US Senate rebuffs Bernie Sanders, supports weapons for war crimes

Michael F. Brown Power Suits 25 November 2024

Senator Tom Cotton and Senator Lindsey Graham walk near the Senate Subway in the US Capitol Building — Senators Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham have inveighed against the International Criminal Court.
Michael Brochstein SIPA USA

Republican proponents of laying waste to Gaza came out in force last week to defeat the effort led by Senator Bernie Sanders to cut off US weapons to Israel going to commit war crimes and other atrocities. These Republicans had help from most Democrats, though a surprising 19 Democratic and independent senators found it within themselves to vote against at least some weapons to Israel in the midst of the Gaza genocide.

The three resolutions pushed by Sanders sought to cut off 120 millimeter tank rounds, 120 mm “high explosive” mortar rounds and precision-guidance kits attached to bombs. Each of Sanders’ resolutions received 17 to 19 votes.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who last year made a genocidal call for Israel to “bounce the rubble” in Gaza, declared that “Senate Democrats are trying to cut off military aid to Israel during an existential war. This would be a shameful abandonment of an ally, and the Senate should overwhelmingly reject this absurd resolution.”

Earlier this year, Cotton, Arkansas’ principal vigilante, proposed throwing Gaza genocide protesters off bridges and even said: “If they glued their hands to a car or the pavement, well, probably pretty painful to have their skin ripped off, but I think that’s the way we’d handle it in Arkansas. And I would encourage most people anywhere that get stuck behind criminals like this, who are trying to block traffic, to take matters in their own hands.”

On Thursday, the deliberately disagreeable Cotton interrupted an anti-war CODEPINK activist speaking to the senator about money that’s “going to bomb children and schools” in Gaza in order to say that her pink kuffiyeh(checkered scarf) is a “well-known symbol for terrorists.”

Cotton made clear that he thinks organizations concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza are “anti-Semitic” rather than address the substance of the Israeli-caused starvation faced by Palestinians that helped lead the International Criminal Court this past week to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his recently dismissed defense minister.

Instead, Cotton dismisses Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, as a “deranged fanatic” and threatens a US invasion of the court. He is undoubtedly communicating a threat against Khan and the ICC.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK, noted the dangers of throwing around the term “terrorism” in a week when the House of Representatives voted to give the treasury secretary the power to “take away our non-profit status and destroy our organization, CODEPINK.” That bill, House Resolution 9495, next goes to the US Senate.

Fifteen Democrats voted to give Donald Trump’s treasury secretary the power to declare pro-Palestinian non-profit groups as “terrorist-supporting organizations” and terminate their tax-exempt status. This would run roughshod over the notion of “innocent until proven guilty” and put the onus on the group presumptively declared guilty to prove its innocence.

Congressman Jamie Raskin stated that “once this scarlet letter and the infamy of being designated a terrorist-supporting group are firmly affixed on the organization, the stigmatized then can finally go to a judge, but incredibly the legal burden is explicitly put on them to prove they are not a terror-supporting group, completely reversing the burden of due process which properly belongs to the government.”

Scott Bessent is expected to be that next treasury secretary and appears to be an opponent of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian freedom and equal rights.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has said that boycotts – though a nonviolent form of protest long employed to secure equal rights – are “economic terrorism” against Israel, an argument likely to gain abusive headway if the House legislation is passed by the Senate and becomes law.

Other voices on arms to Israel

Senator Lindsey Graham, who last year urgedIsrael to “level the place” in reference to Gaza, was not to be outdone by Cotton. Graham, a Republican, maintained: “Israel is in a fight for its very life. Give Israel what they need to fight a war they can’t afford to lose.”

Later in the week, Graham wanted to sanction US allies willing “to help the ICC,” saying “we’re going to sanction you” and “crush your economy.” He specifically directed the threat at Canada, Britain, Germany and France.

International rules, according to Graham, don’t apply to Israel or the US.

Republican Senator John Thune, who will be the majority leader in January, derided the genocide-supporting Biden administration, insisting that Republicans would be more supportive of Israel. Thune also appeared to conflate Israel with Jews elsewhere in the world, an anti-Semitic trope.

“To our allies in Israel, and to the Jewish people around the world, my message to you is this: Reinforcements are on the way. In six weeks, Republicans will reclaim the Senate majority, and we will make clear that the United States Congress stands squarely in Israel’s corner.”

