Bernie Sanders Goes to Bat For Thomas Massie’s Defund Israel Bill In Scathing Screed

Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions ranking member Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a hearing to examine reviewing recent events at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and implications for children’s health on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Wednesday he was supporting Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-KY) bill to completely cut the U.S.’s military aid to Israel.

In a lengthy tweet criticizing Israel’s military operations across the Middle East, Sanders accusing the country of committing a genocide in Gaza and called its war against Iran “reckless and illegal.” The tweet read:

Israel, like any other country, had the right to defend itself against the horrific terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 innocent people. But it did not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian population. It did not have the right to kill more than 73,000 Palestinians and wound over 173,000 more, the vast majority of them women, children and the elderly. It did not have the right to destroy virtually the entire infrastructure of Gaza, the schools, the health facilities, the water systems, wastewater plants, the electric grid that a civilian population depends on to survive. It did not have the right to destroy or damage 92% of all housing units in Gaza. In other words, Israel did not have the right to commit genocide. And it did not have the right to escalate its violence and annexation of the West Bank while the world’s attention was focused elsewhere.

Tragically, almost five months ago, Israel, with strong support from the Trump administration, launched a reckless and illegal war against Iran, a war that has killed thousands of people and left an already unstable region of the world even more unstable. That war expanded into Lebanon, where Israeli strikes have now killed more than 4,000 people and displaced some 20% of the entire Lebanese population. That is not “defending Israel”. These are regional wars of expansion and terror, waged without a clear strategy, and without an end in sight.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE CLEAR: NO MORE U.S. AID TO ISRAEL

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on an amendment introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie to cut the $3.3 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel. I strongly support this amendment.

Israel, like any other…

, Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) July 15, 2026

Sanders then went on to claim that “the American people are catching on,” citing polls that showed the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters, and over a third of Republican voters, “oppose sending military aid to Israel.”

“Congress must focus on the needs of their constituents, not an Israeli government that is undermining American values,” Sanders concluded. “I urge my colleagues in the House to vote yes on the Massie amendment.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, support among other key Democrats has been split, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) suggesting he would vote against the amendment.

The post Bernie Sanders Goes to Bat For Thomas Massie’s Defund Israel Bill In Scathing Screed first appeared on Mediaite.