J Street Turns Against Israel: Urges Senators to Halt Arms Flow

The progressive Israel advocacy group J Street is urging senators to vote in favor of several resolutions put forward by Sen.

Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to protest U.S. arms sales to Israel, a lobbying boost for Sanders’ effort and a marked shift to the left for J Street.

“We are urging Senators to vote yes to send a message, understanding that the sales are going to go through,” J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami told Jewish Insider on Monday. The votes — a series of measures known as joint resolutions of disapproval, each of which deals with different types of weapons sent to Israel — are expected to take place on Wednesday.

If the resolutions were to pass in both the Senate and the House, they would block the arms transfers, though they’re almost guaranteed to fail. How many senators support the resolutions will be a barometer of Congress’ frustration with Israel more than a year into the war in the Middle East. Eleven senators, including one Republican, supported another Sanders effort that sought to halt arms sales earlier this year.

“The United States government must stop blatantly violating the law with regard to arms sales to Israel,” Sanders wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published Monday. The resolutions, which will touch on $20 billion of proposed weapons sales to Israel, are co-sponsored by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Peter Welch (D-VT).

J Street’s campaign will urge senators to “vote yes on at least one” of the resolutions, Ben-Ami said. He asserted that the reso…  lutions are “symbolic,” but said senators should still support them to indicate “disapproval of the way the war has been conducted, of the Netanyahu government’s disrespect for President [Joe] Biden’s advice and requests and of the failure of the administration to use our leverage appropriately to change Israel policies and actions.”

AIPAC is lobbying heavily against the measures. Last week, Jewish Federations of North America — the umbrella organization of dozens of Jewish communal groups — similarly put out a call for members of the U.S. Jewish community to urge their senators to vote against the resolutions.

In recent days, J Street has strongly criticized the Biden administration for its handling of the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

In a Monday fundraising email, the group spotlighted “President Biden’s failure to take action,” writing that the Biden administration reneged on its promise that it would cut some weapons to Israel unless Israel increased aid to civilians in Gaza within 30 days.