Washington (Quds News Network)- The US Senate will vote on Wednesday on bills to block a $20bn arms deal with Israel, after a year in which the Biden administration has supplied billions of dollars of arms used in Israel’s genocide war on Gaza.
In September, Senator Bernie Sanders – a progressive independent who caucuses with the Democrats – introduced the measures, known as Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs), and announced on November 13 that he will bring them to the Senate floor for a vote this week.
Among the weapons to be approved are 120mm tank rounds, high explosive mortar rounds, F-15IA fighter aircraft, and joint direct attack munitions, known as JDAMs, which are precision systems for otherwise indiscriminate or “dumb” bombs.
Separate resolutions are being brought forward for each weapon type, including its cost to US taxpayers. However, together, the initiative is known as JRDs.
Congress, as the nation’s purse, regulates the sale and export of weapons through the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act. By law, it cannot transfer weapons to governments or entities committing human rights violations.
The disapproval resolutions are being led by Sanders and Peter Welch of Vermont, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Brian Schatz of Hawaii.
Who is Bernie Sanders?
Bernie Sanders is an American politician who has served as a U.S. Senator from Vermont since 2007. Born in Brooklyn in 1941, he began his political career as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont in the 1980s and later served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991 to 2007.
Known for his progressive politics and self-description as a democratic socialist, Sanders gained widespread national attention during his campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, where he advocated for policies like Medicare for All, free public college tuition, raising the minimum wage, and addressing income inequality.
Though he ultimately lost both nomination races to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden respectively, his campaigns significantly influenced Democratic Party politics and helped popularize democratic socialist ideas among younger Americans.
“As horrific as the situation in Gaza has been over the past year, it is getting unimaginably worse,” Sanders wrote in an opinion article for The Washington Post on Monday, urging his colleagues to approve the JRDs this week.
“I have met with doctors who have served in Gaza, treating hundreds of patients a day without electricity, anesthesia or clean water, including dozens of children arriving with gunshot wounds to the head.”
“I’ve seen the photographs and the videos. Unicef estimates that 10 children lose a leg in Gaza every day. There are more than 17,000 orphans.”
And that, he said, is “unspeakable and immoral”.
“We are complicit in these horrific and illegal atrocities. Our complicity must end,” he stressed.
More than 110 advocacy organizations, including Amnesty International USA, the Arab American Institute and Human Rights Watch, have issued a joint statement endorsing the JRDs.
“The joint resolutions of disapproval would suspend particular transfers of types of weapons that the Israeli government has used in strikes that have killed thousands of civilians, including aid workers and journalists, in Gaza over the last year,” the groups said in the statement.
Israel’s US-backed war on Gaza has killed more than 43,800 Palestinians and brought the enclave on the brink of famine.
The US has spent a record $17.9bn on military aid to Israel since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023, according to an October report for Brown University’s Costs of War project.
Israel is the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid in history, getting $251.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959, the report said.
Even so, the $17.9 billion spent since October 2023 is by far the most military aid sent to Israel in one year.
The U.S. committed to providing billions in military assistance to Israel and Egypt each year when they signed their 1979 U.S.-brokered peace treaty, an agreement since the Obama administration set the annual amount for Israel at $3.8 billion through 2028.
The U.S. aid since the Gaza war started includes military financing, arms sales, at least $4.4 billion in drawdowns from U.S. stockpiles and hand-me-downs of used equipment.
Source: qudsnen