Senator Chris Van Hollen continued to be one of the more outspoken Democrats about the harm Israel is causing in Gaza, though earlier this year he talked the talk, but did not walk the walk when it came to backing up his words with his vote.

This time, Van Hollen voted in line with his words, asserting “US taxpayer-funded security assistance can’t be a blank check — it must be used in line with our interests, values and laws. The Netanyahu government is violating that principle and we should pause delivery of offensive weapons until it complies.”

This, of course, is still problematic as a “rehabilitated” Netanyahu – perhaps with yet another stamp of approval from a complicitState Department – would mean giving weapons to a leader who just hours later the ICC issued a warrant to arrest.

Most Democrats, however, stood with Republicans in support of the Gaza genocide and providing the weapons Israel needs to carry it out.

Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen urged “all of my Senate colleagues to join me in strongly opposing the proposal to restrict arm sales to Israel, particularly when it continues to be under constant attack. We must ensure Israel has what it needs to defend itself from Iran and its terrorist proxies.”

She was not alone. The Biden administration heavily pushed Democrats to vote against cutting off arms to Israel.

The American president seems determined to push genocide until the very end of his term, not caring that he is standing arm in arm with men being pursued by the ICC.

Biden, the principal weapons provider for Israel’s war crimes, stated: “The ICC issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. Let me be clear once again: whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”

Democrats continue to come through for Biden in keeping Israel well armed. Yet those who voted for the first time against offensive arms to Israel are signaling an overdue fight within the party.

Sanders is right when he says, albeit belatedly: “I am holding a vote on the floor of the US Senate to block the sale of offensive arms to Israel. The extremist Netanyahu government is breaking US and international law. Every senator who believes in the rule of law should vote for these resolutions.”

Flailing Democrats taking hawkish stances

Out-of-touch Democrats lost with young people, Arab Americans and Muslim Americans because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refused to say no to the genocide and war crimes being carried out by Israel with US arms. Republican Senator John Thune isn’t wrong when he saysthe issue “literally fractured” the Democratic Party. This thrills him as the leadership of his party is united in support of Netanyahu and his war crimes.

Democratic leaders, however, are not representing their constituents. As The Washington Post noted last week, “Polls over the past year have shown that more than half of Americans – and 75 percent of Democrats – disapprove of Israeli military actions in a war in which local journalists have uploaded to social media a steady stream of videos showing the bodies of children pulled lifeless from the rubble, others withering from starvation, and families living in squalid encampments.”

Democrats are going to have to decide in the next four years whether they can win by being the multicultural war party – what Jason Briond refers to as a “multicultural ruling elite” or “multiracial empire” – and supporting genocide in Gaza or if this will so alienate key constituencies that they will not return to the Democratic Party.

Many one-time Democrats of all races will look at an identity politics that abides a chartreuse genocide and decide this isn’t the “progress” they had in mind when they pushed for broader political representation. That said, they’re still rightly going to be proponents of civil rights, equal rights and diversity in business, education and American life in general, finding these completely preferable to white supremacy and a Republican Party that doesn’t even want to teach the reality of racism and Jim Crow segregation.

But a politics advancing a multicultural war party of Democrats is much too similar in result to the Republican neoconservatives pushing the catastrophic Iraq war in 2003. And now neoconservatives, including Dick Cheney, have been incorporated into the Democratic coalition.

There’s no joy, and no viable Democratic future, in supporting such depraved warmongering. Democratic voters won’t be able to form a successful coalition behind “diverse” enablers of war crimes such as Biden and Harris.

Remarkably, many Republicans took one set of lessons from Iraq, concluding at least in word that there’s a need to avoid similar wars, while top-of-ticket Democratic leaders are championing Middle East violence despite being more inclined to resist such bellicosity just two decades ago.

The Democrats absolutely have other problems beyond warmongering, namely hemorrhaging working class voters, but backing Israel’s genocide in Gaza and apartheid policies more generally are one aspect of the 2024 election implosion that Democrats will have to grapple with in order to be viable in future elections.

The horror of Gaza and US complicity is so enormous that one can anticipate a future Democratic presidential candidate apologizing to constituents for the war crimes Biden and Harris helped Israel carry out. Short of that sort of reversal, strongly rejecting the Democratic Party’s arming of the Gaza genocide, some voters won’t return. Others are so repelled by the genocidal violence of both parties that they may never return to national electoral politics no matter what is said.

Tuesday, 26 November 2024