{"id":989492,"date":"2023-02-11T11:00:40","date_gmt":"2023-02-11T11:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=421446"},"modified":"2023-02-11T11:00:40","modified_gmt":"2023-02-11T11:00:40","slug":"israeli-army-battalion-puts-u-s-ban-on-funding-abusive-units-to-the-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/02\/11\/israeli-army-battalion-puts-u-s-ban-on-funding-abusive-units-to-the-test\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli Army Battalion Puts U.S. Ban on Funding Abusive Units to the Test"},"content":{"rendered":"

J<\/span>ust over a<\/u> year ago, soldiers belonging to a controversial, ultra-Orthodox unit of the Israel Defense Forces stopped a 78-year-old Palestinian American man on his way home from visiting a relative in the occupied West Bank. When the man refused to cooperate with an identification check \u2014 insisting on his right to go home \u2014 soldiers forced him out of his car, blindfolded him, and zip-tied his hands behind his back. They then dragged him to a nearby yard, where they left him lying face down on the ground, according to witnesses.<\/p>\n

Omar Assad had already stopped breathing<\/a> when the soldiers left him, a man detained alongside him told reporters<\/a>. When a doctor finally arrived, he found that Assad had been dead \u201cfor 15 or 20 minutes.\u201d An autopsy<\/a> found that he had suffered a fatal, stress-induced heart attack.<\/p>\n

The brutal death of Assad, a U.S. citizen who had retired to his home village near the Palestinian city of Ramallah after four decades in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sparked widespread outrage. B\u2019tselem, an Israeli human rights group, denounced the soldiers\u2019 \u201cutter indifference<\/a>\u201d in failing to provide first aid or call an ambulance; the U.S. State Department called Assad\u2019s death \u201ctroubling<\/a>.\u201d Following an internal review, the IDF itself acknowledged<\/a> that \u201cthe incident showed a clear lapse of moral judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel recently moved the unit involved in Assad\u2019s death out<\/a> of the occupied West Bank. But the soldiers\u2019 treatment of Assad was not unusual. While hardly the only ones accused of human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories, members of the Netzah Yehuda unit often committed gratuitous acts of violence, a former member of the unit told The Intercept in his first interview with an international news organization.<\/p>\n

The Netzah Yehuda battalion was originally set up to allow ultra-Orthodox Israelis to serve in the military. But over the years, the unit has attracted not only some of the most religious soldiers, but also a growing number of far-right extremists, including many settlers. Unlike other units, enlistment in Netzah Yehuda is voluntary; until recently, it was deployed exclusively in the West Bank, where its members were in daily contact with Palestinians living under occupation. As such, the unit \u2014 whose name is an acronym<\/a> for \u201cHaredi Military Youth\u201d \u2014 was known for getting \u201ca lot of action,\u201d the former member said.<\/p>\n

The ex-Netzah Yehuda soldier asked not to be identified because of the enormous social cost associated with publicly criticizing Israel\u2019s military. Since leaving the unit, he has come to reject the occupation and his own role in it. Netzah Yehuda has long been criticized in Israel \u2014 some senior political and military figures have even called for the unit to be disbanded<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 but testimonies from former members are rare. While The Intercept could not independently verify some of the incidents the former soldier described, he also spoke to Breaking the Silence<\/a>, an organization of Israeli veterans who gather testimony from soldiers in the occupied territories.<\/p>\n

The IDF did not answer a detailed list of questions for this story nor address the former soldier\u2019s allegations on the record. But in a statement to The Intercept, a spokesperson wrote that the Netzah Yehuda\u00a0unit was moved from the West Bank to\u00a0the Golan Heights \u201cto diversify the IDF\u2019s area of operation and accumulate operational experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spokesperson also\u00a0referred The Intercept to an earlier statement<\/a> in which\u00a0the IDF wrote that \u201cis considering filing indictments\u201d against the soldiers involved in Assad\u2019s death. \u201cAs part of the investigation, anomalies were found in the conduct of the commander of the checkup force and the commander of the soldiers that guarded the detainees,\u201d that statement read. \u201cIt was also found that it is not possible to establish a correlation between these abnormalities and the death.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n\"448A3359\"<\/p>\n

An ex-Netzah Yehuda member, who requested anonymity because of the enormous social cost associated with publicly criticizing Israel\u2019s military, poses for a portrait on Feb. 6, 2023.<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: Oren Ziv for The Intercept<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

