Every person deserves to live with safety, dignity, and freedom. That is true for Israelis, and it is true for Palestinians. No family should have to fear rockets, bombs, terrorism, or starvation. Lasting peace will only come from providing the safety and security of all people in the region.
The October 7th terrorist attack by Hamas was a horrific crime that shocked the world’s conscience. Hamas murdered more than a thousand people including children, grandparents, young people at a music festival celebrating peace. But nothing about self-defense justifies the right to wage a war without limits. Under the direction of the Netanyahu Government, thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians have been killed. Hospitals and schools were bombed. An entire population displaced, without food, medicine or humanitarian aid. Destroying entire communities and starving civilians will not make anyone safer. It will only deepen trauma, and push peace farther out of reach.
We can’t continue to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It’s a moral atrocity, and it’s being carried out with American weapons, paid for with American tax dollars. Those are dollars that should be funding schools, healthcare, and childcare here in Maine and across this country, not on bombing innocent civilians. Starving children and flattened hospitals don’t make Israel safer, and they don’t make America safer. They betray the values both our countries claim to stand for.
In the Senate, I’ll vote for Bernie Sanders’ Block the Bombs Act to stop sending offensive weapons that are being used against civilians. And I’ll push America to actually use our leverage with the Israeli government. Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East, and that alliance is exactly why we have leverage that we’ve been refusing to use. That means enforcing the ceasefire in full, conditioning military aid on compliance with U.S. and international law, surging humanitarian aid into Gaza, and putting real diplomatic muscle behind a future where Israelis and Palestinians both live in security, dignity, and freedom. Hamas has no place in that future. It must disarm, and it can never be allowed to govern Gaza again. And I know ordinary Israelis want this over too. For two years, Israeli families filled the streets night after night, demanding their government bring the hostages home and end the war. They deserve leaders in Israel and in America with the courage to deliver the peace they’ve been asking for.
That future is impossible while illegal settlements keep expanding across the West Bank. Settlement expansion and rising settler violence against Palestinian families are erasing the possibility of a Palestinian state, and Washington’s silence has made us complicit. I’ll oppose any American support for settlements or annexation, and I’ll back sanctions on those responsible for settler violence.
I can make these commitments because I answer to no one but you. I will never accept donations from AIPAC. I’ve spent my career fighting the corrupting influence of big money in our politics, and I’m not about to let it dictate matters of life and death. On this, like everything else, I’ll only be accountable to voters.