Santa Barbara Congressmember Salud Carbajal voted in favor of an amendment to a House spending bill for the State Department that would have stripped $3.3 billion in offensive military assistance to Israel to protest the wholesale violence visited upon Gaza and Lebanon by Israeli armed forces at the direction of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. To date, Israel’s military response to the Hamas attack of October 7 has claimed the lives of 70,000 Gazans.
“We cannot continue to provide Netanyahu a blank check. I remain deeply opposed to how Netanyahu has conducted this war. His administration’s strategy has fueled a devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza and has resulted in the tragic loss of an inordinate number of civilian lives,” Carbajal wrote in a prepared statement. “While I have always been and will continue to be a steadfast supporter of Israel, I cannot support Netanyahu’s extremism, including his push for illegal settlements and condoning settler violence in the West Bank. These actions are untenable and harm the future security of both Israelis and Palestinians.”
As widely expected, the amendment — authored by Kentucky Republican Thomas Massei, a libertarian-minded, wild-hair political maverick — was defeated. The vote was 314 to 104, with Massei being the sole Republican to vote in favor of the measure. Perhaps most striking was that 103 Democrats voted for it; 98 voted against it.
Although largely regarded as a symbolic gesture, the vote reflects the growing moral revulsion within the Democratic Party faithful over Israel’s ever-escalating military posture in the region. Netanyahu — and the death toll inflicted by his government — has succeeded in alienating even staunch supporters of Israel like Carbajal.
Since the October 7 attack by Hamas, Carbajal has voted in favor of continued military aid to Israel despite growing criticisms — particularly from younger and more activist members of his party. In an interview before July 4, Carbajal noted that the Massei vote was soon coming up. At the time, he declined to state which way he would vote, stating he wanted to hear more what his constituents thought about it. From the constituents he’d heard from already, Carbajal said, the results were overwhelmingly and emphatically in favor of the amendment.
Within party leadership, the feelings over the Massei amendment were cautiously mixed. House minority leader Hakim Jeffreies announced that he was voting against the measure, but that he wasn’t going to twist any arms to make sure others did as well. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, by contrast, announced that she was voting for it.
Gaza has emerged as a galvanizing hot-button issue for many voters, especially younger ones. Recent primaries demonstrated there’s a palpable risk for Democratic candidates who espouse status quo support for Israel’s military policies.
Carbajal, a moderate liberal who has traveled to the Middle East twice on trips sponsored by pro-Israel political action committees, has been under increasing political pressure to take tougher steps to impose meaningful consequences on the Netanyahu government. Among his more vocal critics has been Marcy Winograd of the Central Coast Antiwar Coalition.
“I was pleased to see Congressman Carbajal honored his constituents’ wishes to stop supporting Israel’s crimes against humanity and I thanked him personally on social media,” she wrote. “I encourage all of us who have been calling his office, meeting with his staffers, showing up at town halls, and running against him in primaries to thank him as well.”
