The US House of Representatives on Wednesday defeated an amendment to cut off aid to Israel, despite nearly half of Democrats supporting it, reflecting the growing rupture between the party and Israel.

The House voted 314 to 104 to defeat the measure, offered as an amendment to a State Department spending bill by Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a maverick who has made his disagreement with his party on Israel a signature issue and recently lost the GOP primary race to run for reelection in the November midterms.

Besides Massie, the only Republican to back the measure, 103 Democrats voted in favor, a sharp departure from previous years in which bills supporting Israel passed almost unanimously. Democrats on the party’s left flank have been strongly pushing to end US military aid to Israel entirely amid the midterm election primary campaigns, while its establishment wing wants to limit the assistance to solely defensive weaponry.

While 48 percent of Democrats backed Massie’s amendment, the figure was well below reported predictions that as high as 150 Democrats could vote for it.

The number was expected to be higher because the measure was certain to fail, allowing Democrats to vote against Israel without any practical policy consequences.

Enough Democrats still felt uncomfortable enough with the scope of Massie’s amendment that they decided to vote against it, even though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is overwhelmingly unpopular in the party.

Massie is a fiscal hawk who opposes all foreign aid, but he said he was also responding to the toll on civilians of Israel’s attacks on Hamas in Gaza. “There have been 70,000 casualties in Gaza, and I don’t think we should be part of that,” he said during House deliberations, without........

© The Times of Israel