Last week, 27 Senate Democrats voted in favor of a resolution introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that sought to block the sale of specific weapons to Israel for its war in Gaza, where more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed. Among Democratic senators, the count was a new high water mark for Sanders’ resolutions disapproving of certain offensive weapon sales to Israel, and represents more than half of the caucus. Also last week, two Israeli human rights organizations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights - Israel, deemed that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, as was found by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in public announcements in December.
Within the past two weeks on Capitol Hill, there’s been a small shift in sentiment among some Senate Democrats, prompted in part by photos of widespread famine in Gaza, much of the emergency afflicting children. The reason for this shift in tone arriving now is up for debate—Michael Fakhri, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, told the Guardian that since early last year he has co-authored and publicized U.N. reports warning of Israel’s efforts to impose mass starvation in Gaza.
Still, 19 of the 44 Democratic senators who recently called in a letter addressed to Trump administration officials for humanitarian aid in Gaza did not vote for either of Sanders’ resolutions, including Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand from New York and Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla from California. The Democrats’ votes, continuing their approval of funding and weapons for Israel’s military, run counter to their letter’s urging for “experienced multilateral bodies and NGOs” to provide aid in the region. The Israeli government is backing the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), formed with the U.S. in May. Israeli forces have been present at GHF sites where more than 1,400 people have been killed seeking aid, and the aid allowed in by Israel has been just a fraction of what's needed in Gaza. Groups like Doctors Without Borders and Human Rights Watch are calling on officials to stand down GHF so that international groups can restore aid delivery.
Among U.S. senators, Schiff was the top beneficiary in the 2023-2024 election cycle of spending by the lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which opposed Sanders’ latest resolutions on weapons sales. In his Senate race last year, a pro-Schiff super PAC, funded largely by AIPAC’s super PAC, spent millions of dollars on ads before the March 2024 primary election echoing Schiff’s campaign ads.
Other lawmakers whose votes on the offensive weapons sales did not back up their recent letter urging a diplomatic solution to the war in Gaza—Cory Booker (N.J.) and Mark Warner (Va.)—were the top two Democratic recipients in the Senate of earmarked contributions from AIPAC’s PAC this year. Along with two other Senate Democrats up for re-election in 2026 who signed Schiff's letter, John Hickenlooper (Colo.) and Chris Coons (Del.), these four holdouts on the Sanders resolutions have received close to $1 million combined from AIPAC’s PAC already this cycle. AIPAC quickly became the largest PAC contributor at the federal level and is funneling a rising amount of campaign dollars to lawmakers and candidates.
Though Sanders’ latest measures were rejected in the Senate on July 30 by votes of 73 to 24 and 70 to 27 (with three Democratic senators not voting), for the first time the majority of the chamber’s 47 Democratic-aligned senators voted against certain U.S. military sales to Israel. The resolutions would have stopped the sales, approved by the Trump administration, of $676 million of bombs and $24 million of firearms to Israel, signaling the senators’ disapproval on humanitarian grounds. Sanders’ office has underscored its view that the offensive weapons sale violates the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act. The packages are just a slice of the enormous weapons sales and military funding that the U.S. approves for Israel annually—in 2024, the U.S. provided a record $18 billion in military aid to Israel, according to analyst Stephen Semler.
