{"id":1455740,"date":"2024-01-20T10:27:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-20T10:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/01\/congress-sanders-israel-weapons-human-rights\/"},"modified":"2024-01-20T19:28:32","modified_gmt":"2024-01-20T19:28:32","slug":"congresss-israel-support-is-out-of-touch-with-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/01\/20\/congresss-israel-support-is-out-of-touch-with-voters\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress\u2019s Israel Support Is Out of Touch With Voters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Polling of US voters shows growing sympathy for Palestinians. But this week, the Senate couldn't even bring itself to pass a modest measure to investigate whether Israel is using US aid to violate human rights.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n Pro-Palestine protesters interrupt an October 31 Senate hearing where US secretary of defense Lloyd Austin and US secretary of state Antony Blinken were testifying. (Drew Angerer \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

In 2024, the United States of America is still a pro-Israel country, albeit one where a large and growing segment of the public sympathizes with the Palestinian cause \u2014 particularly young people, Democrats, and progressives.<\/p>\n

In the US Congress, meanwhile, support for Israel is near-lockstep and unconditional, and support for Palestinians is a minority position, almost to the point of being fringe.<\/p>\n

If you need convincing, just look at the latest Senate vote on Israel\u2019s nearly unprecedented<\/a> destruction of Gaza. Last month, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) put forward<\/a> a modest measure that would invoke an existing US law that requires the State Department to look into whether or not a country getting US aid is following the laws of war, and apply it to Israel. Sanders\u2019s measure finally came up for a vote earlier this week.<\/p>\n

The resolution wouldn\u2019t have cut US aid to Israel, though if the State Department had failed to put together a report in 30 days, the aid spigot would have automatically shut off. The most likely outcome would have been that the report was produced, at which point Congress would have voted on whether to continue sending more aid to Israel \u2014 a vote that, let\u2019s face it, probably would have gone Israel\u2019s way regardless of what the State Department determined about the country\u2019s military campaign.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the bill was nixed in the Senate by an overwhelming 72\u201311, with 17 senators abstaining. All but two who voted for the measure \u2014 Sanders himself, and Republican senator Rand Paul \u2014 were Democrats. Opponents like Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) charged that the bill \u201cwould show a division between Israel and the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

To put that into percentage terms, 72% of the Senate is against having the US government simply investigate whether its aid is being used to carry out human rights abuses, a charge Washington regularly lobs at its adversaries to justify escalating hostilities or taking military action against them, and which US politicians perpetually cast themselves as protecting the world against. A mere 11% of the Senate thinks the United States should verify that it\u2019s not enabling Israeli war crimes.<\/p>\n

To break that down along partisan lines, just 19% of Senate Democrats voted for this mild check on Israeli war crimes, with 77% voting nay. For Republicans, those figures were only 2% and 67%, respectively.<\/p>\n

Now compare that to recent polling on US opinion about the Gaza war \u2014 this survey<\/a>, for instance, commissioned by the American Arab Institute (AAI) and the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and conducted at the start of this month. The poll found that a plurality of 42% think US policy should be balanced between Israeli and Palestinian needs, and that the American public believes the United States should strive to be an honest broker between the two, by a ratio of 57 to 26%.<\/p>\n

By just about anyone\u2019s definition, making sure that the assistance you give one of the parties in a conflict isn\u2019t being used to violate the human rights of the other would count as a \u201cbalanced\u201d approach and \u201cbeing an honest broker.\u201d<\/p>\n

The survey also asked specifically whether US military assistance to Israel should come with absolutely no strings attached while Palestinian civilians are being put at risk. The answer? No, by a ratio of 51 to 26%. That same portion of respondents also agreed with objections to President Joe Biden\u2019s leapfrogging of Congress<\/a> to send Israel weapons in December, while another plurality, this time of 41%, said the United States should think about cutting or putting conditions on the billions of dollars of US aid Israel gets annually.<\/p>\n

Think about those numbers. The American public thinks the United States needs to condition US aid to Israel by a nearly two-to-one margin. The US Senate thinks the United States shouldn\u2019t even make sure its arms aren\u2019t being used to commit atrocities by a seven-to-one margin.<\/p>\n

Congress looks similarly unrepresentative even when you put it next to polls that show a public more supportive of Israel\u2019s war. A CBS News\/YouGov survey<\/a> carried out in early December, for instance, asked whether Biden\u2019s \u201crecent statements and actions toward Israel\u201d had exhibited too much or too little support for the country. A total of 69% thought he was either showing the right amount (41%) or not enough (28%) \u2014 which doesn\u2019t neatly map onto the substance of this week\u2019s Senate vote, but does show there was (at least in early December) a robust majority of the public that erred on the side of backing Israel.<\/p>\n

But that poll also found that fully 31% of Americans believed Biden had displayed too<\/em> much backing for Israel, in stark contrast to the only 11% of the Senate who voted for Sanders\u2019s bill \u2014 and that poll was before the events of the past month and a half, including an explosion of starvation in Gaza, the Palestinian death toll crossing the 20,000 mark, and the genocide case brought against Israel at the International Court of Justice. That same survey, by the way, showed 38% of Democrats and 23% of Republicans believing Biden was too supportive<\/em> of Israel \u2014 significantly more than the only 19% of Democratic senators and 2% of Republican senators who just voted for the bare minimum of oversight on aid to the country.<\/p>\n

But since the Senate vote is about a fairly specific issue that doesn\u2019t correspond exactly with what pollsters are asking US voters, let\u2019s look at something that does: support among members of Congress for a cease-fire, the central global demand from the Palestine solidarity movement, human rights organizations, and states appalled by the war.<\/p>\n

According to Win Without War\u2019s tally<\/a>, 59 members of the House and four senators \u2014 all of them Democrats \u2014 have so far joined calls for a cease-fire. That means a cease-fire is only backed by:<\/p>\n