U.S. Pressure<\/h2>\n

Even before Assad\u2019s death last January, Netzah Yehuda members had been accused of extrajudicial killings, torture, and beatings, among other abuses. In August, the unit made headlines after a video<\/a> of some members beating two young Palestinians went viral on TikTok. The IDF suspended the soldiers involved in that beating and opened a criminal investigation. It wasn\u2019t the first time: According to Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, Netzah Yehuda soldiers have been convicted<\/a> of offenses against Palestinians at a rate higher than those in any other IDF unit.<\/p>\n

But it was the death of Assad \u2014 which came only weeks before the killing by a different IDF unit of another Palestinian American, journalist Shireen Abu Akleh<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0that put the unit on the radar of U.S. officials. The incident prompted calls for the U.S. government to impose consequences on a foreign military it supports to the tune of $3.3 billion<\/a> a year. In particular, a growing<\/a> number<\/a> of critics have urged the Biden administration to apply U.S. legislation known as the \u201cLeahy Law,\u201d after recently retired\u00a0Sen. Patrick Leahy<\/a>, which limits the ability of the State and Defense departments to provide military assistance to foreign units that have a record of human rights violations. The law has never been applied to any units of the Israeli military, despite a number of cases \u2014 including the killings of several U.S. citizens<\/a> by Israeli forces \u2014 likely meeting its criteria.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe very least the US can do is to impose Leahy Law sanctions for the murder of an American against a repeat offender Israeli unit that has been killing and abusing Palestinians with impunity for years,” said Adam Shapiro, advocacy director for Israel-Palestine at Democracy for the Arab World Now, a U.S.-based human rights group focused on the Middle East and North Africa. DAWN also submitted a complaint<\/a> detailing a series of incidents involving the unit to the International Criminal Court, accusing its members and two of its commanders of war crimes. “While Netzah Yehuda might not be the worst abuser in the Israeli Army, its actions have been well-documented by Israeli and international media, offering a unique insight into the absolute unwillingness by Israeli governments to hold its soldiers accountable for violating international law and the Israeli army’s own rules of engagement,\u201d the group noted<\/a> last fall.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The State Department began looking into the unit\u2019s record following Assad\u2019s death, although officials would not confirm reports<\/a> that they had asked the U.S. Embassy in Israel to draft an internal report on the unit\u2019s conduct and begun interviewing witnesses. The IDF characterized the unit\u2019s recent move out of the West Bank and its redeployment to the Golan Heights as an operational decision. But many have pointed out that the move followed increased U.S. scrutiny of the unit\u2019s record. Israeli authorities have also opened a criminal investigation<\/a> into Assad\u2019s death and made a rare offer of compensation to his family \u2014\u00a0a signal, to some, that U.S. pressure was having an impact.<\/p>\n

The State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Israel did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story. At a press briefing<\/a> in December, State Department spokesperson Ned Price did not directly answer a reporter\u2019s question regarding calls to apply the Leahy Law to Netzah Yehuda but said, \u201cWe manage our security relationships around the world in the context of human rights and the rule of law and in accordance with U.S. legislation, including in this case with the Leahy vetting laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stanley Cohen, an attorney representing the Assad family in the U.S., told The Intercept that the family has repeatedly asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into Assad\u2019s death but has received no response. \u201cThe U.S. government has an obligation at this point to initiate a grand jury investigation or certainly a preliminary FBI investigation of what happened and why and how,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cThis is an elderly man, simply driving home, in a community filled largely with elderly Palestinians, many of whom are American Palestinians.\u201d (The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n

Cohen noted that the Assad family declined the Israeli government\u2019s offer of compensation and rejected \u201cIsrael’s interpretation that the family only cared about money and not justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn’t have to press the so-called nuclear button in order to get accountability.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

For Shapiro, of DAWN, there is no question that U.S. pressure played a role in the redeployment and the compensation offer, even if those measures fall far short of Leahy Law requirements. \u201cIt wasn’t just a random decision to move this unit,\u201d he told The Intercept. \u201cFor me, the biggest lesson of all of this is that when the U.S. does something even as minor as asking questions, there can actually be very positive results, though this is not a full, positive outcome yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, we would like to see a cutting of aid,\u201d Shapiro added. \u201cBut we didn’t have to press the so-called nuclear button in order to get accountability. There are things that can be done, and this is a perfect example of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Netzah Yehuda soldiers now out of the West Bank, however, it\u2019s unclear whether\u00a0the State Department\u00a0will continue to investigate their record or demand accountability for their crimes. It also seems unlikely that U.S. officials will heed calls to finally apply the Leahy Law against a unit of the IDF.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that they moved the unit out of there was a positive step,\u201d Tim Rieser, a senior foreign policy aide to Leahy, told The Intercept. \u201cBut they should have disbanded it altogether and punished the soldiers who were responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Troubled Youth<\/h2>\n

