Providing for Congressional Disapproval of the Proposed Foreign Military Sale to the Government of Israel of Certain Defense Articles

Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise in support of Senator Sanders' resolutions. I will be voting for both of them.

On February 21, 2024, I wrote a public letter to President Biden, and I said: The Hamas attack on Israel is devastating and Israel faces threats from other adversaries in the region and we should help Israel defend its civilians, but we should do so only by providing defensive weapons to Israel and not offensive weapons.

Why defensive weapons?

We have long been a security partner of Israel. Those who follow the relationship understand there are threats to Israeli civilians that are very present because of actors in the region like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis; and Iran and Iranian-backed militias and Israeli civilians do face threats that warrant the United States providing defensive support.

But I took the public position more than 2 years ago now that it would be wrong to send offensive weapons to Israel, and that position was based on exactly the same reason, to protect civilians--protect Palestinian civilians, protect Lebanese civilians--to protect civilians. Offensive weapons delivered to Israel in the way they are using them, particularly bombs, are guaranteed to cause mass civilian suffering. That is what has happened in Gaza, and that is what is happening in Lebanon.

Anyone who has paid attention to this region just has to answer this question: Is more civilian death going to get us to the right place?

This is a region that has been replete with the deaths of civilians, and the U.S. taxpayer and this body should not be pouring gasoline or adding tinder to a fire where more and more civilians are in jeopardy.

So, since that public letter to President Biden, I have supported Senator Sanders and other resolutions before. If weapons are offensive in nature, the United States shouldn't be transferring them, and I will support the resolutions for that matter. We need to protect civilians. We don't need to pour gasoline on a fire in the region and accelerate more deaths of civilians.

I have received some outreach about this particular vote from some who say this is a vote to deny all military aid to Israel. That is not what this vote is about. This is about denying particular weapons that are offensive in nature.

Just to give you an order of magnitude, during this term of Congress, the President has noticed 27 different arms transfers to Israel; and with these two joint resolutions of disapproval, we have challenged 6-- 6 of those 27 arms transfers--as being offensive in nature. We have not challenged 21 of the arms transfers that are primarily defensive in nature. There has not been a single Senator who has brought up a challenge to the defensive arms sales because we want to protect civilian lives; but when weapons like this that are offensive in nature are guaranteed to lead to the deaths of civilians, I think it is appropriate to challenge them, and that is why I am going to support these resolutions.

I have also had some say that, if these resolutions succeed, the United States is reducing its support for Israeli defense. That is also not true. The support for Israeli defense is the result of a 10-year memorandum of understanding that has an annual allocation for Israeli defense that has been supplemented by a supplemental bill that was passed by this body in April of 2024. That amount of money, which is an annual allocation, gets drawn down by these transfers.

I would urge my colleagues to support the cessation of offensive weapons transfers. If this bill succeeds, it doesn't reduce support for Israeli defense by a single penny. It just means that Israel should request and the United States should consider transferring defensive weapons to enable Israel to defend its own civilians but not to carry out military action that would harm other civilians.

The principle of ``let's just stop the damage to civilians in the region'' seems to me to be overwhelming. If the deaths of civilians were accomplishing anything, we would have seen that accomplishment long before now. So stopping the transfer of offensive weapons seems to me to be the right thing to do not just for the United States security interests and the safety of our servicemembers in the region, but it is also the right thing to do to promote regional stability and the security of Israel.

For that reason, I will vote for the resolutions, and I appreciate my colleague for introducing them.

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