Democratic Senators Face Pressure on Israel Arms Sales Vote

Advocacy groups are pressuring top Democrats to back limits on arms sales to Israel ahead of twin votes planned by Sen. Bernie Sanders for this week, which would condemn two transfers of US weapons.

The votes on what the Senate calls Joint Resolutions of Disapproval would seek to bar a $150 million transfer of 1,000-pound bombs, and a $300 million transfer of military bulldozers. Neither resolution will pass the Senate. But a quirk of parliamentary procedure will allow Sanders to call the votes without the approval of Senate leadership, forcing each of the Senate Democrats to vote yes or no on both of the sales.

A long list of groups, including the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace and the liberal Zionist J Street, are now putting significant efforts into pushing Democrats to vote in favor of the two resolutions, capitalizing on a moment of widespread frustration over the Iran war, anger at Israel’s apparent attempts to scuttle the US-Iranian ceasefire through intense bombing of Lebanon, and growing skepticism of Israel among Democratic voters. The advocates hope to nail down the Democratic leadership on the issue. “We get people on the record, on a vote; something people will have to stand by as they seek reelection or any other office,” says Hamid Bendaas, communications director at the IMEU Policy Project, a pro-Palestine advocacy group that’s supporting the resolutions.

The push comes as liberal and progressive Democrats have taken harder stances against arms sales to Israel in recent weeks, including 2028 progressive presidential hopefuls like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Ro Khanna. Now, the pro-Palestine movement is looking to consolidate its gains, and extend them to the core of the Democratic party establishment. “What these votes offer is an organizing opportunity for all of us to show the Senators the broad gap between where they are, and what the base is demanding of them,” says Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action.

On Monday, JVP staged a sit-in on the street outside the Manhattan offices of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, to draw attention to the votes. The group says that police arrested around 100 activists after protesters blocked Third Avenue outside of the senators’ offices for more than half an hour on Monday afternoon.

In Washington, DC, meanwhile, a coalition that includes J Street, the progressive anti-Trump movement Indivisible, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council, sent a letter to senators on April 9th in support of both of the resolutions, linking the votes to Democratic opposition to the US-Israeli war on Iran. “We feel very strongly that if you oppose the US-Israel war in Iran, then you need to support these Joint Resolutions of Disapproval,” says Hannah Morris, J Street’s vice president of government affairs.

Sanders’s timing likewise seems aimed at pulling support from senators who opposed the Iran war, but have not yet voted to block arms sales to Israel. “I think the fact that these military articles are being considered right at the moment when this ceasefire is on knife’s edge is going to contribute to a very substantial vote in favor,” says Dylan Williams, vice president of government affairs at the Center for International Policy, which also signed the coalition letter.

This week’s votes will be the fourth round of similar votes forced by Sanders since November of 2024, with other votes taken in April and July 2025. The rules of the Senate allow individual senators to force votes on proposed arms transfer blocks, with no filibusters or amendments allowed. The number of Democrats voting in favor of the resolutions has climbed steadily, from 17 on one of the proposals raised for a vote in November of 2024, to 27 on a vote last July, representing a majority of the Democratic caucus. JVP Action’s Miller says her group is hoping for “something like 30 votes, if not more” in favor of the resolutions this week.

That would mean expanding the list of yes votes beyond the reliable progressives in the caucus to national security-focused centrists and mainstream liberals whose criticism of Israel has thus far been limited. Some centrists have already begun to move: Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Democratic moderate, missed the votes that Sanders forced in July, one of which would have opposed the sale of automatic rifles for use by the Israeli police, but said in a statement that she would have voted to block the transfers if she had been there. “It’s clear to me from my conversations with multiple Senate offices, including some who did not support the last Joint Resolution of Disapproval against arms sales to Israel last summer, that there is a shift happening,” says Josh Paul, co-founder of the nonprofit lobby group A New Policy, which signed the same coalition letter as J Street.

Hill insiders were wary of prognosticating about which Senators they think might flip. But eyes are on Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, another rumored presidential hopeful, who recently told Politico he would no longer take money from AIPAC—or any other single-issue PAC. Also under the microscope is Sen. Ruben Gallego, the Arizona Democrat, who missed the July votes but has grown increasingly critical of Israel in recent months. Even Sen. Chris Coons, the influential moderate from Delaware, has recently signaled an openness to conditioning aid to Israel. (No Senate offices responded to a request for comment about how they were leaning ahead of the planned votes.)

The Sanders resolutions could come to the Senate floor as early as Wednesday. The resolution on 1,000-pound bombs aims to block the sale of 12,000 bombs, part of a larger package of US bombs sales to Israel announced in March worth a total of $660 million. The federal notification of the sale doesn’t specify whether Israel will use its own funds or US funds to pay for the bombs, but Israel generally pays for the weapons it buys from the US government with military aid provided by US taxpayers. The resolution on military bulldozers, which Sanders first introduced in March of 2025, would block a large sale of D9 bulldozers manufactured by Caterpillar, which Israel has used to destroy Palestinian homes and infrastructure for decades.

At the JVP protest on Monday in favor of the two Sanders resolutions, hundreds of activists arrived outside the New York senators’ office building in standard Midtown office attire, then stripped off their Oxfords to reveal white t-shirts with anti-war slogans. Among the high-profile activists who were arrested blocking traffic were the prominent Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour, New York City Council member Alexa Avilés, and Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower who gave military documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks.

“We are seeing a moment when the overwhelming anti-war sentiment among the constituent base in this country has become so potent and clear that candidates and electeds are having trouble ignoring it,” says JVP Action’s Miller. “And so their political calculus is starting to shift.”