Statement Regarding the Senate’s Vote on S.Res.852

A New Policy today released the following statement regarding the Senate’s vote on S.Res.852 - A resolution requesting information on Israel's human rights practices pursuant to section 502B(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.

Two years ago a Democratic Administration buried its head in the sand and refused to issue any meaningful criticism of Israel. Tonight, every single Senate Democrat bar one voted in support of a Resolution led by Senator Van Hollen (D-MD) to demand a report from the State Department on Israel’s human rights practices - on pain of a full cut-off of assistance to Israel should it fail to deliver that report. Though the Resolution failed to pass the Senate, the overwhelming Democratic support it received marks the crossing of a rubicon in terms of the party’s position on the U.S.-Israel relationship.

A New Policy also notes and welcomes Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) sole Republican vote in favor of the Resolution. Demanding accountability for American lives taken by foreign security forces should not be a partisan matter, and we do not believe it will remain one for long.

Tonight’s vote was both a long-overdue call by the Senate for the State Department to execute its most basic of responsibilities by seeking accountability for Americans killed by foreign security forces, and a clear rebuke of AIPAC’s Israel First agenda that prizes the impunity of the Netanyahu government over the lives of U.S. citizens.

The Resolution the Senate voted on today also highlighted Israel’s appalling practices of child detention under an Administrative system in which children as young as five years old have been torn from their families and thrown into a system in which the use of torture and sexual abuse are documented, and rampant.

This cannot continue. The U.S. cannot continue to be complicit in Israel’s wide-ranging human rights violations in the West Bank, in its wide-ranging war crimes in Gaza, or in its flagrant disregard for civilian life, including the lives of American citizens.

Change cannot come quickly enough - but tonight 47 Senators demonstrated that change is coming.

#    #   #