By Dave DeCamp.
The Senate on Tuesday night voted down a resolution introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that would have frozen US military aid to Israel if the State Department failed to produce a report on whether Israel was committing human rights violations in Gaza.
Under the resolution, which invokes the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, aid would have also been frozen if human rights violations were found. The legislation failed in a vote of 72-11, with one Republican, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), nine Democrats, and Sanders supporting the oversight of Israel’s mass killing of Palestinians with US weapons.
“It should not be controversial to ask how US weapons are used,” Sanders wrote on X before the vote. “We should all want this information. If you believe the war has been indiscriminate, as I do, then we must ask this question. If you believe Israel has done nothing wrong, then this information should support that belief.”
During a speech on the Senate floor last week, Sanders said that due to the “scale of the destruction, and the extensive use of US arms in this campaign, including thousands of massive 2,000-pound bombs, Congress must act to conduct real oversight.”
The White House came out against the resolution ahead of the vote as it supports unconditional aid to Israel despite the massive civilian death toll in Gaza. “We do not believe that this resolution is the right vehicle to address these issues,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who has repeatedly shrugged off Israel’s killing of civilians.
Source: Antiwar.com
17 Jan 2024