Outlawing Israeli Self-Defense

By Seth Mandel

Thursday, April 16, 2026

 

Yesterday’s Senate vote on Israel highlighted the utter uselessness of the term “defensive weapons.” It also shows why pro-Israel good faith is no match for anti-Zionist opportunism, especially in an era saturated with political propaganda.

 

Almost all Senate Democrats voted against the sale of bulldozers and anti-tunnel munitions to Israel. And the specifics here matter a great deal. Hamas’s battlefield innovations (and those of the wider net of Palestinian terrorist groups) have always been aimed at ballooning the death toll. Israel has been forced to innovate methods that would counteract Hamas’s ghoulish calculation.

 

Casualty reduction is the reason Israel wants the weapons at issue in yesterday’s vote. They are not, however, defensive weapons. And because they are not defensive weapons, Israel’s congressional opponents have a better shot at killing the sale—a fact to which last night’s roll call readily attests.

 

So: What does Israel need bulldozers for?

 

Their most common use by the IDF is to clear mines and IEDs (like homemade roadside bombs) and other deadly boobytraps. They are also useful in uncovering and destroying the tunnels used exclusively by terrorists and the hostages they kidnap.

 

And although obviously not a primary use, the bulldozers are also helpful during wildfires, when a nimble armored earth-mover can help stymie the flames’ path. All of these uses will be improved as Israel continues to make these vehicles more reliably remote-controlled.

 

Is it a “defensive weapon of war?” No, but it’s a bulldozer, not a fighter jet.

 

But the debate over the word “defensive” largely misses the point, because it was never about defensive weapons in the first place. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expressed her opposition to Iron Dome funding, which is undeniably purely defensive, she was responding to a DSA member who phrased it this way (emphasis added): “If the moment presents itself in Congress, will you commit to voting ‘no’ for any spending on arms for Israel, including so-called ‘defensive capabilities?’”

 

“So-called defensive capabilities” was a telling phrase, and AOC’s willing submission to the DSA’s demands foreshadowed last night’s vote on bulldozers and anti-tunnel munitions. The new talking point is that there’s really no such thing as purely defensive weapons.

 

Iron Dome is an umbrella. When Ocasio-Cortez walks under an umbrella in the rain, are we unsure who is protecting themselves from what? Only a lunatic would say the umbrella is an offensive capability deployed against the raindrops.

 

But that’s where we are. Those of us who have tried to find common ground with Israel’s critics have made a  serious mistake: We allowed for the division of offensive and defensive categories thinking it would at least protect the anti-missile system that stops rockets from falling on the heads of little children as they walk to school in Israel. We didn’t imagine that members of Congress would suggest those children are the aggressors in the conflict and therefore anything that protects them is an offensive weapon.

 

We should have seen it coming. The progressive idea of “colonialism” bears no relation to actual colonialism; it’s usage is solely to justify the killing of Jews in Israel no matter where they live. They’re considered occupiers even in Tel Aviv. Academic and NGO activists have been arguing that Israel has no right to defend itself—so how could anything Israelis deploy be considered defensive? “Defense” doesn’t exist for the Jewish state, according to this line of thinking.

 

Once you concede that non-defensive weaponry is on the table, Bernie Sanders and AOC and Elissa Slotkin and Chris Murphy merely adjust the category so that all arms are non-defensive.

 

In a broader sense, this simply means that Israel is deprived of the rights we usually accord to all other states. It’s another way of saying Israel has no right to exist, therefore anything that enables it to exist is evil, including mine-clearing and wildfire-fighting vehicles. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

 

The worst part is that the trend is clear: Unless something changes, this shameful moment in American history will be surpassed by an even more shameful moment next time this vote is taken. And anti-Israel Democrats will continue trying to chip away, bit by bit, at the Jewish state’s ability to defend itself from mass-casualty terrorism.