[Photo: Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) harnesses turn “dumb” bombs into “Smart” bombs. These US munitions are currently used by Israel (Wikipedia).]

By Elizabeth West

Is there a way to bar Israel from using US-provided munitions against civilian populations? I have no idea. And this is wherein the moral dilemma lies. Does withholding military aid to Israel hamper its ability to protect itself from attack by extra-national forces? If so, can an agreement be reached that US military aid (and munitions) only be used for defense and not against civilian populations?

The 2 Joint Resolutions put forward by Sanders are clearly targeted at denying munitions and material support, primarily being used in the Israeli offensive against Gaza.

 

 

JDAMs, included in SJ Res 26, and the sample letter by Elizabeth West, are Joint Direct Attack Munitions. These are harnesses that can be attached to dumb bombs to allow them to be guided missiles (or “smart” bombs). In other words, they can be used to upgrade munitions for specific targeting.

I agree with Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth West, and millions of Americans that the US should not be facilitating the bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure. I encourage you to call your Senator and ask them to vote “Yes” on SJ Res 26 and 33. Or write your Senators with your opinion and a reasoned argument for why they should support these two resolutions.

Elizabeth West

On April 3rd, Senator Bernie Sanders forced votes on the floor of the Senate on two Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs), specifically S.J. Res 33 and 26, each intended to stop the transfer of particular weaponry to Israel. Sadly, only 15 senators* voted for them. It is likely that one or both of your Democratic senators (if you have any) were amongst the 31 who voted ‘no,’ or ‘present,’ or simply did not vote, in effect endorsing an additional export of massive numbers of US-made bombs to Israel, bombs that will be used to blow up more Palestinian civilians, along with the few homes, hospitals, schools, farms and bakeries still standing.

The Palestinian human rights organization with which I work, like many other pro-peace, anti-genocide organizations and individuals, urgently implored our Democratic senators to vote with Sanders, hoping that their oft-stated commitment to human and civil rights might extend to Palestinians. We were disappointed in our representatives; chances are, you were as well.**

Senator Sanders has three more JRDs in the pipeline. When — and if — they will make it to the floor for a vote is unknown, though we hope it won’t be far off. What we do know is that US weapons are being used by Israel each and every day to slaughter non-combatants in Palestine. Opposing the transfer of arms in the future, arms earmarked to complete the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, may feel like the tiniest drop in the proverbial bucket, given the rise of lawlessness, fascism, and terror at home, but the two are intimately connected. Self-evidently, state-sponsored murder and kidnapping cannot reasonably be construed to signal the collapse of democracy in one instance and the defense of it in another. Heroics, like a twenty-five-hour speech in the well of the Senate meant to stand against the takeover of the US by actors hostile to our Constitution and laws, pale in power when it is followed a mere two days later by a vote to continue to facilitate the killing of blameless children in another country.

With upcoming opportunities for our senators to redeem their recent votes in favor of Israeli atrocities, my organization asked them to account for those votes and offered them context, both political and factual. Israeli hasbara and AIPAC have clearly swayed their understanding and actions, and while it is an uphill struggle to counter those fraudulent narratives, we try. Another drop in the bucket? Perhaps just one small way to stand against tyranny wherever it rears its head.  

The letters we sent were tailored in response to our own senators’ defense of their votes; below we have written a generic version addressed to any and all of the Democratic senators who actively chose, earlier this month, to consign more Palestinian children to the flames, to amputation without anesthetic, to living a literal hell on earth. If you are a reader here, you almost certainly know most of what follows by rote, but we thought to gather some of the pertinent facts and language in a document that would make it simpler to approach your senator should you care to. Please feel free to copy mine, adapt, and enrich the letter.  Please…use it! While this is admittedly nowhere near enough, there are times when every drop counts.

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Senator:

Your April 3, 2025, votes on Bernie Sanders’ JRDs left me with a number of questions as well as, quite frankly, a broken heart. I wonder why, when given the chance to take a minimal step that would slow the illegal slaughter all the world sees exploding in Gaza and the West Bank, you chose to underwrite these atrocities with more US weapons.

Nearly a year ago, the Biden State Department found that Israel, using US-supplied weapons, likely breached international and humanitarian law. Our own ‘Leahy Laws’ prohibit the provision of military support to countries against which there are credible allegations of “gross violations of human rights” including: extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture, rape by security forces, and other forms of cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment. 

Numerous documented and ultimately undisputed instances of each of these have been perpetrated by the IDF against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Recently, the Israeli military killed 15 well-identified medics in Gaza by shooting them at close range while their hands were bound, subsequently burying both the humans and their vehicles in order to hide the war crime. Just three weeks ago, the IDF shot an unarmed New Jersey teen (and American citizen) in the West Bank. Omar Mohammed Saada Rabea was hit eleven times, and while he bled to death, Israeli soldiers actively prevented the fourteen-year-old from receiving medical attention.

So I ask: how can voting to provide more offensive military equipment to a country that has a long track record of using US-provided materiel in the commission of gross violations of human rights align with any legislator’s essential commitment to the rule of law?

Some Democratic senators have suggested that heightened threats from Iran and its proxies require the provision of more arms to Israel so that they might defend themselves from foreign attack. While I am not disputing anyone’s right to defend themselves, this seems to present another confounding misalignment between stated intent and the reality represented by ‘no’ votes on S.J. Res 33 and 26. 

