Senate Democrats face key test on Israel as Sanders forces arms vote

senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT, is planning to force a vote on arms sales to Israel, a move that will prove to be a test of Democrats in the Senate whose position in the Jewish state has shifted in recent weeks.

Sanders, an independent of a routine conference with Democrats in the Senate, announced that he would force a vote on a pair of decisions to prevent the sale of $ 675 million to thousands of bombs and tools for bombs and stop selling “tens of thousands” of automatic rifles to Israel.

“American tax motivated spent tens of billions of dollars to support the extremist Netanyahu government,” Sanders said in a statement. “It is enough.”

Watch: Bernie Sanders interact with Iran Trump in an actual time in the “oligarchy fighting”

This is not the first time that Sanders pressured arms sales or military aid to the Jewish state. Since December 2023, just months after the conflict began between Israel and Hamas, the legislator has either submitted or forced the votes on decisions five times, and each of them aims to prevent military aid and billions of dollars in ammunition and weapons.

His last attempt comes after the photos revealed children who are starving in Gaza, in which he blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Watch: Senate members in Demi

President Donald Trump listens to a meeting with Crown Prince Bahrain Prince Salman bin Hamad Al -Shatiya at the White House of Oval Office on July 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

“It is time late for congress to use the leverage we have – tens of billions in weapons and military aid – to demand Israel to end these atrocities,” he said.

The vote, expected late on Thursday, comes when the Senate Democrats have been subjected to a tune shift on Israel since the events of October 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out a brutal attack on Israeli soil.

Sanders’s recent attempt earlier this year, which sought to prevent more than $ 8 billion from arms sales, witnessed 15 democratic democraticists, while all Senate Republicans voted against it. Although decisions are likely to fail as his previous attempts are made, more Democrats are expected to vote by him.

Israeli officials object to the United Nations Security Council resolution

The majority leader of the Senate, John Thun, spoke to the right as a majority in the Senate, Senator John Paraso, R and Iu, listening during a press conference after a lunch for the Republican Policy in the weekly Senate in the American Capitol July 22, 2025, in Washington. (Getty Images/Alex Wong)

Earlier this week, 40 Democrats in the Senate wrote to Foreign Minister Marco Rubio and the United States Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkev and called on the administration to “” widespread expansion of humanitarian assistance and services throughout the Gaza Strip. “

Republicans in the Senate blamed the reported conditions in Gaza on Hamas, where some called for more food aid on its way to the Gaza Strip. President Donald Trump has pledged that more food centers managed by Israel would come.

Click here to get the Fox News app

The majority leader of the Senate John Thun, Rurawi, said that he shares Trump’s view and that there is a desire to “meet that need and reduce this pain.”

“But you also have to understand that when you get a terrorist group like Hamas working in that region, it objects and turns many of these food aids that are going there,” he said. “This is the challenge that the Israelis face. This is the challenge we face and other countries around the world.”