Poll: Majority of Americans want to halt U.S. arms shipments to Israel

03/28/2024 / By Kevin Hughes

A recent poll conducted by the think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) showed that 52 percent of American voters want the administration of President Joe Biden to stop shipping weapons to Israel.

“Fifty-two percent of Americans agree that the United States government should halt weapons shipments to Israel until Israel stops its attacks on Gaza,” the think tank announced in a statement. (Related: Poll: Majority of Americans oppose sending weapons, supplies to Israel.)

The survey goes further than other recent polls that gauge how the American public feels about the situation in Gaza by asking specifically about halting U.S. arms shipments to Israel. Only 27 percent of respondents opposed an end to weapons sales to Israel, while 21 percent were unsure.

Furthermore, 62 percent of respondents who voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election agreed with the statement “The U.S. should stop weapons shipments to Israel until Israel discontinues its attacks on the people of Gaza.” Only 14 percent of Biden voters opposed the statement, while 24 percent were unsure.

On the other hand, only 30 percent of Trump voters supported halting U.S. weapons shipments to Israel. A majority opposed an end to arms sales and another 15 percent were unsure.

“A majority of Americans now believe that — due to the horrific humanitarian disaster in Gaza — the U.S. should block new arms shipments to Israel. I agree,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in response to the poll. “There should be no more U.S. money” for the “war machine” of Israeli extremist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he added.

U.S. has shipped Israel tens of thousands of arms since October 7 attack

Since the Oct. 7 attack, the U.S. has shipped tens of thousands of arms to Israel, including bombs and precision-guided munitions.

A lot of the shipments were sent out of the country using procedures that have largely allowed the Biden administration to avoid public scrutiny and have masked the total scale of the executive’s military support for Israel.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the Biden administration has organized more than 100 individual transfers of arms to Israel, but Congress was only officially notified of two of these shipments made under the major foreign weapons sales process, which are usually submitted to lawmakers for review and then publicly disclosed.

In both cases, Congress was notified but was able to avoid the review process by using an emergency rule. The rest of the transfers were approved by the White House using less public mechanisms available to the executive.

These procedures include drawing from existing U.S. stockpiles, accelerating previously approved deliveries and sending weapons in smaller batches so that they fall below the dollar threshold that requires the administration to notify Congress.

The handling of these weapons transfers underscores the turbulent attitudes within the Biden administration. On the one hand, even the president himself has grown increasingly frustrated with how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has handled the conflict.

On the other hand, the White House continues to fend off calls to use the threat of stopping the flow of weapons to press Netanyahu to reduce civilian casualties and increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The deep and already existing ties between Washington and Tel Aviv allowed the immediate surge in weapons shipments to Israel after Oct. 7. Israel receives more than $3 billion in taxpayer-funded military aid every year from the United States. There are currently over 600 active cases of potential military transfers or sales between the U.S. and Israel, worth more than $23 billion.

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Watch the video below to learn why the U.S. sells weapons to over 100 countries around the world.

This video is from the GalacticStorm channel on Brighteon.com.