United States Senator Bernie Sanders has promised to advance a resolution to block bombs and bulldozers to Israel, testing support for the US ally in Congress amid the war with Iran. Sanders said on Monday that he will “force the vote” on the measure later this week – a legislative process of bringing a bill to the floor of the Senate without the approval of the majority leader. The resolution is unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled Senate, but it will gauge the level of support Israel has among Democrats, who have been increasingly angry over the US-Israel war on Iran and the ongoing atrocities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Sanders put forward a similar bill in July of last year, but it failed in a 27-70 vote. Still, Palestinian rights advocates said at the time that the tally reflected an erosion in the pro-Israel bipartisan consensus in Washington. A majority of Senate Democrats backed the 2025 resolution.
Since then, US public support for Israel has continued to nosedive, according to polls, especially among young people and Democrats. A Gallup poll in February suggested that only 46 per cent of Americans have favourable views of Israel. Only 17 percent of Democratic respondents said they sympathise more with Israelis than Palestinians.
The US provided Israel with more than $21bn in military aid in the first two years of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The abuses in Gaza and the war on Iran, which saw US President Donald Trump join forces with Israel to start the conflict without congressional authorisation, have intensified scepticism of the unconditional support for Israel in the US. On Monday, J Street – a prominent liberal Zionist group that describes itself as pro-Israel and pro-peace – called for the first time for phasing out US aid to the Israeli military.
J Street also urged applying US laws, which restrict security assistance to foreign countries over rights abuses, consistently to Israel. Rights advocates say successive US administrations have breached the law and overlooked Israeli violations to ensure a continuous flow of weapons to Israel.
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