A proposal by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to link military assistance to Israel with the Israeli government’s adherence to human rights and international conventions in the Gaza war was rejected by the Senate on Tuesday by a vote of 72 to 11. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) joined Sanders and nine Democrats who supported the measure.
Sanders wanted to freeze all US security aid to Israel pending a State Department report to be issued in 30 days, examining whether Israel committed human rights violations in the Gaza Strip.
“This is a tragedy in which we, the United States of America, are complicit,” Sanders said on the Senate floor, and pointed out that “Much of what is happening, much of the bombardment and the other actions we are seeing now is happening right now with US arms and equipment.”
In October, President Biden sought an extensive emergency national security funding package, seeking approximately $14 billion to support Israel’s war efforts. However, discussions on this proposal have predominantly centered around the substantially larger amount designated for Ukraine, which some Republicans are against, while others condition enhanced aid to Israel on stricter immigration rules at the US border with Mexico. So far, the negotiations rage on.
Democratic senators Jeff Merkley (Oregon) and Chris Van Hollen (Maryland) last week visited the Rafah border crossing in Egypt, which serves as a key entry point for numerous aid trucks heading into the Gaza Strip. Van Hollen told The New Yorker (How Israel’s Inspection Process Is Obstructing Aid Delivery): “We found a humanitarian crisis that was bad and getting worse, and we made observations on why that was the case and what we could be doing to improve the situation.”
“It’s getting worse in terms of the level of hunger, and that is the result of people who’ve been denied access to the food they need for too long, and are not getting adequate levels of humanitarian supplies, as well as a dramatic reduction—it went down to zero in early December—of commercial trucks going through the crossings, and of course those trucks used to supply goods to the people of Gaza,” the senator elaborated.
Van Hollen presumably represented the view of the nine Democrats who voted for Sanders’ measure when he explained:
“I think that President Biden’s strategy was to show the people of Israel that the United States stood firmly with them in the aftermath of the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7th, and I strongly supported the President in doing that. I think the Administration hoped that by providing that warm embrace, the United States would have more influence in terms of how Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition conducted the war. But clearly, they’ve not succeeded in having much of an impact. I don’t deny they’ve made some marginal gains on the edges, but the overall results show that Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition are essentially rebuffing the United States on almost every front.”
He then repeated the progressive mantras that require no proof, as religious doctrine rarely does:
“I do believe that given this very right-wing government in Israel headed by Netanyahu and including people like Smotrich, the United States has to do much more to uphold our values as part of that relationship. And that means doing a better job of holding this Netanyahu coalition accountable—and future coalitions. There’s been a long history of expanding settlements, expanding outposts, but under this very right-wing coalition, we’ve seen a spike in that, and we’ve also seen a spike in settler violence on the West Bank.
“Not that there weren’t very big problems on the West Bank before October 7th. I spoke out about them. I’ve been trying to draw people’s attention to them. But, since October 7th, you’ve seen an even greater rise in settler violence and incidents literally every day. So the bottom line is I think we need to do more to hold this Netanyahu government accountable and take other steps that are necessary.”
Over the past few weeks, more than a dozen Senate Democrats, predominantly from the party’s left wing, have endorsed different proposals aiming to restrict or impose conditions on security assistance to Israel. But we can expect things to remain as they are in the Senate until the November elections, which isn’t so bad, as long as the House remains in Republican hands.
But no matter the outcome in November, progressive Democrats will never let go of the “settler violence” principle of their faith.
