Two articles describe bills in Congress to shield Netanyahu from arrest and to increase secret weapons stockpiles in Israel.
Stefanik introduces legislation to prevent future NY officials from arresting Netanyahu
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), chair of the House Republican Leadership, is seeking to block threats by Zohran Mamdani, a New York state representative and the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should the premier come to the city.
Stefanik, a potential 2026 Republican candidate for New York governor, introduced legislation on Tuesday to prevent Mamdani from enforcing the International Criminal Court warrant against Netanyahu. (The court is an independent body in The Hague.)
Washington is not a party to the court, and Stefanik said her bill would “protect American sovereignty and prohibit radicals like Mamdani from illegally arresting the leader of our democratic ally Israel.”
The legislation would prevent state and local law enforcement officers from carrying out the warrant and arresting Netanyahu on a visit to New York City, where the United Nations is headquartered.
Mamdani has come under fire from the U.S. Jewish community after he declined to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” as antisemitic attacks spiked in the months following the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Jewish groups say that the phrase calls for violence against Jews.
While the state lawmaker has since said he would not use the phrase, he has endorsed the movement to boycott Israel. He also accuses the Jewish state of committing “genocide” in Gaza.
In a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 75% of likely Jewish voters viewed Mamdani unfavorably and supported Mayor Eric Adams over Mamdani, 42% to 21%.
House seeks to expand secretive arms stockpile used in Gaza war
A new bill would allow unlimited US weapons transfers to Israel with little oversight
By Connor Echols, Reposted from Responsible Statecraft, September 17, 2025
The House is poised to expand the use of a secretive mechanism for funneling weapons to Israel.
Hidden deep in a must-pass State Department funding bill is a provision that would allow for unlimited transfers of U.S. weapons to a special Israel-based stockpile in the next fiscal year, strengthening a pathway for giving American weapons to Israel with reduced public scrutiny. The House Foreign Affairs Committee is set to discuss the bill on Wednesday morning.
The stockpile — known as War Reserve Stock for Allies-Israel, or WRSA-I — is “the least transparent mechanism of providing arms to Israel,” former State Department official Josh Paul told Responsible Statecraft. Since Oct. 7, Israel has quietly purchased huge numbers of American weapons from WRSA-I, facilitating a wave of airstrikes that many analysts consider the most intense bombing campaign of the 21st century.
The transfer process is simple. When Israel asks for weapons from WRSA-I, the Secretary of Defense can approve the request without having to go through typical steps like notifying Congress or even the White House in advance. Then “Israel can just drive in, pull whatever it requires, and drive out,” said Paul, who now runs a lobbying firm called A New Policy, adding that payments for the weapons are “worked out or provided in the future.”
The legislation, crafted by committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-Fla.), would build on a 2024 law that temporarily waived restrictions on the value and type of U.S. weapons transferred to WRSA-I each year. (U.S. law previously limited such transfers to $200 million annually.) That law also gave the Secretary of Defense the authority to assess the value of arms transfers rather than relying on the fair market value of the article.
Even before these changes, the U.S. had already started taking advantage of WRSA-I to quietly fuel Israel’s war in Gaza. In the early days of the conflict, Biden administration officials appeared to dodge transparency rules by cutting up larger transfers from WRSA-I into smaller weapons packages that fell under the $25 million threshold for notifying Congress of the sale. This helps to explain how Israel has managed to prosecute the war in Gaza despite receiving few publicly acknowledged weapons sales from the U.S.
Some worry that these arms transfers could place additional pressure on U.S. weapons stockpiles, which have already been strained by American support for Israel and Ukraine.
According to Paul, the proposed expansion of WRSA-I risks creating “a significant drain on U.S. military readiness.”
The effort to expand arms transfers to Israel comes after a panel of United Nations experts determined that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The Israeli government rejected that claim, which it says relies “entirely on Hamas falsehoods.”
Notably, the bill also contains a provision that would eliminate all of the State Department’s reporting requirements, meaning that the department would no longer need to submit reports to Congress on issues like human rights abroad.
“Congressional oversight would take a very big hit if this were to pass as it exists now,” said John Ramming-Chappell, an adviser at the Center for Civilians in Conflict. “Congress and the public would have less information about U.S. foreign policy and its impact.”
Connor Echols is a reporter for Responsible Statecraft.
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