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.
I couldn’t find much, but this poll seems to suggest the majority supports the US position on Israel. It’s surprisingly bipartisan.
Do you have another source maybe? This poll is from June, maybe you found something more recent?
That poll is about opinions on the US’s role, and says nothing about Israel.
It’s an absolutely bonkers result considering the US’s decades of destabilizing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets in other countries like Yemen and Syria, alliance/support of terrorist states like Saudi Arabia and Israel, and imperial/extractive attitude that has been the primary force destabilizing the region in my lifetime.
The idea that ANYONE can look at the middle east and have a positive view of America’s role is disgusting. America’s disastrous 21st century foreign policy is the primary reason that the entire world has become so destabilized. America is a terrorist state and the US military machine is the single biggest threat to human survival. Stopping the US at all costs is the most important thing that we can do to protect the biological experiment of the current ecosystem upon which we depend.
The only reason I am considering voting for Trump in the fall (compared to the handful of reasons why I am considering Harris) is that four more years of chaos may finally destroy the American War Machine and the disaster that is American foreign policy.
Four more years of Trump directly puts my life in danger, but if it leads to this country self-destructing I’m personally willing to make that sacrifice. Anything to cripple our criminal war machine. What good are our rights and liberties if the depend on a war machine that is willing to risk the habitability of our planet? If America collapses, with it will fall the major fuel of the arms race. If the leopards have to eat my face for my country to finally get put in its place, I’ll proudly try to pet the kitty.
Ideally, I want America to be a functional democracy that respects and promotes civil rights and liberties around the globe. I have never had the option to vote for such an America. In my lifetime I have never seen America take actions that imply that these are the values of our government. The options are to vote for the competent criminal who will directly and purposefully undermine the habitability of our planet, or the incompetent one who may cause more damage in the short-term due to his bumbling but may be better in the long run by removing America’s destructive influence on the world’s stage as we turn inwards to fight a civil war. Maybe a civil war will cause us to reassert what we claim are our values, and I’ll finally live in a country I can respect,
I’m pretty genuinely torn in this election, because I’m willing to sacrifice my personal safety for what I see as a net positive in the world in the long run. I’d rather be hopeful that we have a path to fix America. I’d rather be hopeful that America could be a country that promotes democracy and civil liberties. America as it stands is not a democracy, and we have no liberty. America is dead. Do we keep voting for the parasites, or do we vote for the incinerator to protect others?
That poll is about opinions on the US’s role, and says nothing about Israel.
It’s a poll about the US role in the ME w.r.t. Israel, the rest of the poll’s questions were also about Israel, this was just the question that I figured best represents how people feel about Biden’s handling of it so far.
The only reason I am considering voting for Trump in the fall (compared to the handful of reasons why I am considering Harris) is that four more years of chaos may finally destroy the American War Machine and the disaster that is American foreign policy.
Are you sure about that? Last time Trump was president we got Russia gearing up for an invasion of Ukraine and China posturing regarding an invasion of Taiwan as well. Neither of these conflicts have been or would be beneficial to humanity as a whole. It’s destroyed the ecosystem in Ukraine for example.
And suppose Trump does turn isolationist instead of going to war with Iran like he’s been trying to do. Do you think the resulting power vacuum will lead American voters to believe that going isolationist was beneficial? We saw the opposite in 2020 happen, where people wanted the US to return to the world stage by electing Biden.
Ideally, I want America to be a functional democracy that respects and promotes civil rights and liberties around the globe. […] Maybe a civil war will cause us to reassert what we claim are our values, and I’ll finally live in a country I can respect,
Have you considered that you might end up on the losing side? Republicans have always been war hawks. Them fully cementing their power through Trump could very well lead to an even more active US war machine. Trump won’t be around forever, he’s old and these days the target of assassination attempts.
Accelerationism has been tried in the past. It has never ended well. I urge you to really reflect on what it truly means if your envisioned scenario were to happen. I urge you to reflect on the many, many things that have to happen in order to end up somewhere better. And please, consider what happens if you’re wrong about what electing Trump will lead to.
I live in a country that’s been under the yolk of another whose population thought like you do, that maybe making things worse will make things better. It led to the worst environmental disaster we’ve ever known, caused the deaths of millions and led to the birth of the US war machine. The scars are still visible today.
