Congress must act to stop the Israeli war machine

A two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran perilously hangs in the balance following failed negotiations this weekend in Islamabad, and, in a dangerous escalation, President Trump imposed a naval blockade of Iranian ports starting Monday. 

This deeply unpopular, unconstitutional, and illegal war must be brought to an end lest Trump implement his genocidal threat that “A whole civilization will die…never to ​be brought back ​again,” a proposition he doubled down on this weekend. 

As Congress returns from its spring recess this week and considers various means to rein in an increasingly erratic president, including through impeachment, invoking the 25th Amendment, passing a War Powers Resolution to end U.S. hostilities in Iran, and defunding the war effort by rejecting a supplemental appropriations request of up to $200 billion, Congress must also act to block weapons to Israel, the country which sold the U.S. on this war of aggression.  

The Senate can do so by voting tomorrow to approve Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs), introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders, to block the delivery of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bombs, which have killed tens of thousands of civilians from Gaza to Iran and Lebanon, and militarized bulldozers, which have played a central role in the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of more than three million Palestinians and Lebanese from their homes. 

Specifically, Sanders is expected to force a vote on S.J.Res.138, which would block the delivery of 12,000 1,000-pound bombs to Israel, valued at $150 million, and S.J.Res.32, which would block the delivery of nearly $300 million of Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozers. 

As Tax Day nears, it is important to remember that these weapons will likely be paid for by American taxpayers through Foreign Military Financing (FMF)–part of a munificent appropriation of $3.8 billion in weapons the U.S. gives Israel every single year under the terms of a 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) negotiated during the Obama administration without any congressional or public input.  

This year, the average taxpayer will pay more than $4,000 toward war and weapons. That is more than the average taxpayer will pay for SNAP, school lunch programs, education, affordable housing, disaster relief, and energy and environmental programs–combined. 

As the cost of living continues to climb as a result of the US-Israeli war on Iran, and at a time when Americans go bankrupt from medical bills and lack health care, pile up unrepayable student loan debt, and suffer from a lack of affordable housing, it is bad enough that our government prioritizes this obscene level of warfare and militarism over human needs at home and abroad.

Even worse yet, in the case of these bombs and bulldozers that Trump wants to give to Israel, not only do they further the imbalance of governmental expenditures between militarism and human needs here at home. They also enable Israel to continue to unleash genocidal violence and campaigns of ethnic cleansing, which destroy hospitals, schools, and homes of Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iranians, denying them their human needs, too.

MK-80 series bombs, of which the 1,000-pound bomb is one variant, have been repeatedly linked to Israeli attacks and atrocities in its region-wide aggression against Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine. Weapons expert Trevor Ball identified a 1,000- or 2,000-pound bomb that crashed into a home in Tehran, and another one used in an Israeli attack on Beirut’s Bachoura neighborhood.

Israel has also used these types of bombs repeatedly in Gaza throughout its genocide of Palestinians. For example, the UN found that Israel used a 1,000-pound bomb in a January 2024 attack on Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, which killed 12 people, including a journalist.

In addition, Israel has used Caterpillar D9 bulldozers as a major component of its campaign of what the UN terms “domicide”–its deliberate damaging or destruction of an estimated 92% of all homes in Gaza.

In advance of its October 2023 ground invasion of Gaza, Israel amassed 100 Caterpillar D9 bulldozers to ensure this end. “With a skilled operator at the controls,” the Israeli newspaper Ynet wrote admiringly, the D9 bulldozer “can demolish a residential building within an hour, flattening it to a rubble pile no higher than a meter.”

And beginning in January 2025, Israel also embarked on massive campaigns to destroy the major West Bank Palestinian refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams, forcibly displacing an estimated 40,000 people–the largest single act of ethnic cleansing by Israel in the West Bank since it began its military occupation of the area in 1967. 

Amnesty International found evidence that Israel used bulldozers in this large-scale forced displacement, which it demanded to be investigated as a war crime.

Ibraheem Khalifa, a resident of Nur Shams, described how his family was forcibly displaced and their apartment building demolished: “These are apartments we built with our own hands. There, we grew up and made memories. In this house, we got married, held celebrations, went through sorrows—everything. This house witnessed it all. Now, our homes and all of our belongings in them are gone.”

Now, Israel has also started to implement its threat to do to Lebanon what it did to Palestinians in Gaza, in part with bulldozers. Since March 2, Israel has forcibly displaced more than one million Lebanese, destroyed homes and communities, and threatened a potentially permanent military occupation of 16 percent of the country up to the Litani River. 

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz has pledged to demolish all Lebanese homes in villages near the border with Israel “in line with the model we applied in Gaza’s Rafah and Beit Hanoun.” 

Let’s be clear: providing Israel with any types of weapons violates US law. The Arms Export Control Act limits the use of US weapons to internal security and legitimate self-defense–not for bombing civilians and civilian infrastructure and forcibly displacing millions of people. 

And the Foreign Assistance Act prevents any country from receiving anything from the US if it engages in systematic patterns of gross human rights violations and blocks US humanitarian aid, which Israel continues to do in Gaza. 

As a first step toward comprehensive sanctions of the genocidal regime of Israel, the Senate can take a stand for the rule of law by voting for Sen. Sanders’s Joint Resolutions of Disapproval and blocking these deadly bombs and bulldozers.

Americans can call their Senators and demand they vote for these resolutions by clicking here.