One year since she introduced a resolution for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., said she hasn’t seen any indication that a Kamala Harris presidency would result in a different U.S policy toward Israel.
“I have not seen anything different than, we continue to send the weapons to facilitate the violence,” Bush told The Intercept. “As long as we are continuing to send the weapons and the funding to bomb people, to destroy, to exterminate a whole people, then everything else is just talk.”
“We can’t say that we want the violence to stop, and then we help hand over the weapons that cause the violence.”
Amid growing public outrage over U.S. support for Israel’s war, President Joe Biden has reportedly used tough language with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and in one instance, paused a weapons shipment. Yet there has been no fundamental shift in policy: the U.S. has sent $17.9 billion to Israel over the last year, and even as the administration this week warned Israel that its failure to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza could affect U.S. military aid, a White House spokesperson said the letter was “not meant as a threat.”
For Bush, the White House’s admonishments ring hollow so long as the military aid keeps flowing. “I hear the stern words,” she said. “We can’t say that we want the violence to stop, and then we help hand over the weapons that cause the violence.”
Bush, along with Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., was one of the earliest congressional proponents for a ceasefire in Gaza — a position that was seen as a third rail in Washington. During a White House press conferencepress secretary Karine Jean-Pierre described calls for a ceasefire as “repugnant,” “disgraceful,” and “wrong,” while congressional Democrats piled on Tlaib. Since then, Israel has killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza and expanded its war into Lebanon, where it has also killed thousands of people.
“We had foresight at that time,” Bush said. “Had the administration listened then, where would we be now?”
With diplomacy all but stalled as the war widens, the calls for a ceasefire have evolved into a stronger policy demand. “What we need is for the Biden administration to take action to end the violence, not enable it,” Bush said. “What we need is the arms embargo.”
Playing With Words
A year after the White House publicly disparaged calls for a ceasefire, Harris and Biden have now at least rhetorically adopted that same demand. Harris first called for a ceasefire in March, before Biden did so and before she became the party’s presidential nominee. At the August Democratic National Convention, the vice president repeated the call to the sound of raucous applause. And Biden has repeatedly made similar comments. But activists argue that without an arms embargo, the language coming out of the administration feels hollow.
“For all of their rhetoric of being appalled at the level of violence,” said Samer Araabi, a member of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, a Bay Area advocacy organization. “Not a single material action has backed those feelings of concern.”
Araabi said a ceasefire has always been the goal, but it’s now crystal clear that an arms embargo is the best shot to get there. “The only thing that the U.S. has done to bring Israel to bear has been leveraging military aid,” said Araabi.
Activist organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace Action and IMEU Policy Project, are rallying around a new resolution from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that would block the latest $20 billion weapons sale to Israel.
“We are over a year into a genocide and the U.S. has spent over $17.9 billion dollars on the Israeli military and on sending weapons to the Israeli military,” said Beth Miller, political director at JVP Action. “The only way that this regional war stops, the only way that this genocide stops is when the U.S. stops sending weapons.”
In the month since Israel intensified its assault on Lebanon, at least 1.2 million Lebanese nationals have been displaced by Israel’s bombing campaign. And just this week, the United States deployed 100 troops and an air missile defense system to Israel.
“I don’t think we’re any closer to a ceasefire than we were a year ago,” said Sumaya Awad, a Palestinian writer and the director of strategy at Adalah Justice Project. “In some ways, I think we’re even further away because we’re now in a place where the U.S. government is entering into a war that could have been stopped with a ceasefire a month ago, two months ago, certainly a year ago. Instead, we just get this hollow rhetoric from our government about the importance of pushing toward a ceasefire and humanitarian aid — while they actively send the arms and the bombs that are going into Gaza and now Lebanon.”
The “forefronting” of the ask for an arms embargo is an important part of the strategy going forward, argued Awad, who is also a member of New York City Democratic Socialists of America, which is advocating for an immediate ceasefire. “An arms embargo and ceasefire at this point now go hand in hand,” she said. ”If you say ceasefire but you’re not saying we’re going to stop sending you weapons, then you’re not actually pushing for a ceasefire, you’re just playing with words.”
A Generational Shift
While more than 90 members of Congress have now called for a ceasefire in Gaza — although with conditions or caveats that rendered many such calls empty — most have not signed onto the only piece of legislation in Congress calling for one.
Since Bush first introduced the resolution with 12 original co-sponsors, six other members have signed on. Another resolution denouncing calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, introduced in March by Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., meanwhile, has 18 co-sponsors.
The issue has also greatly motivated political donors. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent millions to oust Bush and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who was an original co-sponsor on Bush’s ceasefire resolution. AIPAC and its super PAC, United Democracy Project, spent more than $100 million on primaries this cycle, making Bush and Bowman’s races two of the most expensive House Democratic primaries in history. The group has targeted members of Congress who have highlighted human rights violations in Israel and called on the U.S. to place conditions on military aid.
Bush worries that AIPAC’s influence will have a chilling effect on legislators moving forward. “With the attacks from AIPAC, I don’t know what that’s gonna look like in the new Congress. I don’t know what that’s gonna look like when new resolutions are brought forward, after Jamaal and I are gone, as people are thinking about their next elections. I don’t know how that changes. I’m just hoping that people make the decision that it has to be people over their campaign coffers, it has to be human lives over our positions.”
Despite the movement’s setbacks in Congress, activists like Araabi argue that something fundamental has shifted among Democrats on the Hill. The broad popular consensus among both parties over Israel has shifted, he said, “in ways we probably haven’t seen in a generation in politics.”
Miller, of JVP Action, noted that the movement’s demands are showing up even in the center of U.S. politics. “We’re seeing for example New York Times op-eds by people like [Nicholas] Kristof that are talking about how Biden has become the arms supplier for the flattening of Gaza,” she said. “That is the moment when we as movements need to double down on the demand and organize even harder, because we’re finally starting to break through.”
The lack of policy change from the Biden administration is not a knock on the movement, Miller said. People speaking out against the war in Gaza have faced repression across college campuses, in workplaces, the courts, and in the media. “State power is operating with this brute force of repression because they are unable to argue with or undercut the moral clarity of what our movements are saying,” Miller said. “It’s a sign that what we are saying is catching on.”
When Congress reconvenes in November, the Senate will take up the Sanders resolution to block the $20 billion weapons sale proposed in August. Bush said a vote on the legislation is an important next step for Congress. “I do think that that is a critical move when we’re looking at what all we can do to end this cycle of violence,” Bush said, “and sending this clear message that the U.S. can’t continue to fund military action.”
