Nov. 21, 2024

As the consensus public affairs voice for the Jewish communities of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota we are grateful to Senators Amy Klobuchar, Kevin Cramer, John Hoeven, John Thune and Mike Rounds for rejecting legislation put forward by Senator Bernie Sanders that would block security aid to Israel. As stated by incoming Majority Leader Thune, ‘last night, the Senate sent a strong bipartisan message of support for Israel […]’

Withholding these critical arms sales to Israel would have emboldened America’s and Israel’s shared adversaries, weaken Israel’s security, and undermined America’s ability to achieve a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza. 

Over the past year of war, we have learned that whenever Hezbollah or Hamas perceives division between the United States and Israel, they stiffen their negotiating position. Accordingly, Senator Sanders’ legislation threatened to derail what US special envoy Amos Hochstein calls a ‘real opportunity” to achieve a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah.

This is not just our assessment.  

Prior to yesterday’s vote the Biden Administration warned ‘[a]t a time when Hezbollah is about to agree to a ceasefire, now is not the time to send a message to Israel’s adversaries that there is a break in the relationship between the United States and Israel.’ This official added that such divisions ‘actually only encourages Israel’s adversaries to be more obstinate and sends a terrible message to Iran, as Iran considers retaliation against Israel.’

As thoughtfully detailed in The Atlantic, Israel is currently fighting a multi-front war for its survival against Iran and its proxies. What began with the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust on October 7, 2023, and was escalated the next day by Hezbollah with its unprovoked rockets attacks on Israel, has devolved into a defensive war on seven fronts. 

This is a terrible war that Israel neither started nor wanted.

Iran represents a major threat to U.S. security and regional interests as well as an existential threat to Israel. In the last year alone, Iran has, for the first time, directly attacked Israel twice, launching hundreds of ballistic missiles, rockets, and drones at civilian population centers across the country. Israel has also been the target of a barrage of missiles and drones emanating from Hezbollah in Lebanon, militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen. 

These attacks have killed Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Druze Israelis, displaced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes, and targeted our own U.S. Navy warships.

The United States must continue to support its strongest ally in the Middle East so that Israel is able to protect its citizens and counter the mounting threats throughout the region, which seek to destabilize the Middle East and threaten U.S. interests.

It is for these reasons we are terribly disappointed that Senator Tina Smith did not join the vast majority of the United States Senate and most of her Democratic Senate colleagues in rejecting Senator Sanders’ legislation. 

In particular, we cannot fathom how Senator Smith and the minority of Senate Democrats who voted with Senator Sanders can both claim that Israel’s defensive war against Hamas is resulting in indiscriminate bombing and then vote to deny Israel the very technology, in the form of JDAMS, Israel uses to make its bombs more targeted. 

Returning to a more positive note, we also want to thank the Biden Administration for not only strenuously opposing Senator Sanders’ legislation, but also vetoing yesterday’s United Nations Security Council resolution which refused to make a call for a permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas contingent upon the unconditional release of all hostages. 

As aptly stated by Robert Wood, Deputy US Ambassador to the UN, ‘[a] durable end to the war must come with the release of the hostages. These two urgent goals are inextricably linked. This resolution abandoned that necessity, and for that reason, the United States could not support it.’ 

We agree and thank President Biden and his Administration for their moral clarity.