Congress is woefully out of step on the issue of Israel's invasion of Gaza.

Israel's bombings and incursions have killed more than 1,100 Palestinians, hundreds of them women and children. Meanwhile, nine Israeli soldiers have died and Hamas rockets have killed four Israeli civilians.

But this disproportionate response by Israel has received overwhelming support in Congress.

On Jan. 8, the Senate passed its resolution by unanimous consent, vigorously endorsing Israel's actions and blaming only Hamas.

The following day, the House of Representatives passed its own version of the resolution by a margin of 390 in favor to 5 against, with 22 voting "present" (presumably to register discomfort with the measure without voting "no"). This resolution, astonishingly, even blamed Hamas for all the Palestinian deaths.

This lopsided vote in Congress does not reflect U.S. public opinion, however. While polls continue to indicate a strong commitment among the American people to Israel's right to live in peace and security, there appears to be far less support for providing Israel with a blank check, such as defending Israeli violations of international humanitarian law. In contrast to the near-unanimous support by Democrats on Capitol Hill, a recent Rasmussen poll shows that Democratic voters, by a more than two to one margin, oppose Israel's disproportionate attack.

Why, then, is Congress so far behind American public opinion? And why are congressional Democrats ignoring their own voter base? It is not just the influence of the hard-line American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and others in the self- appointed "pro-Israel lobby." It is also because most elected officials have failed to recognize the dramatic shift in attitudes among ordinary Americans, particularly younger voters, who believe that, just as Israel should not be unfairly singled out for criticism, Israel should not be singled out as somehow exempt from international norms of behavior.

This growing opposition to unconditional U.S. support for Israel's massive assault comes not from any sympathy for the extremists of Hamas or from opposition to Israel's right to self- defense. It comes from the liberal mainstream of peace groups, human rights organizations, churches and the young activists who helped elect Barack Obama in November.

It also includes a growing number of American Jews who recognize that the large-scale killing of Palestinian civilians does not make Israel safer.

Few Democrats on Capitol Hill seem to be aware of this shift among the broad progressive populace and how non-representative of their core constituency they are on this issue.

Similarly, many of these younger progressive voters who support a more balanced policy toward Israel and Palestine probably don't realize just how far to the right many of their otherwise-liberal senators and representatives are.

This combination is probably why Congress continues to get away with supporting Israeli aggression. The problem may be less the power of AIPAC than the failure of the larger number of more moderate voices to mobilize comparable pressure on Congress.

The time to mobilize that pressure is now.

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Stephen Zunes is professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. Kevin Martin is executive director of Peace Action (www.peace-action.org ). The writers wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine.

(c) 2009, Stephen Zunes and Kevin Martin

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