I can say for myself that I am a proud American of Jewish descent. My father left Poland in 1921, fleeing poverty and anti-Semitism. The part of the family that remained in Poland suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Since childhood, I have known well where anti-Semitism, racism, fanaticism and demagoguery lead.
So let me be very clear. Speaking out against the horrific and inhumane actions of Israel and Israel's extremist leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is not anti-Semitism. Pointing out Israel's dangerous and destructive role in shaping American foreign and military policy is not anti-Semitism. That is something every member of Congress and every American should think about.
On October 7, 2023, the terrorist organization Hamas attacked Israel. Over 1.200 innocent men, women, and children were killed, and hundreds were taken hostage. Like any other country, Israel had every right to respond to the attack. But not to violate international law and wage an all-out war of unimaginable destruction against the entire Palestinian people - which experts have rightly qualified as genocide.
The Israeli authorities had no right to kill more than 72.000 of the 2,2 million Palestinians in Gaza and injure over 170.000 - mostly women, children and the elderly. They had no right to destroy the entire physical infrastructure of Gaza, including the water and sewage systems and the electricity distribution network.
They had no right to demolish all 12 universities in Gaza, as well as hundreds of schools, thus destroying the entire education system there. They had no right to damage or demolish over 90% of the housing units in Gaza, which is why the vast majority of the local population now lives in tents.
They had no right to damage or destroy 94% of Gaza's hospitals and kill 1.700 health workers. They had no right to impose a blockade on food, water, fuel and medicine - which left thousands of Palestinians malnourished and hundreds of them starving to death.
The carnage is not stopping. Despite the so-called ceasefire, humanitarian aid remains far below what is needed, and Israel continues to kill civilians.
The problem is not just in Gaza. Since October 2023, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 1.071 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 233 children, in flagrant violation of international law that protects Palestinian territories. At the same time, they have demolished over 6.000 Palestinian homes and established more than 200 new illegal settlements and outposts on Palestinian territory.
This is not just the outbursts of extremist settlers. This is state policy. Netanyahu’s security cabinet has approved the most sweeping changes to the legal status of the West Bank since 1967, removing almost all obstacles to further settlement expansion. Netanyahu himself has declared: “There will never be a Palestinian state.” His finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has boasted that building new settlements will “bury the idea of a Palestinian state forever.”
We now know that Netanyahu convinced Trump to launch an unnecessary, unconstitutional war against Iran. The conflict, which violates many provisions of international law, has already killed thousands of civilians, including hundreds of children in Iran and Lebanon, as well as 26 Israeli civilians and 13 American soldiers. Billions of innocent people around the world are suffering the economic consequences of this illegal war through rising prices and shortages of basic goods.
But Gaza was not enough for Netanyahu. Nor was Iran. Israel, meanwhile, has started a war that is spreading into Lebanese territory. More than 2.000 people have already died in the new war, and Israel has occupied 14% of Lebanese territory.
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has announced that all Lebanese border villages will be demolished “on the model of Gaza,” in his words. Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, has warned that Dahiyeh, a suburb of southern Beirut, will soon “look like Khan Younis,” the Gaza city that Israel razed to the ground. That’s not a threat. That’s a promise.
After the terrible and illegal actions of the Netanyahu government over the past three years, the American people have had enough. Support for Israel in America is plummeting. According to a recent Pew survey, 80% of Democrats have an unfavorable opinion of Israel, as do 41% of Republicans. Among young people, the percentages are even higher. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that 60% of respondents - including three-quarters of Democrats and two-thirds of independents - oppose sending American weapons to Israel.
That's why I've called on members of the Senate to vote on two joint resolutions to disapprove the arms shipment - the only formal action we have available to try to block the arms sale. In the first resolution, we demanded the cancellation of the shipment of 1.000-kilogram bombs worth $151,8 million.
In the second, we sought to block the shipment of $295 million worth of bulldozers, which are used to demolish homes in Gaza and the West Bank, thus physically eliminating the very idea of a Palestinian state. Bulldozers there are not defensive weapons. They are a tool of ethnic cleansing.
It is long overdue that the members of the Senate listen to the American people and suspend American military aid to the extremist Netanyahu government. I hope that my fellow senators will one day join me in these demands.
(Translated by Đorđe Tomic)
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