Jeff Merkley
D · U.S. Senate, Oregon · Tier 4
Tier 4, “Critical / conditions aid”
Voted Yes on all nine Sanders arms-disapproval resolutions from November 2024 through April 15, 2026, and cosponsored seven of them — among the most consistent arms-block records in the Senate. In his own voice: until Gaza's civilians are fed, America should not send 'a single dollar or a single bomb to Netanyahu’s government.' But he explicitly supports continued funding for defensive systems 'like Iron Dome and David's Sling,' blocking only offensive arms, and does not use 'genocide.' He traveled to the Gaza border — twice barred by the Israeli military from entering Gaza itself — and says the US is complicit in Netanyahu’s starvation strategy. In September 2025, releasing a report with Chris Van Hollen on their trip to the Gaza border, he said, “The goals of the Netanyahu government are clear: to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians through a campaign of destruction and deprivation.” He has not called for a full arms embargo and is endorsed by J Street. He signed the June 2024 letter backing refugee priority status for Gazans with U.S. citizen or permanent-resident relatives and the October 2024 letter urging sanctions on Israeli ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir over settler violence. In 2025 he signed the July Van Hollen letter seeking an independent U.S. investigation into the killing of American citizen Saifullah Musallet by Israeli settlers, the July Welch–Van Hollen letter urging an end to U.S. funding for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the November Van Hollen–Reed letter of 11 senators pressing Secretary Rubio to account for the “many hundreds” of potential Leahy Law violations by Israeli military units in Gaza; in October 2025 he co-led a letter pressing the administration on Israel’s detention of Palestinian American teenager Mohammed Ibrahim, and he signed its February 2026 follow-up seeking accountability for his abuse and the January 2026 Welch–Khanna letter urging a stronger U.S. response to Israel’s moves to annex the West Bank. In March 2025 he also signed letters to the administration on the detention of student activists Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk. In August and September 2026 Merkley signed Tlaib’s bicameral letter demanding the release of 20-year-old US citizen Sama Safi from Israeli military detention and the Dexter–Ruiz letter seeking the release of Gaza pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya from Israeli detention without charge (Sep 8), and in a letter dated October 20, 2026 and released October 22 he joined Peter Welch and ten other senators in demanding the release of Abdalkareem Safi, an 18-year-old U.S. citizen held at Israel’s Ofer prison without charge, writing that detaining an American “in an Israeli military prison, without being informed of the allegations against him and without any opportunity to contest his detention, is a violation of international law and unacceptable conduct by a close ally of the United States.” He also cosponsors Coons’s S.5476 (September 2026), which would sanction foreign persons who have facilitated Israeli settlement construction in the E1 area of the West Bank. Announcing his cosponsorship on Sep 28, 2026, he cited “the organized strategy of harassment and violence settlers are inflicting upon Palestinians” and said the settlements “are designed to destroy the possibility of a future Palestinian state living peacefully alongside the state of Israel.” On Oct 21, 2026, during the olive harvest, he wrote that settlers “are assaulting Palestinian olive farmers in the West Bank and the journalists documenting the harassment,” and that “Inaction by the IDF gives settlers permission to continue their threats and violence.” In late June 2023 he went on a J Street delegation to Israel and the West Bank with Chris Van Hollen and Ben Ray Luján, and in a November 2023 letter urging Secretary Blinken to press Israel to stop settler attacks the three wrote that they had “personally visited Susya earlier this year,” an unrecognized Palestinian community in Masafer Yatta, and were “deeply moved by the villagers’ stories of displacement.” On the late-August 2025 trip he and Van Hollen also went into the West Bank, visiting the Church of St. George in Taybeh, whose outer wall settlers had set on fire in July, and meeting Mahmoud Abbas and the families of Palestinian Americans killed or jailed there; he said members of Congress should come “to witness and to listen and to carry the stories of injustice in our heart, but also in our advocacy back home.” Jewish Insider reported on Oct 23, 2026 that Merkley was among about 30 signers of a draft letter, led by Rep. Ro Khanna and gathering signatures through Nov 6, urging the negotiators of the 2027 defense authorization bill to strip its U.S.-Israel defense-technology cooperation provisions; the draft, which cites Israel’s conduct in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, says “These are not the actions of a government whose defense establishment should be granted deeper access to American military technology, nor rewarded with U.S. defense contracts,” and asks that any framework kept “carry human rights conditions consistent with those governing other United States security assistance.”
A 4, on one of the strongest arms-blocking records in the Senate. He voted for all nine Sanders arms-disapproval resolutions from November 2024 through April 2026, cosponsoring seven, voted No on the Israel–Ukraine–Taiwan aid package both times the Senate passed it in 2024, and says in his own voice that until Gaza's civilians are fed, America should not send a single dollar or a single bomb to the Netanyahu government. What keeps him from going further toward the critical end: he explicitly continues to support defensive systems like Iron Dome and David's Sling, has not called for a full embargo, and does not use 'genocide' in his own voice; his September 2026 statement on settlement sanctions keeps a two-state frame, a future Palestinian state “living peacefully alongside the state of Israel.”
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elect26 places 2026 midterm candidates on a six-tier spectrum, from 1 (most pro-Israel) to 6 (most critical of Israel).