When Sen. Bernie Sanders routinely takes to the Senate floor to demand an end to American military support for the State of Israel, it is usually dismissed as the predictable grandstanding of the progressive fringe. But the recent Senate vote on his Joint Resolutions of Disapproval may indicate that Sanders is no longer on the fringe. He may now be driving the agenda.
While his effort last week to block hundreds of millions of dollars in critical arms sales to Jerusalem thankfully failed, the final tally should send a chill down the spine of everyone who values national security and the value of Israel to it. Over 80% of the Senate Democratic caucus voted to abandon our closest Middle Eastern ally in the middle of a multi-front war.
Nor was this symbolic protest vote: It was a profound, historic capitulation to the radical, anti-Zionist wing of the Democratic Party.
At this exact moment of maximum peril for Israel, Sanders and 40 Democratic senators attempted to cut off the supply of critical 1,000-pound precision munitions and D9 armored bulldozers which are specifically utilized by the IDF to clear roads of deeply buried IEDs and booby traps, minimizing casualties for Israeli soldiers and local civilians as well.
Stripping a democratic ally of the very tools required to dismantle terrorist infrastructure is not a “pro-peace” position. It is a policy that actively ensures a high death toll and provides a massive tactical advantage to Hezbollah and Hamas.
We can be thankful that a Republican majority, joined by a mere seven Democrats who refused to bow to the activist mob, stood firm and defeated the Sanders resolutions. But the sheer volume of the Democratic defection cannot be ignored. The Democratic Party has now officially allowed its foreign policy to be dictated by its most extreme, anti-Israel elements. It is a dangerous, shameful shift that actively emboldens our enemies and betrays our greatest friend.