Statement on U.S. President Donald Trump’s Heavy Weapons Deal with Israel

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention is appalled by the proposed sale of $2.8 billion in heavy weapons to Israel that was announced by U.S. President Donald Trump on 15 September 2026. The sale would take place via the U.S. Foreign Military Financing mechanism, which allows foreign countries to use U.S. taxpayer dollars to purchase weapons from U.S. companies. This arms transfer is one of the largest transfers of heavy weapons to Israel in U.S. history. It is out of step with American public opinion and constitutes a direct threat to international peace and security. The world must respond appropriately to a threat of this level.

Due to the ongoing genocide against Palestinians, Israel’s standing among Americans is at an all-time low. A recent February 2026 Gallup poll showed that Americans hold greater sympathy for Palestinians (41 percent) than for Israelis (36 percent) for the first time in history. Thirty percent of Americans (including half of all Democrats) believe Israel is committing genocide, compared with only 20 percent who believe it is not and 50 percent who say they do not know enough to make a determination. According to the Institute for Global Affairs, only 16% of Americans support U.S. weapons transfers to Israel without restrictions. 38 percent believe that all weapons transfers to Israel should be stopped while another 24 percent approve of weapons transfers to Israel only if there are strong restrictions on how they can be used.

U.S. Representative Gregory Meeks, the ranking democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has placed a formal hold on the proposed arms package out of concern over Israel’s potential use of heavy weapons against civilians, but analysts expect the Trump Administration to bypass any congressional opposition as it has done in the past. In that case, Congress would need to pass a Joint Resolution of Disapproval (JRD) by a two-thirds majority to prevent the arms sale, something that is hardly conceivable in today’s political climate and so close to a critical election.

The proposed sale, while not the largest in terms of the dollar value of the weapons, is among the largest single transfers of heavy weapons to Israel in U.S. history. It includes 20,000 MK-84 bombs, 20,000 BLU-117 bombs, and 20,000 I-2000 penetrator warheads. This amounts to 60,000 bombs in the 2000 pound class of weapons. Together they weigh about 54,400 tons. For reference, according to Al Jazeera, the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo in 1945 used 1,600 tons of bombs. The arms transfer would equal the total weight of all bombs dropped on Berlin in World War II and one-third of all bombs dropped on Japanese islands. Although the deal would be another windfall for U.S. weapons manufacturers, profit cannot be the only explanation for the U.S. President’s proposal.

To make matters worse, the U.S. has already transferred almost $10 billion in weapons to Israel since President Trump took office. This includes 35,000 MK-84 and BLU-117 bombs.

Israel has already used MK-84 bombs in Gaza and Lebanon to destroy entire buildings and kill dozens of people in pursuit of single individuals. According to a New York Times investigation, the Israeli army detonated the same bombs “routinely” in areas where the Israeli government instructed civilians to move for safety in the first six weeks following 7 October 2023. In response, the Biden Administration paused all sales of 2,000 pound “dumb” bombs to Israel in April 2024. President Trump reversed Biden’s policy once he took office.

The arms deal closely follows several proposed arms deals with U.S. ally Saudi Arabia that also include 2,000 pound bombs.

Chillingly, it also closely follows the remarks of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir in mid-August of 2026 calling for the killing of scores of Palestinians nightly in Gaza, as “[t]here are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.” The Lemkin Institute published a statement at the end of August condemning his remarks as more evidence of incitement to commit genocide within the Israeli leadership.

This arms deal comes as President Trump faces a possible electoral debacle in the U.S. in November, as midterm elections threaten to destroy Republican control of the U.S. Congress. The President’s panic is obvious. He recently promised $5,000 to every American if the Republicans maintain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate after the midterms and sent U.S. Vice President JD Vance out to beg Americans to “give us another chance, or give us another couple of years.”

The announced arms deal raises so many alarms because of the lethality of the weapons, the likelihood that Israel will use them against civilians as it has in the past, and, importantly, the probability that they are meant to be used to prolong war against Iran and export it to other theaters. This latter goal serves several purposes in the U.S. and in Israel. The U.S. President faces a stark reckoning from the American people over the failure of his authoritarian and fascist policies while Israeli leaders have once again announced their state’s intention to commit genocide, as per the legal definition provided in the Genocide Convention. Given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own electoral concerns and his longterm interest in realizing the project of a “Greater Israel,” it stands to reason that both of these men would seek an expansion of regional war and genocide. Once again President Trump is supplying the means to protect Israeli-U.S. military dominance in the Middle East, but this time with a destructive power so frightful that it constitutes a threat to international peace and security and the lives of everyone in the region.

Over the past two years, Israel and the U.S. have purposefully and publicly shifted the overton window on how much impunity a state can enjoy to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The Lemkin Institute has watched, horrified, as Israel has repeatedly targeted civilians, aid workers, medical staff, and journalists, blocked aid, destroyed UN property, bombed hospitals, flagrantly violated ceasefires, manufactured a famine, and displaced wide swathes of people into overcrowded, unsafe areas—all with the support of the U.S. Earlier this year, the U.S. and Israel jointly violated the prohibition on the use of force in Iran, and soon afterwards Israel began employing some of its tactics developed in Gaza to the south of Lebanon.

Throughout all of this, world leaders and international institutions have refused to call Israel and the U.S. to account. They have handed Prime Minister Netanyahu a blank cheque to continue to violate the Genocide Convention, the Hague Conventions, and the Geneva Conventions. Now, he appears to be preparing to cash that cheque in an effort to achieve his dual goals of Greater Israel and increased Israeli influence over the Middle East, the South Caucasus, and corridors to Central Asia.

The world finds itself at the edge of a precipice. And while President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu drove us here, they did not do so alone. They were helped along the way by those who remained silent, those who profited quietly, those who twisted the narrative, and those who lent support publicly.

The blame does not lie solely with the genocidaires and the arms suppliers. It lies with the international community, which has repeatedly ignored the evidence of genocide in Gaza and neglected to put in motion the mechanisms that exist to stop Israel’s genocidal campaign. It lies with the corporations, universities, academics, NGOs, banks, and wealthy individuals who have continued to profit from income and investments tied to the Israeli government and the Israeli military. It lies with the mainstream news media organizations who have used passive language to downplay Israel’s responsibility for its crimes and who have minimized the suffering of Palestinians and repeatedly invoked the spectre of Hamas when reporting about Israel’s genocidal actions. It lies with the world leaders who have stood by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s side, tacitly or explicitly lending support to his genocidal actions, eschewing the most basic of moral standards.

It is obvious what must happen next. Given the clear signs of a serious risk for escalating mass atrocity, State Parties to the Genocide Convention have an obligation to take action to prevent the U.S. and Israel from using these weapons to continue to commit genocide in Palestine and to expand destruction to the rest of the Middle East, ushering in what will most certainly become a World War.