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.
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?
Gaining more land, that is what it was for.
And so Netanyahu can avoid criminal prosecution.
Must be new to the long history of apartheid, genocidal, capitalist project that is "Israel"..
this guy has been saying this literally since the beginning
Incorrect, Sanders has been a Zionist for his career, it's been his one split with the american left wing.
what you said, even if were to be true, does not contradict what I said so your comment does not make any sense
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.
He’s a fucking legend.
Yugoslavia certainly doesn't think so.
I was curious as well, so I looked it up. Apparently he grudgingly supported the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, despite firmly opposing a similar action taken in 1995 with Croatia. He called the bombing borderline unconstitutional, but added that such an operation seemed necessary to prevent an ethnic cleansing.
Not sure I would agree with the previous commenter since Yugoslavia doesn't exist any more, so I doubt that a no longer in existence country has strong feelings about anything. I also believe the people would likely not want to reform a country that was created for them, especially since their actions in 1999 led to the country dissolving into two or three countries.
the intervention in the Yugoslavian war in 1999 was the only moral answer. it's like the trolley problem if the 5 people are replaced with several entire ethnic groups
https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/atmke0/bernie_sanders_supports_the_nato_bombing_of/