The Senate Inches Closer To Taking Away Israel’s Blank Check
U.S. support for Israel used to go without question. “You see this napkin? In 24 hours, we could have the signatures of 70 senators on this napkin,” Steven Rosen, a top American Israel Public Affairs Committee official, joked to a reporter at The New Yorker over dinner in the early 2000s.
Israel enjoyed guaranteed access to American-made weapons, and it enjoyed the largest disbursement of U.S. taxpayer aid since World War II to pay for those weapons. (U.S. aid has covered 70 percent of the war in Gaza, according to the Israeli newspaper Calcalist.) When push came to shove, the U.S. military was even willing to step in directly to fight Israel’s wars.
But the consensus is no longer automatic. The Israeli army’s conduct towards Palestinian civilians after the Hamas attack of October 2023, and the Israeli leadership’s decision to strike Syria and Iran while the U.S. was trying to negotiate with both countries, has led to unprecedented debates in Congress over support for the Middle Eastern republic.
Israel’s supporters now have to make an affirmative case for U.S.-funded weapons. Although they still hold a majority, it is shrinking fast. In April 2025, only 15 senators voted to disapprove of American weapons shipments to Israel. On Wednesday night, 27 senators voted to block a shipment of rifles to Israel. A majority of the Democratic caucus voted against the shipment.
Many senators cited the growing famine in Gaza as the reason for their changing votes. “I had just had it. I kept expecting that Israel would wake up and realize what an awful thing they were perpetuating, and that surely they would at least open up humanitarian aid. They just continued to not do it, and I just reached the point where enough was enough,” Sen. Angus King (I–Maine) told Politico.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) had put forward two separate resolutions on Wednesday, one on a shipment of rifles and another on a shipment of bombs. Strangely, the shipment of rifles—which have a more plausible defensive purpose—garnered more disapproval than the shipment of purely offensive bombs.
“Israel’s capacity to strike those who would launch missiles and rockets at Israeli civilians depends upon the deterrence provided by the Israeli Air Force,” Sen. Jon Ossoff (D–Ga.) said in a press release explaining his vote to block rifles but not bombs. He added that the rifles “would likely have been allocated to police forces under the control of Itamar Ben-Gvir,” the hardline Israeli National Security Minister.
Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, both Democrats from Rhode Island, also voted to block rifles and not bombs. Neither immediately responded to Reason‘s questions by email.
Republicans, meanwhile, all voted to keep the weapons flowing. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch said on the Senate floor that cutting off weapons to Israel “would mean abandoning America’s closest ally in the Middle East” and that “it is in the interest of America and the world to see this terrorist group [Hamas] destroyed.”
Sanders countered that Israel
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