State Department spotlights alleged Israeli human rights abuses

Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged not to give Israel the benefit of a “double standard” amid a controversy with Jerusalem about potential sanctions on an Israeli military unit.

“Do we have a double standard? The answer is no,” Blinken told reporters Monday at the State Department. “We apply the same standard to everyone, and that doesn’t change whether the country in question is an adversary, a competitor, a friend, or an ally.”

Blinken offered that commitment to impartiality at the publication of an annual report on human rights around the world that numbered Israel among the countries with “significant human rights issues.” While Blinken stopped short of offering a judgment on war crimes allegations, the report’s unveiling coincides with a dispute between U.S. and Israeli officials on a potential finding that an Israel Defense Forces unit has committed human rights violations deserving of sanctions.

“I think a good example of a process that is very deliberate, that seeks to get the facts, to get all the information, that has to be done carefully,” Blinken said. “And that’s exactly how we proceeded, as we proceed with any country that is the recipient of military assistance from the United States. And again, the same standard applies.”

That process is expected to lead to a blacklisting of the IDF’s Netzah Yehuda battalion, an ultra-Orthodox unit. Haaretz, an Israeli media outlet, has described the battalion as “a kind of an independent militia that doesn’t obey the army’s rules,” one whose personnel have an ideological desire to expand Jewish settlements areas that have been reserved by the United Nations as the territory of a prospective Palestinian state. 

Yet Israeli policymakers have fumed at the report of impending sanctions. “The IDF is the only factor standing in the breach and preventing the slaughter of our people as in the past,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday. “I will strongly defend the IDF, our army, and our fighters. If somebody thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit in the IDF, I will fight this with all my powers.”

Blinken faces pressure to accept the recommendations offered by a team of State Department officials known as the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum, a committee tasked with assessing allegations that might trigger military aid restrictions under the Leahy law, which bans “the U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.” The vetting forum has recommended that Blinken invoke that law against Israeli units, according to a ProPublica report.

“If we had been applying Leahy effectively in Israel like we do in other countries, maybe you wouldn’t have the IDF filming TikToks of their war crimes now because we have contributed to a culture of impunity,” former State Department official Josh Paul, who resigned in October to protest U.S. policies regarding Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza, told the outlet.

The Netzah Yehuda battalion has received voluble support from prominent Israeli politicians, especially hard-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. “If there is not anybody at the Defense Ministry who will back up the battalion as required, I will ask to absorb them into the Israel Police and the Ministry of National Security,” he said Saturday.

Ben Gvir’s name appears a dozen times in the report on alleged human rights abuses in Israel, particularly in the context of “reports of systemic torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment of Palestinian detainees in prison facilities after October 7.” U.S. officials already recently imposed economic sanctions on a senior Ben Gvir adviser.

“The American sanctions on the Netzah Yehuda Battalion are a mistake and we must act to cancel them,” center-left Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote Sunday on social media. “The source of the problem is not at the military level but at the political level. The world understands and knows that Minister Ben Gvir does not want the police to enforce the law in [the West Bank] and [Israeli Finance Minister Belazel] Smotrich is not opposed to Jewish terrorism and extreme settler riots.”

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and war cabinet minister Benny Gantz both have urged the Biden administration not to impose the sanctions.

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“Any attempt to vilify an entire unit casts a heavy shadow on the actions of the IDF to protect the citizens of Israel and thwart terror elements,” Gallant said Sunday. “Harm to one battalion is harm to the entire defense establishment; this is not the way to behave with partners and friends.”

Blinken demurred when asked if those appeals have had any effect: “I don’t have more to say about it today, but I think you’ll see in the days ahead that we will have more to say, so please stay tuned on that.”