards to fight a civil war. Maybe a civil war will cause us to reassert what we claim are our values, and I'll finally live in a country I can respect,
I'm pretty genuinely torn in this election, because I'm willing to sacrifice my personal safety for what I see as a net positive in the world in the long run. I'd rather be hopeful that we have a path to fix America. I'd rather be hopeful that America could be a country that promotes democracy and civil liberties. America as it stands is not a democracy, and we have no liberty. America is dead. Do we keep voting for the parasites, or do we vote for the incinerator to protect others?
That poll is about opinions on the US's role, and says nothing about Israel.
It's a poll about the US role in the ME w.r.t. Israel, the rest of the poll's questions were also about Israel, this was just the question that I figured best represents how people feel about Biden's handling of it so far.
The only reason I am considering voting for Trump in the fall (compared to the handful of reasons why I am considering Harris) is that four more years of chaos may finally destroy the American War Machine and the disaster that is American foreign policy.
Are you sure about that? Last time Trump was president we got Russia gearing up for an invasion of Ukraine and China posturing regarding an invasion of Taiwan as well. Neither of these conflicts have been or would be beneficial to humanity as a whole. It's destroyed the ecosystem in Ukraine for example.
And suppose Trump does turn isolationist instead of going to war with Iran like he's been trying to do. Do you think the resulting power vacuum will lead American voters to believe that going isolationist was beneficial? We saw the opposite in 2020 happen, where people wanted the US to return to the world stage by electing Biden.
Ideally, I want America to be a functional democracy that respects and promotes civil rights and liberties around the globe. [...] Maybe a civil war will cause us to reassert what we claim are our values, and I'll finally live in a country I can respect,
Have you considered that you might end up on the losing side? Republicans have always been war hawks. Them fully cementing their power through Trump could very well lead to an even more active US war machine. Trump won't be around forever, he's old and these days the target of assassination attempts.
Accelerationism has been tried in the past. It has never ended well. I urge you to really reflect on what it truly means if your envisioned scenario were to happen. I urge you to reflect on the many, many things that have to happen in order to end up somewhere better. And please, consider what happens if you're wrong about what electing Trump will lead to.
I live in a country that's been under the yolk of another whose population thought like you do, that maybe making things worse will make things better. It led to the worst environmental disaster we've ever known, caused the deaths of millions and led to the birth of the US war machine. The scars are still visible today.
I sympathize with you though. The US is in a shit place electorally speaking. Organizing for electoral reform is probably the best shot at fixing things, but that takes incredible time, effort and money to get through. I can see why that feels hopeless. But personally, I find it a more honorable cause. Endangering yourself and many others is in my opinion deeply irresponsible.
Yes and Harris complicity in continuing the genocide in Gaza, the ethnic cleansing in the Westbank and now the invasion of Lebanon will be the greatest risk for her election. But they would rather hand over the US to Trump on a silver plate, than to stop killing Arabs.
Hot take: Global geopolitics within the current rules as we understand it don't allow for countries to genuinely respect each other as equals. Might will always be right on the global stage regardless of whether it should be that way. So when it comes to picking a global hegemon, the United States is really not a terrible choice compared with the alternatives.
Ukraine is not, objectively could not qualify before 2014 when it became good for the US war machine for them to qualify, and most importantly, NATO should've disbanded in 1991 when the sole reason for its existence fell.
Yeah, our country is shitty. I get the main reason the US joined the allies had more to do with politics then ideology. But least some kind of good comes from the US backing ukraine.
Also just a little slow to come around to reality like always.
Edit... Down vote all you want I'm still a big Bernie fan but the whole US government has been on the wrong side of this war from the beginning. We treat Palestinian lives just like black and brown lives at home like they didn't matter.
Lastly Hamas is not Palestinian I can support Palestinians and condemn Hamas.
He was criticizing the response since the beginning?
Frankly I was initially supporting them, as I am against Hamas but Israel lost the objective, didn't destroy Hamas and didn't get hostages out. So what was all that for?
And doing so in a way that is going to accomplish almost nothing while antagonizing and alienating the people who would let him otherwise get positive legislature passed.