22 Democrats Join GOP to Block Lebanon War Powers Resolution, Enabling Netanyahu's Sabotage of US-Iran Ceasefire
"The United States is not a bystander to these war crimes. It's an active participant," said the resolutions sponsor Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
Nearly two dozen Democrats joined almost every Republican on Tuesday to vote down a war powers resolution that would have halted US military participation in Israel's assault on Lebanon, which is threatening to derail President Donald Trump's peace negotiations with Iran.
"More than 1.3 million people have already been forced to leave their homes or be killed, with the Israeli military telling them they will not be allowed to return," said the resolution's sponsor, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), on the House floor Tuesday. "Eighty-one Lebanese neighborhoods have been violently depopulated and demolished—erased from the map entirely."
Along with Republican Reps. Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.), the resolution received support from 187 Democrats on Tuesday, more than double the number who supported a similar resolution introduced by Tlaib earlier this month.
Despite top House Democrats, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) and Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (NY), giving rhetorical backing to the resolution this time around, The Intercept reported that they did not formally whip the vote.
Twenty-two Democratic hawks joined the GOP to vote against ending cooperation with Israel's war, which has killed more than 4,000 people since March.
Among them were a clique of Democrats who have signed on to the centrist "Promise to America" aimed at countering the momentum of progressive and democratic socialist candidates within the party—including Reps. Donald Davis (NC), Laura Gillen (NY), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Adam Gray (Calif.), Susie Lee (Nev.), and Tom Suozzi (NY).
Others include favorites of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), including Reps. George Latimer (NY), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), and Brad Schneider (Ill.), who have each received over a million dollars from it and other pro-Israel lobbying groups over their careers, according to FEC reports reviewed by Track AIPAC.
Other Democratic opponents include Reps. Steny Hoyer (Md.), Greg Landsman (Ohio), Jared Moskowitz (Fla.), Donald Norcross (NJ), Jimmy Panetta (Calif.), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), Brad Sherman (Calif.), Darren Soto (Fla.), Norma Torres (Calif.), Juan Vargas (Calif.), and Marc Veasey (Texas), many of whom have also received extensive support from the lobby.
As voting began on Tuesday afternoon, Lebanese-American journalist Rania Khalek said that "how people vote on this is a big indicator of who is bought and paid for by the war machine and Israel lobby."
In a comment to Axios, the staunch pro-Israel centrist Golden justified his vote against the measure by claiming that "to the best of my knowledge, we're not engaged in a conflict with Lebanon."
Latimer made a similar statement on social media, claiming that the resolution was only good for "messaging" since the US did not have any active troops in Lebanon.
But Tlaib argued on the House floor that "the United States is not a bystander to these war crimes. It's an active participant."
"The United States is currently engaged in illegal and unauthorized hostilities supporting the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in violation of the War Powers Act," she said. "The Trump administration is providing intelligence, coordinating strikes, demonstrating overt command over the Israeli military decisions, including greenlighting specific Israeli attacks and operations."
Other supporters of the resolution emphasized that ending Israel's occupation of Lebanon is a precondition for ending Trump's war with Iran.
"Ending Israeli military action in Lebanon is a key part of ensuring that the negotiation process with Iran continues and peace prevails in the Middle East," said Rep. Betty McCullom (D-Minn.).
The memorandum of understanding signed by the US and Iran earlier this month states that, for peace to be achieved, it must be implemented on "all fronts," including in Lebanon.
Iranian negotiators have repeatedly emphasized that they will not allow Trump to pull back from the war he's desperate to end unless Israel fully withdraws troops from Lebanon, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has emphatically refused to do.
Janet Abou-Elias, a researcher at the Democratizing Foreign Policy Project at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Common Dreams earlier this month that without US military participation, Israel could likely continue its occupation “only for a limited period of time."
Just Foreign Policy, an anti-war group that has agitated for the passage of Tlaib's war powers resolution, lambasted the 22 Democrats who voted against it.
"These 22 fringe House Democratic hawks revealed today that they don't actually want the Iran War to end," the group wrote in a post to social media. "By failing to end US participation in the Israeli war in Lebanon, they are undermining a peace deal."
Noting that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has caused oil prices to spike and inflation to ripple across the economy, the group said these Democrats were "keeping prices high for Americans."
Just Foreign Policy's executive director Erik Sperling told The Intercept that although the resolution did not pass, the vote signaled that things were moving in the right direction.
“Democrats have been pretty unified about speaking out against the killing of innocents and all of the harm by the Iran War, but there has been less vocal outrage about the mass killing and occupation in Lebanon,” Sperling said. “This is just an important signal that Democrats are aware of the way the Lebanon war is a humanitarian crisis and is the key roadblock to ending this war and delivering the peace that Americans are demanding.”