The Netzah Yehuda unit, originally known as Nahal Haredi, was established in 1999 to offer ultra-Orthodox Israeli men, who are usually exempt from mandatory military service, an opportunity to serve in the IDF while keeping to strict religious codes. No women are allowed in the unit or on its bases, which also adhere to strict kosher standards<\/a>. A rabbi works with the unit, and soldiers\u2019 terms of service are shorter than in other branches of the military so that members can focus on religious studies. But the 500-man battalion, which started with only a few dozen recruits, was also intended to provide discipline to young men with troubled backgrounds, including some who had been shunned by their families or who had violent and sometimes criminal pasts, the former soldier said.<\/p>\n

He had been drawn to Netzah Yehuda because of its religious accommodations, he noted, but had also been impressed to learn that the unit had received a series<\/a> of awards<\/a>, including for thwarting several attacks and \u201cneutralizing<\/a>\u201d alleged terrorists.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew it wasn\u2019t going to be boring,\u201d he told The Intercept. \u201cAs a 19-year-old, that gets the testosterone going. It was \u2018Black Hawk Down,\u2019 that type of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cIt put a lot of very problematic people in the same place.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

He soon realized, however, that putting troubled young men, many with ultra-nationalist views, in a position of power and with constant access to Palestinians was a recipe for abuse. \u201cI think that the intentions of the rabbis that came up with this were in the right place. I get where they came from, but I don’t think that it panned out very well because it put a lot of very problematic people in the same place,\u201d the former soldier said. \u201cSome were very politically motivated, I would say the settlers were the most politically motivated. And then there were a bunch of teenagers who drew a short straw in life and tried to take it out on other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s definitely a problem with discipline,\u201d he added. \u201cSome officers would not take some people with them on missions because they knew that they might lose a couple of soldiers on the way, because they might just wander off in the middle of a Palestinian village and do whatever they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

While it wasn\u2019t until years later that the former Netzah Yehuda soldier began to reevaluate and ultimately disavowed his time in the military, the racist beliefs and often unruly behavior of his peers were readily apparent. One of the soldiers, he recalled, said that the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo Accords with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1994, by an Israeli extremist was \u201cjustified.\u201d The soldier was disciplined over the remark, \u201cbut most people in the unit didn’t understand why \u2014\u00a0because in the eyes of a lot of people there, it was obvious that the murder of Rabin was justified.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were other incidents that revealed the unit\u2019s extremist tendencies. On one occasion, while he was stationed in the northern West Bank, a group of unit members slashed the tires of an Arab driver \u2014 a fellow member of the Israeli military \u2014\u00a0in a nod to the \u201cprice tag<\/a>\u201d attacks frequently carried out by Israeli settlers against Palestinians. The incident infuriated some officers, \u201cbut a lot of people thought it was completely fine,\u201d the former soldier recalled. \u201cThey said that we shouldn’t have Arabs in the military.\u201d<\/p>\n

Members of the unit made no secret of their extremism. On Friday nights, after sharing their Shabbat meal, they would sing racist anthems about Jewish power, including songs glorifying Meir Kahane<\/a>, the U.S.-born founder of the Kach party, an ultranationalist political group that until recently was listed as a terrorist organization in both\u00a0the U.S. and Israel. Kahane\u2019s grandson himself served in the unit. \u201cI had no idea how he got into the military to begin with,\u201d the soldier said. \u201cUsually, they wouldn’t let someone like that in.\u201d<\/p>\n

The IDF does not \u201cintentionally\u201d recruit soldiers with a criminal background and launches investigations \u201cin cases where criminal offenses are suspected,\u201d\u00a0the spokesperson wrote in the statement to The Intercept,\u00a0which also noted that \u201cthe IDF is a stately body and prohibits any form of political expression.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n\"Israeli<\/p>\n

