Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff went against what's in his best political interest to do what he thinks is right. Imagine that.
Jon Ossoff is a Georgian, a U.S. senator and a Jew. He also faces a tough re-election fight next year, perhaps against a popular Republican governor.
All of that and more set up a pretty easy decision for Ossoff last November, when the Senate was considering a series of resolutions to stop the sale of some — but not most — U.S. weaponry to Israel. The politically easy, obvious choice for Ossoff was to vote against those resolutions.
That was not the choice that Ossoff made.
Knowing that he risked the anger of friends, supporters and donors, knowing that it would create a breach with some in the Jewish community in which he had grown up, knowing that he might be risking his political future, Ossoff chose to vote in favor of those resolutions. As he explained at the time, his vote was a protest against Israel’s massive, disproportionate and indiscriminate retaliation in Gaza, using U.S. military equipment, that had killed tens of thousands of non-combatants and left hundreds of thousands close to starvation.
Set aside, just for a moment, whatever doubts you might have about Ossoff’s policy judgment. Consider instead how seldom we see a politician choose principle over politics in recent years. Consider how rarely we see those elected to leadership choose to do what he or she perceives as the right thing rather than the easy thing, the thing that might help guarantee their re-election.
Since those votes, the risk of a backlash has proved real. Prominent members of Georgia’s Jewish community have basically accused Ossoff of betraying Israel and their mutual heritage. Some former supporters have signed onto a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp, urging him to run against Ossoff next year.
“Should you decide to run in the 2026 election,” they wrote Kemp in the letter, “you would find no better friends, more loyal allies or stronger supporters than us and our community.”
Again, Ossoff no doubt expected such a response. Speaking on the Senate floor last fall, he explained why he had taken his course, and his remarks are worth quoting at some length.
“Our commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad,” Ossoff said. “But no foreign government is simply entitled as a matter of right to American weapons with no strings attached. No foreign government, no matter how close an ally, gets everything it wants, whenever it wants it, to use however it wants. It is entirely appropriate for the United States to insist that foreign powers use American weapons consistent with our interests, our values and our laws… To impose conditions on the provision of certain weapons to an ally, when necessary, is not a betrayal of that alliance, it is the pursuit of our national interest.”
He also had a message for Israel’s current political leadership, a message that many Israeli citizens have echoed in their own country.
“We should be disgusted by the spectacle of Israeli extremists running amok in the West Bank, sometimes with the protection of Israeli security forces, shooting and maiming goat herders and olive farmers and burning and seizing their land,” Ossoff said. “And the American people are rightly horrified by the lack of sufficient concern for innocent Palestinian life that has left so many children unnecessarily dead in Gaza, without limbs, or riddled with shrapnel …
“Yes, defend yourself,” he urged Israeli leaders. “Yes, defeat your enemy. But have mercy for the innocent, restrain your own extremists, and respect the interests of the United States.”
As Ossoff pointed out, the United States is required by its own laws to ensure that weapons it supplies to allies are used in ways that respect international law and U.S. interests. Such restrictions are common. We sell weapons to Saudi Arabia with the understanding that they cannot be used against Israel, just as we have put restrictions on Ukraine’s use of U.S. weapons against Russia, to ensure we don’t get drawn into a larger war ourselves.
If those restrictions are violated, there have been consequences, even against Israel. In 1982, President Reagan suspended shipment of cluster-type artillery shells to Israel because it had been using the shells in civilian areas during its invasion of Lebanon. Earlier, Reagan had suspended delivery of F-16 fighters to Israel for similar reasons.
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter canceled the sale of concussion bombs to Israel, because he feared they would be misused. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, President Nixon used similar threats to push Israel to accept a ceasefire. You could reach even further back, to the Suez Crisis of 1956, when Israel, France and Great Britain conspired to invade Egypt and take control of the Suez Canal. All three were U.S. allies, but they were stopped by the intervention of President Eisenhower.
Ossoff is correct, as was Reagan, Carter and other U.S. leaders. If we design the weapons, build the weapons and provide the weapons, we incur at least some responsibility for how those weapons are used. At least, that’s how the world worked when we used to care about such things, before we went from protecting the world from bullies to acting like bullies ourselves, before we decided that power meant that we could take what we wanted.
Israel has long been and remains an important U.S. ally and friend, and its continued security is paramount. However, if a close friend or relative is making decisions that will harm themselves or others, it must not be a betrayal to tell them so, to try to intervene for their own good.
To the contrary, silence under such conditions would be the betrayal.
Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
