Sanders Files to Force First-Ever Vote in Congress on Blocking Weapons to Israel
Sanders Files to Force First-Ever Vote in Congress on Blocking Weapons to Israel
“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.
Bernie on the right side of history as usual.
He’s a fucking legend.
Don't you mean left(ish)?
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.
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.
You don't know what you're talking about
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.
For those who don’t know (there are probably a few) Bernie is Jewish, and his opinions better reflect the rest of us Jews than the crazies on the right (and left) and in Israel. I don’t have stats, but every American Jew I’ve talked to about this has been morally outraged and frankly mortified by Israel’s actions. We understand how it looks to the rest of the world. Don’t let the antisemitism arguments (usually pushed by Christians btw) fool you. Bernie is on the right side of this issue, as usual.
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."
Ever thus to ethno nationalism.
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
It’s the Christian zionists here in the US that support this genocide because they think it will help expedite the end of the world
For reference, see New Apostolic Reformation and Seven Mountains
Shit is beyond crazy and terrifying.
This makes sense, because this isn’t an Israeli or Jewish endeavor. It’s Benjamin Netanyahu desperately provoking a war to maintain his grip on power, because as soon as he’s out of power he will have to be held accountable for his many crimes. Bibi would rather die in office than face that. It’s truly regrettable that his actions have soured the entire world’s opinion on Israel, but here we are.
Netanyahu is to blame for making the situation worse, and for actively working against a ceasefire, but I think it’s important to point out that the majority of Israelis appear to support his actions in Gaza. It’s definitely an Israeli issue and a Netanyahu issue.
The state of Israel in its inception was colonisation, apartheid, massacre, white supremacy, and genocide. Netanyahu is certainly a monster. But look at the rest of his cabinet. Listen to an interview with Israeli citizens even before October 7th in the way they speak about Palestinians and Arabs.
Israel is thoroughly and consistently sick from beginning to end, top to bottom. It’s a depraved machine of terror that runs on the blood of innocent people.
Zionism has been a thing before bibi
his actions have soured the entire world’s opinion on Israel
Oh it began way before that...
I realize this is very sensitive issue and things have likely changed since april, but the last time I saw this polled Jewish Americans support Israel's response to Oct.7 about 62%, 33% oppose
Granted, since april and just off the top of my head, Israel has bombed a number of Gaza refugee camps, killed the Hamas negotiator, conducted two terror attacks against Lebanon, and now is talking about sending ground troops in across the border,.... so.... yea maybe things have changed
But im glad to have Sanders pushing for this though, I think it carries more weight coming from him.
The irony is that Israel's actions ultimately make Jews worldwide less safe.
The irony is that what they're doing is holocaust.
Bernie is Jewish,
So is Jon Stewart.
We coulda had the OG and instead they chose HRC. SMH
Fun fact: Sanders consistently out-performed Hillary in head-to-head matchups against Trump.
The same establishment that derailed Sanders and propped Hillary up were the same ones trying to force Biden down our throats while castigating any dissent.*
*I know the progressives supported Biden until the end, but this was purely a strategic reason where if anything, their calls for Biden to step aside might've had the opposite effect.
Excuse me, we had to go with the obvious choice that would win /s
I’m in tinfoil hat territory, but it’s logical that Hillary was promised the Sec State position and superdelegate support for conceding to Obama and not making it a convention fight. It explains why the r’s only attacked her for 8 years outside Obama, they knew they didn’t have to attack any other potential candidate.
Call your senators. Let them know you support restricting arms to israel
This is my senator!
Call him and tell him he's awesome!
Both of mine will tell me to go pound sand.
Hello, can you be Bernie sanders please?
Schumer: lol, lmao even.
:(
Sad we are cursed with such an absolute piece of shit senator as schumer.
Doesn't matter. The lovely Christians where I live would throw a fit because most of them want Israel to do even more damage.
literal death cult, they think killing enough Arabs and Israelis will bring the Apocalypse
Bernie is always on top of these things, and you have to respect him for that.
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.
Even though 80% of Democrats are for this kind of bill watch, the majority of Congress vote against it, including the Democrats.
Goes to show Republicans (more so of course) and Democrats represent their donors more than the ppl who vote for them
We don’t even exist to them.
Good, force them to vote on it so we can see who supports genocide.
If he's always on top of things, why is he doing this now and not sooner?
We love you Bernie!
Speak for yourself. I don't love nor idolize any politician.
yeah I don't understand why anyone would just comment "Mac loves and idolizes Bernie" unprompted. what a dingus
I wish that Bernie was my real dad.
How do you know he isn't?
Because, if he were, he would have stepped up and been a father. That's how Bernie rolls.
Are they going to call him an "anti-semite" too?
Already have, will continue to.
Yes, they will.
Many comedians have firmly cemented the stereotype of the self-hating Jew. Not that the pro-Israel crowd cares about there being any truth to their accusations.
Good Job Mr Sanders. This took a really long time.
This is still an action of the "we want to influence Israel, but keep them as our ally" kind.