Israeli soldiers of the Jewish ultra-Orthodox battalion Netzah Yehuda hold morning prayers in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights, near the Syrian border, on May 19, 2014.<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Collective Punishment and \u201cHannukah Parties\u201d<\/h2>\n

The Palestinians who members of Netzah Yehuda met daily had been completely dehumanized, the former soldier added. While The Intercept could not independently corroborate details about the specific incidents he described, the episodes are well in line with the violence, harassment, and restriction of movement that Palestinians<\/a> living under occupation<\/a> are routinely<\/a> exposed to<\/a> and that human rights groups have documented for decades.<\/p>\n

The former soldier said that he once witnessed a commander punch a Palestinian man in the stomach and shove him into a military car, apparently because the man was moving too slowly. Some of the soldiers were not allowed to guard Palestinian detainees, he added, because their superiors \u201cdidn’t trust everyone to do that without harming them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the most violent incidents happened when the ex-soldier was stationed near a large settlement in the West Bank. Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal under international law and, in some cases, even under Israeli law<\/a>. Nevertheless, the military is routinely deployed to protect settlers there, even as settler violence<\/a> against Palestinians has been on the rise.<\/p>\n

One Friday, after a funeral for a man killed by the IDF in a Palestinian village near the settlement, a crowd of residents turned up to protest, the former soldier recalled. \u201cUsually, it would just be a couple kids throwing rocks. We would shoot a couple of gas grenades back. There would be back and forth for half an hour, and then we would each go home,\u201d he said. \u201cBut after this funeral a huge crowd came together, and when we got there, we had almost no crowd control equipment because all that ammunition, like the rubber bullets and the gas canisters, had run out. So all we had was live ammunition, and it\u2019s very difficult to do crowd control with live ammunition. That day, they actually told us that we are not allowed to shoot at anyone, because they had just killed someone. And in a situation like that, when you start opening fire on a crowd, you can kill a lot of people, and that was going to be an even bigger problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, the soldiers were instructed to pour mounds of dirt over the main road to the village, essentially trapping its residents. \u201cIt was collective punishment,\u201d said the soldier.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Another time, the former soldier recalled, a commander took a group of soldiers into a Palestinian village, where they went door to door, knocking and then throwing flash-bang and gas grenades into each home \u2014 retribution after some children from the village had thrown rocks on a nearby road earlier that day.<\/p>\n

The former soldier, who said he was not directly involved in the grenade-throwing or\u00a0some of the other, more egregious\u00a0incidents he described,\u00a0remembers being disturbed by the episode. \u201cThe company commander said, \u2018Let’s throw them a Hanukkah party, because it was during Hanukkah,\u2019\u201d he told The Intercept. His fellow soldiers, he said, \u201cwere very excited about that whole thing. They would say, \u2018You should have seen the face of the family when we opened the door. Everyone was sitting and watching TV, and all of a sudden, they got tear-gassed.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of soldiers were excited about being able to just walk into a stranger’s house with little to no consequences,\u201d he said. \u201cYou couldn’t do that in Tel Aviv.\u201d<\/p>\n

No Accountability<\/h2>\n

The harassment and dehumanization of Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation are a daily affair<\/a>,\u00a0and Netzah Yehuda soldiers are hardly the only culprits. But on some occasions, the unit\u2019s actions in the West Bank escalated into gross human rights violations and potential war crimes. Since 2015, members of the unit have killed several Palestinians and beaten and tortured others with electric shocks, according to documentation<\/a> submitted by DAWN to the ICC, which in 2021 opened an investigation<\/a> into alleged crimes committed in the occupied territories.<\/p>\n

