“These are misguided resolutions and if adopted would reinstate the failed policies of the Biden administration and would abandon America’s closest ally in the Middle East,” Republican Senator James E. Risch of Idaho and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on the Senate floor.

In a sign of mounting apprehension over Israel ’s war in Gaza, a majority of Senate Democrats voted in favor of resolutions to block U.S. weapons sales to Israel on Wednesday. Despite this growing support, the measures failed by wide margins in the Republican-controlled chamber.

Global outrage at the Netanyahu government’s actions has grown since the war began, and the suffering of children in the enclave has accelerated the disdain.

The hunger crisis in Gaza has many asking if Israel had a deliberate policy of starving civilians. Israelis say that was never the case, but an ignorance of Palestinian suffering allowed an inconsistent government policy to lead to a calamity.