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New Low for Fetterman: Senator Privately Urged Pardon for Netanyahu
"For someone who claims to care about hostages, going to bat for a leader who sacrificed them for his own political survival... is the height of cynicism," said one Israeli critic.
Dec 11, 2025
US Sen. John Fetterman recently asked Israel's president to pardon Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is on trial in his country for alleged bribery, fraud, and breach of trust—Talking Points Memo revealed on Thursday.
In a previously unreported December 2 letter sent to Israeli President Isaac Herzog and obtained by TPM, Fetterman (D-Pa.) asserted, “In a world this dangerous, I question whether any democracy can afford to have its head of government spending valuable hours, day after day, in a courtroom rather than the situation room."
“I believe there is a strong case to be made for a pardon—not to erase the past, but to secure the future," Fetterman added.
Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump have also asked Herzog to pardon the beleaguered Israeli prime minister, who in addition to facing domestic criminal charges is also a fugitive from the International Criminal Court, which last year issued a warrant for his arrest for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
Scoop, w the incomparable @kateriga.bsky.social: John Fetterman asked Israel's President to pardon Netanyahu in a previously unreported letter talkingpointsmemo.com/news/fetterm...
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— Josh Kovensky (@joshkovensky.bsky.social) December 11, 2025 at 10:03 AM
Fetterman has taken more than $370,000 in campaign contributions from the pro-Israel lobby, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, according to AIPAC Tracker. He has been an ardent supporter of Israel's US-backed genocidal war on Gaza, which has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing and 2 million others forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
In addition to repeatedly opposing calls by progressive members of his own party for an arms embargo on Israel, Fetterman has amplified Israeli claims regarding the war, and even giddily accepted a silver-plated beeper gifted by Netanyahu following the September 2024 pager bombings that killed at least 20 people in Lebanon, including children.
Asked Thursday about his letter to Herzog, Fetterman said, "I fully support it" and called the TPM's reporting "a pointless distraction."
“I know you guys use things like leaks, but I don’t know who did that," he told TPM reporters Kate Riga and Josh Kovensky, who broke news of the letter.
Responding to theTPM article, Israeli journalist Etan Nechin said on social media that "for someone who claims to care about hostages, going to bat for a leader who sacrificed them for his own political survival... is the height of cynicism"—a reference to allegations that Netanyahu prolonged the war, and thus the release of the more than 250 Israelis and others abducted by Hamas during the October 7, 2023 attack, in order to delay his corruption trial.
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When Orders Cross the Line: Why US Troops Must Refuse an Illegal War in Venezuela
A soldier’s oath is to the Constitution, not to unlawful commands. If the United States launches a ground invasion of Venezuela without congressional authorization or international sanction, service members have a duty to say, “No.”
Dec 11, 2025
Every man and woman who enlists in the United States Armed Forces raises their right hand and swears a solemn oath. It is a ritual of profound transformation, marking the passage from private citizen to guardian of the Republic. Yet buried within the cadence of those familiar words lies a paradox that has haunted battlefields from the Ardennes to the Euphrates. We swear to obey the orders of officers appointed over us, yes—but first, we swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
That order of precedence is not accidental. In the American military tradition, loyalty to principles supersedes loyalty to any person, rank, or administration. This hierarchy of allegiance creates the most difficult, perilous, and essential duty a service member holds: the duty to refuse an unlawful order.
Today, that duty is no longer theoretical. When political leaders announce intentions to “soon” strike Venezuela on land, they are not merely rattling sabers—they are proposing an act that would be illegal under both US law and international law. The Constitution vests Congress, not the president, with the authority to declare war. Absent congressional authorization, a unilateral ground invasion would be unconstitutional. Under the United Nations Charter, such aggression would also violate international prohibitions against war absent self-defense or Security Council approval. To obey such a command would not be discipline; it would be complicity in a crime.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) is explicit. Article 90 requires obedience only to lawful orders. This distinction is the firewall between a professional military and a Praetorian Guard or armed mob. A lawful order relates to military duty and promotes the well-being of the unit. An unlawful order—one that directs a crime, violates the laws of war, or targets civilians—is not an order at all. It is a solicitation of conspiracy. To obey such a command is not fidelity to the oath; it is betrayal of it.
A military that follows orders without question is a weapon that can be turned against the very people it was built to protect.
The ghost of Nuremberg hangs over every discussion of this duty. Following World War II, the United States led the world in establishing that “I was just following orders” is no defense for atrocities. We hanged men who claimed they were merely cogs in a machine of state violence. We cannot, morally or legally, hold our enemies to a standard we refuse to apply to ourselves. If we demand recognition of human rights, our own bayonets must be clean.
We have our own examples of this precipice. In 1968, amid the horror of My Lai, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr. saw American troops slaughtering unarmed Vietnamese civilians. He did not follow the flow of the operation. He landed his helicopter between villagers and advancing Americans, ordering his gunners to fire on his countrymen if they continued the massacre. Thompson was treated as a pariah for years, but today he is recognized as a paragon of military ethics. He understood his oath was not to the madness of the moment, but to the enduring values of the nation he served.
