WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) today released the following statement announcing his intention to next week bring to the floor Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRD) that would block the sale of certain offensive U.S. weaponry to Israel. The JRD is the only mechanism available to Congress to prevent an arms sale from advancing:

Next week I will bring to the floor of the Senate a number of Joint Resolutions of Disapproval in order to block certain offensive weapons sales to Israel. There is no longer any doubt that Netanyahu’s extremist government is in clear violation of U.S. and international law as it wages a barbaric war against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Out of a population of 2.2 million, over 43,000 Palestinians have been killed and 102,000 injured – sixty percent of whom are women, children, or elderly people. Israel has destroyed 70 percent of the housing in Gaza, the civilian infrastructure, the health care system, and hundreds of schools. It has bombed every one of Gaza’s 12 universities. 

As horrific as the last year has been, the current situation is even worse. Today, Israel continues to restrict the flow of food and medicine to desperate people. Tens of thousands of Palestinians face malnutrition and starvation. The volume of aid reaching Gazans is lower than at any time in the last year. Blocking humanitarian aid violates the Foreign Assistance Act as well as the Geneva Convention.

This war has been conducted almost entirely with American weapons and $18 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars. Israel has dropped U.S.-provided 2,000-pound bombs into crowded neighborhoods, killed hundreds of civilians to take out a handful of Hamas fighters, and made little effort to distinguish between civilians and combatants. These actions are immoral and illegal.

The United States cannot continue to be complicit in this war by supplying more military aid and weaponry to the Netanyahu government. Congress must act to block these arms sales.

Read the fact sheet, here.