On Tuesday, the Senate voted down a resolution that would have set the stage for Congress to place conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel — quashing what has so far been the most serious effort on Capitol Hill to hold the U.S. ally to account for its brutal assault on Gaza.

Introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in December, the resolution would have required the State Department to submit a report to Congress about allegations of Israel committing human rights violations, and whether and how the U.S. played a role and responded to such acts.

In the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, President Joe Biden asked Congress to approve an additional $14 billion in aid to the country, whose retaliatory war on Gaza has killed more than 24,000 Palestinians.

“The Senators who lent their support to this resolution did so in spite of enormous political pressure,” O’Neill said, noting that, for decades, there has been a bipartisan status quo of not scrutinizing assistance to Israel.

Some Democratic senators who voted to kill the resolution told The Intercept they were concerned about Israeli human rights abuses, but they did not think Sanders’s proposal was the way to address them.

Asked if he thought Israel was doing enough to mitigate civilian casualties, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., told The Intercept that “they need to kill every Hamas member and anybody that dies in Gaza is a result of Hamas.” He voted against the resolution.

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