Biden Admin Says 5 Israeli Military Units Committed Human Rights Abuses, But Won’t Lose US Aid

Last updated on August 7th, 2024 at 04:29 pm

The U.S. State Department has concluded five Israeli military units are responsible for various human rights abuses, but the U.S. won’t cut these units off from military assistance at this time.

“After a careful process, we found five Israeli units responsible for individual incidents of gross violations of human rights,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said at a Monday press conference.

Patel said all of the human rights violations occurred prior to the current Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip after Oct. 7.

The State Department evaluated these Israel Defence Forces (IDF) units to determine if they should lose U.S. support. A pair of U.S. statutory provisions, known as the “Leahy Laws,” stipulate that the U.S. government cannot provide assistance to foreign military units when there is credible information implicating those units in the commission of gross violations of human rights.

Patel said these Leahy Laws prohibitions will not apply to the five IDF units at this time.

“Four of these units have effectively remediated these violations, which is what we expect partners to do. It is consistent with what we expect all countries whom with we have a security relationship with,” he said. “For a remaining unit, we continue to be in consultations and engagements with the Government of Israel.”

Patel didn’t identify the IDF units in question, nor did he elaborate on the allegations they face for human rights abuses.

The Guardian reported one of the IDF units that faced cut off from U.S. aid was Netzah Yehuda, an IDF unit that was specially established to accommodate the strictures an Orthodox Jewish sect known as Haredi. The IDF unit has attracted members of the Hilltop Youth, a religious nationalist movement of West Bank settlers.

In 2022, Haaretz linked Netzah Yehuda members to the death of an elderly Palestinian-American man named Omar Assad. Members of the IDF unit had detained Assad at a checkpoint and he later died of what may have been a stress-induced heart attack after they bound, blindfolded, gagged, and held him at a cold construction site for around an hour.

The IDF reprimanded three IDF officers in connection with Assad’s death and concluded his death was the result of “moral failure and poor decision-making” by the soldiers who detained him.

ProPublica reported earlier this month that a special State Department panel organized to consider Leahy Act decisions involving Israel, had recommended cutting certain IDF units off from U.S. aid, but that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had declined to act on their recommendations for months.

The ProPublica report raised an additional allegation that an unspecified Israeli Border Police unit had tortured and committed rape by an object on a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in 2021 after they suspected him of throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli security forces.

At an April 19 press conference, Blinken said he had made a determination about Israeli units under the Leahy Law framework and would provide more details “in the days ahead.” The following day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted “Sanctions must not be imposed on the Israel Defense Forces!” and said he’d contacted senior U.S. government officials to convince them not to sanction Israeli units.

At the State Department briefing, a reporter asked if the Leahy Law decision Patel announced on Monday reflected the determination Blinken had hinted at on April 19, or if sanctions decisions changed amid pressure. Patel said the determination Blinken hinted at was the conclusion that IDF units had committed gross human rights abuses, and not a specific set of U.S. actions in response to that determination.

“What we were speaking about was the gross violations of human rights. That’s what the – the Secretary was alluding to,” Patel said. “I will say that this process, though, with the Government of Israel broadly, continues to be ongoing, especially as it relates to this one unit.”