Washington - Saba:
The US Senate on Wednesday rejected an attempt by Senator Bernie Sanders to block the sale of American bombs and firearms to Israel, although the vote showed a growing number of Democrats opposed to arms deals amid widespread hunger and suffering in Gaza.
Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has repeatedly tried over the past year to stop the sale of assault weapons to Israel.
The resolutions before the Senate last Tuesday would have blocked a $675 million sale of bombs, as well as shipments of 20,000 automatic assault rifles to Israel. Once again, these efforts failed to gain approval in the House, but 27 Democrats, more than half of the Democratic caucus, voted in favor of the assault rifle resolution, and 24 voted in favor of the bomb deal resolution.
These numbers are larger than any previous Sanders attempt; his highest-supported initiative last November received the support of only 18 Democrats.
The vote showed how the images of famine coming from Gaza are increasingly dividing the ranks of US lawmakers, who have traditionally overwhelmingly supported Israel.
Sanders said that Democrats are responding to "a large majority of the American people who are fed up with spending billions upon billions of dollars on an Israeli government that is currently starving children to death."
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