In that time frame, Netzah Yehuda soldiers killed three Palestinians, including a 16-year-old boy, \u201cin incidents in which soldiers used lethal force against unarmed civilians without justification,\u201d DAWN charged. \u201cIn almost every case [\u2026] soldiers were found to be lying or covering up the incidents to suggest that they were acting in self-defense.\u201d In October 2021, unit members were also accused of beating and sexually assaulting<\/a> a Palestinian man they had detained in the back of a military vehicle and later at a military base. Four soldiers were arrested following that incident; one of them was demoted and sentenced to four and a half months<\/a> in prison. In 2016, another Netzah Yehuda soldier received a nine-month sentence and demotion for torturing Palestinian detainees<\/a> on two separate occasions. In one instance, the soldier had attached electrodes to the neck of a man who was blindfolded and handcuffed, increasing the voltage when the man pleaded with him to stop. He did the same to a second detainee a few days later, while fellow soldiers filmed the torture on a cellphone.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear whether Netzah Yehuda\u2019s abuses were on the State Department\u2019s radar before last year, but after Omar Assad\u2019s death, U.S. officials began making inquiries about the unit. In September, the State Department\u2019s Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs, Hady Amr, met with Assad\u2019s family and publicly called<\/a> for accountability for his death. Israel\u2019s offer of a reported $141,000<\/a> settlement to the family and later the decision to move Netzah Yehuda out of the West Bank also coincided with a growing chorus of voices, including in Congress, calling for a U.S. investigation<\/a> into the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Al Jazeera journalist who was shot in the head in May while reporting from the West Bank city of Jenin. Furor over the killing of Abu Akleh, who was wearing a clearly visible press vest<\/a> at the time, eventually forced the U.S. Justice Department to launch an investigation \u2014\u00a0the first time the U.S. government has heeded demands for an independent, American investigation of an incident involving Israeli forces.<\/p>\n

Whether growing demands for accountability for Abu Akleh\u2019s killing or calls for Leahy sanctions against Netzah Yehuda \u2014 or both \u2014 factored into Israeli officials\u2019 decision to move the unit is hard to establish. \u201cI don\u2019t know how much of this has to do with Israel being afraid of the Leahy Law versus Israel trying to manage a relationship with the U.S. after they have killed two U.S. citizens,\u201d Brad Parker, a legislative consultant at the Center for Constitutional Rights who has represented the Abu Akleh family in the U.S., told The Intercept. The Leahy Law hardly seems to work as a deterrent when it comes to Israel, he added. \u201cEven if it means absolutely nothing, a statement saying \u2018This unit is problematic\u2019 or something like that would be significant, given the fact that the U.S. really doesn\u2019t do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other critics argue that anything short of blocking U.S. financial support for Netzah Yehuda is not enough.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we need is the political will to apply the law, and thus far this administration has lacked that will.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not accountability,\u201d Matt Duss, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Intercept, referring to the unit\u2019s redeployment and the compensation offer. \u201cSome people might claim, \u2018Hey, look, high five, we got the Israelis to do something,\u2019 but that doesn’t begin to solve the\u00a0systemic problem. What we need is the political will to apply the law, and thus far this administration has lacked that will.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. officials\u2019 failure to apply their own laws against Israel has increasingly become a liability, Duss said, noting that while the U.S. \u201ctends to be very serious about human rights in countries that don’t buy our weapons,\u201d intervening in Israel and with some other allies is viewed as \u201ctoo politically controversial \u2026 despite systemic abuses.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Rieser, Leahy\u2019s longtime foreign policy adviser, that\u2019s long been a cause of frustration. \u201cThe law has not been applied as consistently as Senator Leahy believes it should be with respect to Israel and some other key U.S. allies,\u201d he told The Intercept. \u201cI think that\u2019s partly due to political calculations by the administration, whose job it is to apply the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n\"The<\/p>\n

The sisters and relatives of Palestinian teenager Hamza Amjad al-Ashqar, shot dead by Israeli troops from a different unit in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, mourn during his funeral at the Askar refugee camp east of Nablus on February 7, 2023.<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: Jaafar Ashtiyeh\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Leahy\u2019s Legacy<\/h2>\n

There is no public record listing when and where the Leahy Law has been invoked, though public reports indicate that it has been applied to Colombian<\/a>, Mexican, Turkish, Indonesian<\/a>, and Pakistani<\/a> forces, among others. The law is also used as basis for the State Department to vet thousands of foreign military personnel every year \u2014\u00a0a requirement for the provision of U.S. weapons and training.<\/p>\n

More than two decades after it was first introduced, Leahy\u2019s signature legislation \u201chas been institutionalized to the point that it’s not going away,\u201d said Rieser. \u201cIt has been built into the training and guidance of the State and Defense departments. It is permanent law. But Congress and human rights defenders still need to ensure that the law is applied as intended.\u201d<\/p>\n

