Amy Klobuchar, the senior senator from Minnesota, appeared last month in a photograph with Benjamin Netanyahu. Wearing a tight-lipped smile alongside a bipartisan group of senators, she hardly seemed thrilled to be there. But there she was, posing with a man who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court and has been credibly accused of committing genocide in Gaza.

The picture, snapped as alarm was growing over looming famine in Gaza and Israel pursued its pitiless military assault on the enclave, struck me as a maddening but apt illustration of the yawning gulf between the steadfast pro-Israel stance of leading Democratic politicians and their voters. It was, sadly, par for the grisly course.

Then last week Klobuchar did something that genuinely surprised me: She voted in favor of a pair of resolutions put forward by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a leading critic of Israel’s prosecution of the war, that would block the transfer of key offensive weapons to Israel, including 1,000-pound bombs and automatic assault rifles.

She was joined in one of the votes by 24 other Democrats and two independents, a majority of the Democratic caucus. Many were seeking to block weapons for Israel for the first time. And not just any Democrats. The ranking members of crucial committees — Foreign Relations, Appropriations and Armed Services — voted to block the transfers as well. A number of notable moderates joined the vote, including one of the most vulnerable in the 2026 midterms, Georgia’s Jon Ossoff.

Predictably, like all the other measures to limit Israel’s warmaking with American weapons Sanders has tried to bring to the floor of the Senate, the resolutions failed. The entire Republican caucus, joined by the rest of the voting Democrats, voted them down.

It may sound strange to find hope in a failed vote, especially given the dire situation in Gaza. And yet I do. Klobuchar’s vote in particular seemed a meaningful change from a powerful and canny operator who is among the most ambitious of her generation of Democratic politicians. It was a signal, belated but significant, that the Democrats are finally shifting their position on Israel.