I sympathize with you though. The US is in a shit place electorally speaking. Organizing for electoral reform is probably the best shot at fixing things, but that takes incredible time, effort and money to get through. I can see why that feels hopeless. But personally, I find it a more honorable cause. Endangering yourself and many others is in my opinion deeply irresponsible.
Have you considered that you might end up on the losing side?
If Harris wins, I’m on the losing side, as is anyone who cares about civil liberties or democracy. Voting for Harris is voting to lose with complacency and voting for a position of despair that lasts four more years.
If Trump wins, I have high confidence that I won’t survive the next four years, but at least I’ll be going down fighting, and at least there will be some hope that civil liberties and democracy can be restored in the process. Some hope of rebooting America and to create a nation that values democracy. This is a position of hope. I believe in the American people. We are strong. I would rather see those interested in democracy and human rights unite against the tyrannical government instead of acquiescing to tyranny with a rainbow flag on it.
I want to live in a democracy that promotes liberty. Voting one way has no chance of delivering this, but will be comfortable for me as I watch the destruction the planet. Voting the other way opens up a possibility for democracy to win, even if it’s slim. This position of hope is what I am interested in. I see no path to democracy or liberty through the democratic party. Harris is only promising to double down on W’s policies of American destruction.
Russia, China
I also strongly detest these authoritarian regimes. America’s military spending is orders of magnitude larger than theirs, and America is driving the arms race. Reducing the American military will reduce the need for arms for these countries.
Ukraine has only ever been part of the West when the Ashkenazi Jewish glue acting as transliterators were present in the country. Post nazism and post zionism, the people who could keep Ukraine in the west were removed. As long as the Jews are distracted by their genocidal aspirations instead of going home to defend against Russia, Ukraine is a lost cause.
China and Russia both have disastrous policies in central Asia. Ukraine and Taiwan are small fish. Central Asia is the most sensitive ecological and cultural target of Chinese and Russian interference. The US does not care to protect this region because there is no oil. If America were actually providing a challenge to China and Russia where it matters, I might view things differently. I’d love to see a plan to save the Aral sea and central-asian ethnic populations such as the Uyghurs.
But what if Trump and pals manage to stabilize their fascist state. You will never have another free election (Putin style instead of the propaganda of billionaires and theocrats). The whole world will be fucked and all on your coin toss.
It is for once too dangerous to leave to chance. You need to get Harris in, and Trump and the corrupt supreme justices in jail. THEN from the ground up build a new political party for the people and the planet.
The whole world is already fucked. Trump taking over will only fuck America faster and give the rest of the world a chance to not get fucked by America.
For your optimistic scenario, do we have the time for all of that? Does the middle east? Does the world? Is that even a possible outcome of all this? Or will it all just blow over and we’ll pretend like nothing happened (see four years of Biden) while Harris just doubles down on world annihilation? She’s promising to be a republican, I’m just taking her at her word.
You’re a weird American and i say that as a compliment. I hope there are more like you.
Please chose the lesser evil in November.
Thank you, and I plan to.
As I said, I have a handful of strong cases to vote for Harris. I also had this one dissenting voice in me that was screaming to get expressed so I could look back at what I said and analyze it. Thanks for analyzing it with me. Doing this in public and with input from others helps me vet my ideas. I don’t have a social network anymore to talk about these things with. So much social cohesion broke down during the Trump years, and it hasn’t grown back well at all.
We don’t live in a unified country, and we need to be willing to say that we are broken so we can fix ourselves.
That poll isn’t about any specific policy
Polls:
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In Pennsylvania, 34% of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if the nominee vowed to withhold weapons to Israel, compared to 7% who said they would be less likely. The rest said it would make no difference. In Arizona, 35% said they’d be more likely, while 5% would be less likely. And in Georgia, 39% said they’d be more likely, also compared to 5% who would be less likely.
- New Poll Suggests Gaza Ceasefire and Arms Embargo Would Help Dems with Swing State Voters (Full YouGov Report)
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Majorities of Democrats (67%) and Independents (55%) believe the US should either end support for Israel’s war effort or make that support conditional on a ceasefire. Only 8% of Democrats but 42% of Republicans think the US must support Israel unconditionally.
Republicans and Independents most often point to immigration as one of Biden’s top foreign policy failures. Democrats most often select the US response to the war in Gaza.