The first of these, S.J. Res 33, would have blocked over $2 billion for the provision of 35,000 MK 84 2,000 lb. bombs and 4,000 I-2000 Penetrator warheads.

The second, S.J.Res. 26, would have stopped nearly $7 billion in funding for 2,800 500-pound bombs, 2,100 Small Diameter Bombs, and tens of thousands of JDAM guidance kits.

According to Senator Sanders, “All of these systems have been linked to dozens of illegal airstrikes, including on designated humanitarian sites, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties. These strikes have been painstakingly documented by human rights monitors. There is no debate. And none of these systems are defensive, none of them are necessary to protect Israel from incoming drone or rocket attacks.”

The weapons you voted to provide to Israel are offensive weapons, not defensive in nature. Israel has demonstrated again and again that it is more than willing to use US-supplied offensive weaponry to illegally kill, maim and terrorize innocent civilians. A claim of self-defense against Hamas strains credulity when the death tolls as of a month ago were: 50,021 Gazans (with actual numbers estimated as high as 250,000), and 1605 Israelis. If it were up to me, no one would die in war. But the argument that the assault on Gaza is defensive lost any claim to legitimacy long since. True defensive weaponry, such as David’s Sling and the Iron Dome, has not been implicated in any of Senator Sanders’ JRDs.  

I would simply contend that additional lethal arms in the hands of a government that has used these same offensive weapons virtually every single day of the last 565–in clear violation of US and international laws, as well as their own negotiated ceasefire agreements–is not the best way to support Israel’s security. If an Iranian attack is your concern, there are many other avenues to pursue that would directly support Israel’s ability to avoid or prevail in such a conflict. Israel, to date, has given the US absolutely no reason to believe it will use further armaments to defend itself against Iran, and daily arguments to support the expectation that it will use them to kill Palestinian civilians and remove them from their homeland. Israel’s actions must be taken as the measure of their intent.

It is also worth noting that a recent poll by Israeli TV 12 found that 70% of Israelis do not trust their own government and, in opposition to the Netanyahu government’s push to fight on, want a deal with Hamas to end the war. In fact, increasing numbers of Israeli soldiers are declining to fight in a war they understand is being waged to solely benefit the President and his cronies instead of the country they have vowed to serve and protect: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/08/nx-s1-5344937/fewer-military-reservists-in-israel-are-willing-to-report-for-duty

Why, then, are you voting to arm a demonstrably corrupt regime that does not seek nor have the support of its own people in this matter?  

Were you aware that here in the US, a March 2025 Economist/YouGov poll (page 90) found that just 15 percent of the American people support increasing military aid to Israel, while 35 percent support decreasing military aid to Israel or stopping it entirely? Only eight percent of Democrats polled supported increasing military aid to Israel at this time.

In addition, a November 2024 J Street poll of Jewish voters tallied 62 percent of American Jews supporting withholding “shipments of offensive weapons like 2,000-pound bombs until Prime Minister Netanyahu agrees to an American proposal for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages.” 

Senator Sanders’ JRDs do not undermine Israel’s right to exist or to defend itself. They attempt, rather, to bring the US into compliance with its own laws, and in my view, actually support an ally by refusing to enable its illegal and immoral actions. History has shown us again and again that the road to peace and stability cannot feasibly be built upon a foundation of war crimes and the slaughter of a civilian population.  

As Jack Mirkinson, an editor at The Nation, wrote: “The violence is the direct result of some very basic realities – namely, that Israel has been occupying Palestine for 75 years, has been killing and oppressing Palestinians for just as long, and has created the world’s most enduring apartheid state. And the only thing that will put a stop to the violence is if those conditions are ended. That’s really all there is to it. You can go through all of the twists and turns since 1948, but if you don’t come back to that fundamental truth, there’s no real conversation to have.”

Senator Sanders will undoubtedly be asking for your vote on further JRDs in the future, each of them targeting the sale of arms which Israel has habitually used to kill innocent civilians (including Americans) in both Gaza and the West Bank. I sincerely hope that you will reconsider sending more offensive weapons to Israel and will co-sponsor Senator Sanders’ JRDs, or at very least vote against expanding US complicity in Israel’s illegal assault on the people of Palestine.  Show us, your constituents–who overwhelmingly oppose more arms to Israel–that you hear us, and perhaps most importantly, that you have the integrity to stand against tyranny and lawlessness wherever it exists.

Senator, do the right thing.

Sincerely, 

A Heartbroken Voter

*Voted Yea: Dick Durbin (IL), Martin Heinrich (NM), Mazie Hirono (HI), Tim Kaine (VA), Andy Kim (NJ), Ben Ray Luján (NM), Ed Markey (MA), Jeff Merkley (OR), Chris Murphy (CT), Bernie Sanders (VT), Brian Schatz (HI), Tina Smith (MN), Chris Van Hollen (MD), Elizabeth Warren (MA), and Peter Welch (VT).  If one of these folks is your senator, a thank-you would not go amiss.

**S.J. Res 33 Roll Call: https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1191/vote_119_1_00165.htm 

S.J. Res 26 Roll Call:

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1191/vote_119_1_00166.htm

Elizabeth West lives, writes, and strives to find beauty and joy in the heart of DuPont country.  She can be reached at [email protected] or via her website.