US progressives, supposedly pro Palestine, vote to fund Israel

For the second time this year the United States Congress voted to send Israel billions of dollars in military funding. Of course there’s nothing unusual about that specifically, but what is interesting is how progressives in Congress chose to coordinate their votes.

On both occasions, members of the so called squad, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Presley and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, either voted in favour of funding Israel or refused to take a concrete stance against it.

So do these self styled progressives actually support the Palestinian cause, or are they just all talk and trying to protect their careers, and political ambitions in Washington DC?

September 20th, 2021, New York, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, or AOC, proposed an amendment seeking to limit arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel.

This came on the cusp of the third anniversary of the murder of Saudi journalists and dissident, Jamal Khashoggi.

AOC’s amendment to block an arms sale to Israel, worth over $700 million in Joint Direct Attack Munitions, or JDAM bombs, comes four months after Israel used these very munitions, manufactured by Boeing, to kill Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians.

The offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press were also bombed during the Israeli onslaught against the besieged Gaza Strip in May, 2021.

In light of these events the amendments proposed by AOC not only seemed quite sensible but also drew support from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and applause from human rights and pro Palestine advocates.

This didn’t however stop the Israeli ambassador to the US from calling the congresswoman antisemitic for trying to restrict the sale of one weapon.

The next day, another good move from the progressives came when they removed the Iron Dome provision from a government spending bill. The proposal would have seen another additional $1 billion sent to the Israelis to replenish their rocket interception system.

House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, likely added the Iron Dome provision to the government spending bill in an attempt to win over support from Republicans.

This didn’t work, and without Republican support, the bill was destined to fail, it could only pass by a simple majority, if a handful of progressives in Congress agreed to it.