Vermont Business Magazine Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) announced Tuesday evening his intention to immediately force votes to block offensive arms sales to Israel in light of the daily civilian massacres and unfolding famine created by the Netanyahu government’s policies.
Wednesday, the Senate will vote on:
- S.J.Res.34 – To prohibit the U.S.-taxpayer financed $675.7 million sale of 201 MK 83 1,000-pound bombs; 4,799 BLU-110A/B General Purpose 1,000-pound bombs; 1,500 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits for MK 83 bombs; 3,500 JDAM guidance kits for MK 83 bombs; and related logistics and technical support services.
- S.J.Res.41 – To prohibit the sale of tens of thousands of fully automatic assault rifles.
Sanders said: “U.S. taxpayers have spent tens of billions of dollars in support of the racist, extremist Netanyahu government. Enough is enough. We cannot continue to spend taxpayer money on a government which has killed some 60,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 143,000 — most of whom are women, children and the elderly. We cannot continue supporting a government which has blocked humanitarian aid, caused massive famine and literally starved the people of Gaza.”
In the last two weeks, dozens of young children have died from starvation. Doctors say it will soon be too late to stop a wave of famine-related deaths in Gaza. Children’s bodies are eating themselves from within, their organs are shutting down. This is the direct result of Netanyahu’s policies.
Israel’s six-week blockade and subsequent replacement of the established United Nations distribution system with the untested Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has turned aid sites into civilian killing fields. In the last two months, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been shot while trying to get food aid, mostly at GHF sites. These near-daily massacres have seen Israeli soldiers repeatedly fire into unarmed crowds, testimony confirmed by American contractors.
“The time is long overdue for Congress to use the leverage we have — tens of billions in arms and military aid — to demand that Israel end these atrocities,” Sanders continued.
The arms sales in question clearly violate the criteria laid out in the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act. Reliable human rights monitors have documented numerous incidents involving the use of 1,000-pound bombs and JDAMs in illegal strikes leading to unacceptable civilian death tolls. These include strikes in which hundreds of civilians have been killed and strikes on humanitarian facilities, including UN schools. The rifles in question will go to arm a police force overseen by Itamar Ben-Gvir, who advocates for the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from the region, who has been convicted of support for terrorism by an Israeli court, and who has distributed weapons to violent settlers in the West Bank. Israeli security forces and settler extremists have killed thousands of Palestinians and six Americans in the West Bank in recent years, including earlier this month. No one has been held accountable for these deaths.
At a time when Israeli soldiers are shooting civilians trying to get food aid on a near-daily basis, extremist settlers are pushing Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank, and Gaza is witnessing mass starvation as a result of Israeli government policy, the United States should not be providing more weapons to enable these atrocities.
“The Israeli-inflicted starvation of Palestinians in Gaza must end. This bombing campaign, which has killed and wounded tens of thousands of people and destroyed Gaza, must end. We cannot continue to be complicit. History will judge us for not standing up against this humanitarian catastrophe and these war crimes,” said Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont), who cosponsored the Joint Resolutions of Disapproval. “The United States needs to say: Enough.”
On Tuesday, Senator Welch spoke on the Senate floor about the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and the need for the United States Senate to take immediate action. He condemned Hamas, pushed for a ceasefire, and demanded the release of the remaining hostages. Senator Welch also rejected the Netanyahu government’s illegal use of starvation as a weapon of war.
“We all condemn Hamas. We all want the release of the remaining hostages. But we have to ask ourselves the question: is it at all justifiable that there is a policy that has to be recognized that starvation is being used as a tool of warfare? I reject the legitimacy of that act. It's a war crime, Mr. President. It's a war crime to starve a population to get what you want from your enemy, as righteous as your defense against an enemy may be,” Senator Welch said in his remarks... “We cannot separate the current starvation in Gaza from the Netanyahu government’s strategy of forcibly displacing Palestinians from their land.”
WASHINGTON, July 29 – Sen. Bernie Sanders
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