That doesn't work. To make them listen, you must be willing to actually let them die. To drop them under the bus.
Same goes for Turkey, Russia, Pakistan.
Well, geopolitics make this a dangerous approach, but one should remember always than anything short of that readiness is not leverage.
So what they should be voting on is this AND dissolving the alliance. Of course one shouldn't make threats of clearly hostile action while still allied, this bites long-term.
Its pretty fucked up how law seems to mean less and less nowdays. to think there even needs to be such vote about america sending weapons to country breaking international laws and doing terrorist shit.
when exactly did you feel like international law meant something, and what events made you feel so? genuinely would like to know
Growing up in America there's definitely an initial feeling of "law and order" ruling many of America's past with interfering in other countries affairs, eventually you learn about the fucked up shit if you actually start looking though lol.
I remember I did a presentation in middle school about Operation Paperclip and most of the class thought I was making it up lol.
I thought it meant something, as they bothered to even pretend there is international law by having one in first place.
But it isn't even international law, these are domestic laws forbidding sending weapons to nations that interfere with US humanitarian aid that have been flouted repeatedly and with the barest semblance of an excuse made. I can see them not paying attention to UN "laws" but this isnt the same thing.
It's wild to me that Americans are suddenly playing moral police on this. America sells weapons to just about every dictatorship or oppressive government, to this day. Including Saudis, the ones who blew up the trade center. It seems hypocritical how hard Sanders and others are going, demanding the stop of weapons sales to just Israel. Why not the rest of the world?
Have to start somewhere, our military industrial complex isn't going to be stopped all at once. And the genociders are the most obvious evil at the moment.
SeCOnD aMEndMeNt!
It’s because the issue is popular/in the news a bunch
We're not the moral police. There are many Americans who are diehard pro-genocide. There are others that are implicitly pro-genocide. They just don't hang out on Lemmy. Also, our media is focused on Israel right now. Most Americans don't know what our military is doing elsewhere in the world and the media doesn't cover it. It's hard for a populist politician to take a stand against our military industrial complex when the population doesn't know what that Complex is doing. That industry fights back.
We could be at the end of Bernie's second term right now if Hillary hadn't staged a hostile takeover of the DNC during the primary.
trump would have been nothing more than a dated joke from TV reruns, Covid would have been handled appropriately, pretty much everyone would be measurably better off.
Dont forget what the moderate branch stole from us, they're still the ones running shit. That's not just an expression, literally the same people from back then are still running the DNC and in the current administration, they're literally still the ones running shit.
Part of the recipe for far right fascists to rise to power requires liberals’ “compromise.”
Liberals are just pro-Oligarchy - they think Money should be above the one power which is led by elected leaders: the State - which is against Democracy just like the Fascists, just with a different and more subtle mechanism determining those whose power is above the power of the vote.
They're just a different kind of Far-Right from the Fascists, which is why it is so easy for them to support Zionists - which are ethno-Fascists, the same sub-type of Fascism as the Nazis - even while they commit a Genocide.
People with even the slightest shred of Equalitarian values wouldn't ever support those commiting ethnic cleansing.
Oh yes, timeline 4861707079. I do enjoy that one, shame about the gazelles going extinct though.
The reason HRC won the primary is that she got 17 million votes and Sanders only got 13 million.
....because the media and DNC conspired to make Bernie look like he was a crazy person who had no chance (basically the opposite of what they do for Trump). They used classic "tail wagging the dog" tactics to gaslight the left, downplay Bernie's support, and coronate Hillary.
If they hadn't been actively sabatoging him the entire fucking time he had an excellent chance.
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.
Yeah, this is an absolute shame. He tried doing something similar shortly after the genocide had started, but everyone else currently in power just shut him down almost unanimously.
If politics and getting into power wasn't 90% based on your wealth and connections, maybe US could have more people like Bernie trying to actually do good rather than trying to enrich or empower themselves.
If they’re forced to vote on it, at least we’ll know which politicians have a spine and which have a padded wallet.
Just imagine: we could’ve had this guy as president for the last 4-8 years…
File that one behind the what-if of a Gore Presidency. We keep missing the alternate timelines we should have taken. Here's hoping we don't screw up once again.
Imagine a back-to-back two term each Gore then Bernie presidency. We'd be living in a utopia, and I'm not even American
I'm glad he's giving me a chance to have yet another demonstration of how shitty our country is. Can't wait to see this fail miserably and anyone who votes for it lose their re-election.
inb4 AIPAC makes a hit list of everyone who votes for this
He knows it won't pass, the article says it too. That's not the point.
Yes, I know it won't pass, too. I just hate being constantly reminded that this country is ruled by violent idiots.
Israel-fetishizing politicians and media: Hey! That's antisem- Oh wait... Shit.
Billions of dollars and weapons to Urkaine! Yes!
Billions of dollars and weapons to Israel! NO!!!
LOL
One of these things is not like the others...
Nuance. Try it.
Ukraine is not doing genocide