A Year Since Their Ceasefire Resolution, Progressives Say Only an Arms Embargo Can Stop Israel

Creator: Mike Finn

Her call for a ceasefire was prescient. Now Rep. Cori Bush says the Biden administration must stop enabling Israel’s violence.

Akela Lacy, Jessica Washington Oct. 16

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.”

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 conference, press 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.