Defense officials have at times resisted the law\u2019s implementation. The Intercept reported last year on one of several programs<\/a> set up to circumvent it. Before he retired, Leahy also worked to close a major loophole in the law that made it difficult to apply against countries that receive U.S. assistance<\/a> in bulk installments, like Israel, whose security agreements with the U.S. are outlined on a 10-year basis. Previous arrangements made it hard for U.S. officials to know which units of the IDF received what \u2014\u00a0something Leahy addressed through a recent amendment to the defense budget. \u201cWe don’t know with certainty which IDF units receive U.S. equipment,\u201d Rieser said. \u201cWe realized that was a loophole for countries that receive bulk shipments of equipment, and Congress modified the law to address that issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ultimate obstacle to the law\u2019s implementation, however, remains a political one. \u201cMany members of Congress or administration officials are reluctant to suggest that Israeli soldiers may have committed a gross violation of human rights,\u201d said Rieser, noting that Leahy repeatedly called on multiple administrations to apply the law with respect to Israel. He noted that during the Trump administration, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, suggested<\/a> that the law should not apply there.<\/p>\n

The argument, Rieser noted, was that \u201cIsrael is a democracy, it has a credible justice system, and therefore the Leahy Law doesn’t apply.\u201d But Israel\u2019s investigations of alleged military misconduct are carried out by the IDF itself, he noted; they have often been cursory and rarely resulted in appropriate punishment. \u201cThe Israeli justice system, particularly the military justice system, is not perceived as being impartial in cases involving Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n

An Extreme Symptom<\/h2>\n

Shawan Jabarin, the general director of Al-Haq, a prominent Palestinian human rights organization<\/a> based in the West Bank, told The Intercept that he first heard about the Leahy Law during a trip to the U.S. in 2001, a few years after the legislation was introduced. \u201cWe first called for Leahy sanctions to be applied against the IDF two decades ago,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Over the years, the State Department has flagged several incidents of human rights abuses committed by Israeli forces as potential Leahy cases, including the 2003 killing by an Israeli military bulldozer of American peace activist Rachel Corrie. (Last year, The Intercept published exclusive documents<\/a> revealing internal deliberations about the law\u2019s application to that case).<\/p>\n

Yet none of those incidents resulted in sanctions against any unit of the IDF. \u201cNothing happened,\u201d said Jabarin. \u201cNothing happened because this is Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Multiple U.S. administrations have in the past responded to Israeli abuses with measured words of condemnation, but the U.S. government has never publicly imposed consequences on Israel for its military\u2019s misconduct \u2014 neither by applying the Leahy Law nor by threatening to withhold military assistance or limit arms exports under other U.S. statutes. A formal sanctioning of Netzah Yehuda would have only minor practical impact but would convey that the U.S. government is ready to draw a line.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsraelis got very upset when Ben and Jerry’s said it didn’t want to have ice cream sold in settlements,\u201d said the former soldier. A U.S. rebuke of Netzah Yehuda would likely renew calls to address its history of abuses, he noted, but warned that singling out one unit for censure risks giving a pass to the rest of Israel\u2019s military apparatus.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the Israeli public, Netzah Yehuda is very convenient because it’s a group of people that are not very popular in Israeli society to begin with, the Haredim. So it’s very easy to scapegoat and say these Haredim and these settlers, they are the ones who are a problem, it\u2019s not our kids from Tel Aviv and these other nice cities, who also go and kill Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ori Givati, advocacy director at Breaking the Silence \u2014 the group of former Israeli soldiers who have denounced the abuses of Israel\u2019s occupation \u2014 told The Intercept that \u201canything that pushes the U.S. to do anything is a step in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery unit that serves in the territories is violent toward Palestinians \u2014 every unit,\u201d he said. \u201cSome are documented less, some are documented more. Netzah Yehuda has maybe a tendency to be more violent than others toward Palestinians, but they are not worse than any other unit which invades people\u2019s homes in the middle of the night. They\u2019re not the problem; they\u2019re maybe an extreme symptom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jabarin, the Palestinian human rights activist, agreed that sanctioning Netzah Yehuda would have only symbolic impact \u2014 but would be important nonetheless.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just the unit, it\u2019s the system behind it,\u201d he said. \u201cStill, this is a test. Can [the U.S.] act according to its principles, its laws, the values they speak about?\u201d<\/p>\n

The post Israeli Army Battalion Puts U.S. Ban on Funding Abusive Units to the Test<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A former member speaks out about the unit responsible for the death of a 78-year-old Palestinian American.<\/p>\n

The post Israeli Army Battalion Puts U.S. Ban on Funding Abusive Units to the Test<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":300,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989492"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=989492"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":991842,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989492\/revisions\/991842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=989492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=989492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=989492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}