We must acknowledge the terrible weight this places on the individual soldier, marine, sailor, or airman. In the fog of war, where adrenaline spikes and intelligence is imperfect, distinguishing lawful from unlawful orders is agonizing. A soldier is trained to react instantly; hesitation is often synonymous with death. Asking a 19-year-old lance corporal to act as a constitutional jurist in the heat of battle is an immense demand.
Yet it is a necessary one. The complexities of modern conflict—counterinsurgency, urban warfare, domestic support operations—blur the lines between combatant and civilian. In these gray zones, the moral compass of the individual service member is often the only safeguard against atrocity.
Furthermore, domestic political turmoil raises the stakes. Should the military ever be called upon to act on American soil in ways that violate constitutional rights, the “duty to refuse” moves from theory to the final safeguard of democracy. The Founding Fathers feared a standing army for this reason; they mitigated that fear by tethering loyalty to law, not leaders.
We must train for disobedience as rigorously as we train for obedience. Troops must understand that refusal to violate the law is not mutiny, but fidelity. A military that follows orders without question is a weapon that can be turned against the very people it was built to protect. A military that thinks, judges, and holds the law above rank is the shield of a free republic.
The uniform does not silence conscience. When the order comes to cross the line—to torture, to target the innocent, to invade a sovereign nation without lawful authority—the American soldier has a duty to stand firm, look their commander in the eye, and say, “No.” In that moment, they are not breaking ranks. They are keeping the faith.
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‘Don't Give the Pentagon $1 Trillion,’ Critics Say as House Passes Record US Military Spending Bill
"From ending the nursing shortage to insuring uninsured children, preventing evictions, and replacing lead pipes, every dollar the Pentagon wastes is a dollar that isn't helping Americans get by," said one group.
Dec 10, 2025
US House lawmakers on Wednesday approved a $900.6 billion military spending bill, prompting critics to highlight ways in which taxpayer funds could be better spent on programs of social uplift instead of perpetual wars.
The lower chamber voted 312-112 in favor of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2026, which will fund what President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans call a "peace through strength" national security policy. The proposal now heads for a vote in the Senate, where it is also expected to pass.
Combined with $156 billion in supplemental funding included in the One Big Beautiful Bill signed in July by Trump, the NDAA would push military spending this fiscal year to over $1 trillion—a new record in absolute terms and a relative level unseen since World War II.
The House is about to vote on authorizing $901 billion in military spending, on top of the $156 billion included in the Big Beautiful Bill.70% of global military spending already comes from the US and its major allies.www.stephensemler.com/p/congress-s...
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— Stephen Semler (@stephensemler.bsky.social) December 10, 2025 at 1:16 PM
The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) led opposition to the bill on Capitol Hill, focusing on what lawmakers called misplaced national priorities, as well as Trump's abuse of emergency powers to deploy National Guard troops in Democratic-controlled cities under pretext of fighting crime and unauthorized immigration.
Others sounded the alarm over the Trump administration's apparent march toward a war on Venezuela—which has never attacked the US or any other country in its nearly 200-year history but is rich in oil and is ruled by socialists offering an alternative to American-style capitalism.
"I will always support giving service members what they need to stay safe but that does not mean rubber-stamping bloated budgets or enabling unchecked executive war powers," CPC Deputy Chair Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said on social media, explaining her vote against legislation that "pours billions into weapons systems the Pentagon itself has said it does not need."
"It increases funding for defense contractors who profit from global instability and it advances a vision of national security rooted in militarization instead of diplomacy, human rights, or community well-being," Omar continued.
"At a time when families in Minnesota’s 5th District are struggling with rising costs, when our schools and social services remain underfunded, and when the Pentagon continues to evade a clean audit year after year, Congress should be investing in people," she added.
The Congressional Equality Caucus decried the NDAA's inclusion of a provision banning transgender women from full participation in sports programs at US military academies:
The NDAA should invest in our military, not target minority communities for exclusion.While we're grateful that most anti-LGBTQI+ provisions were removed, the GOP kept one anti-trans provision in the final bill—and that's one too many.We're committed to repealing it.
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— Congressional Equality Caucus (@equality.house.gov) December 10, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Advocacy groups also denounced the legislation, with the Institute for Policy Studies' National Priorities Project (NPP) noting that "from ending the nursing shortage to insuring uninsured children, preventing evictions, and replacing lead pipes, every dollar the Pentagon wastes is a dollar that isn't helping Americans get by."
"The last thing Congress should do is deliver $1 trillion into the hands of [Defense] Secretary Pete Hegseth," NPP program director Lindsay Koshgarian said in a statement Wednesday. "Under Secretary Hegseth's leadership, the Pentagon has killed unidentified boaters in the Caribbean, sent the National Guard to occupy peaceful US cities, and driven a destructive and divisive anti-diversity agenda in the military."
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