The defeat of Sanders’ resolutions laid bare a harsh political reality: even amid staggering civilian deaths in Gaza, Washington’s instinct is to protect its strategic alliances, not question them. The vote margins were not close. Democrats and Republicans closed ranks, signaling that bipartisan unity on Israel outweighs mounting legal and moral doubts about U.S. complicity in the war’s devastation.

Yet the failed effort did something his opponents did not intend: it dragged a deeply uncomfortable question into the center of American politics. How far should the United States go in arming an ally when the weapons are linked to flattened neighborhoods, starving families, and tens of thousands of dead? For many watching from Gaza to U.S. campuses, the Senate’s decision was not just a policy choice, but a chilling statement about whose lives carry weight in the halls of power