The bill is unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled US Senate, but it could test declining support for Israel among Democrats.
Published on 13 April 2026
United States Senator Bernie Sanders has promised to push a resolution to halt bombs and bulldozers in Israel, testing support for the US ally in Congress amid its war with Iran.
Sanders said Monday he would “force a vote” on the measure later this week — a legislative procedure for bringing a bill to the Senate floor without the majority leader’s approval.
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“This week, I will force a vote on legislation to stop the sale of nearly half a billion dollars worth of bombs and bulldozers to the Israeli military,” Sanders wrote on Twitter.
“The extremist Netanyahu government, which is carrying out genocide in Gaza, does not need more military support from American taxpayers,” he said, referring to the administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The resolution is unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled Senate, but it would reveal the level of support for Israel among Democrats, who are increasingly angry over the US-Israel war on Iran and ongoing atrocities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Sanders introduced a similar bill last July, but it failed by a 27-70 vote. Still, Palestinian rights advocates said at the time that the numbers reflected a decline in the pro-Israel bipartisan consensus in Washington.
A majority of Senate Democrats supported the 2025 proposal.
Since then, American public support for Israel has been steadily declining, according to surveys, especially among young people and Democrats.
A Gallup poll in February suggested that only 46 percent of Americans had favorable views of Israel. Only 17 percent of Democratic respondents said they were more sympathetic toward Israelis than Palestinians.
In the first two years of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the US provided Israel with more than $21 billion in military aid.
Abuses in Gaza and the war on Iran, in which US President Donald Trump joined hands with Israel to start the conflict without congressional permission, have increased doubts over unconditional support for Israel in the US.
On Monday, J Street – a prominent liberal Zionist group that describes itself as pro-Israel and pro-peace – called for the first time to phase out US aid to the Israeli military.
“The war in Gaza, rising extremist Jewish terror in the West Bank, and the US-Israeli war with Iran have highlighted the need for a fundamental reassessment of the US-Israeli security relationship,” the group said in a statement.
J Street also urged continued enforcement of US laws on Israel that restrict security assistance to foreign countries over rights abuses.
Rights advocates say that successive US administrations have violated the law and ignored Israeli violations to ensure the continued flow of weapons to Israel.
