Years before Oct. 7, soldiers and officers in four Israeli security force units committed what the U.S. State Department would later determine to be serious human rights violations against Palestinians.
In one incident in 2019, an Israel Defense Forces soldier shot and killed an unarmed Palestinian man on the side of a road in the West Bank. That soldier was given no jail time — only three months of community service.
Under the U.S. Leahy Laws, the government must disqualify any military or law enforcement unit from receiving assistance if there’s credible information that the group had committed violations like rape or extrajudicial killings, unless the offending entity has taken adequate steps to punish the perpetrator.
On Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress he had determined the punishments for the soldiers and officers in all four cases — including the community service sentence — to be adequate, according to a State Department memo to Congress. The units won’t be disqualified from receiving American military assistance. The names of the units were previously reported by Al-Monitor. ProPublica obtained the memo with Blinken’s justifications.
Some experts disagreed with that decision, saying that the punishment Israel meted out in the 2019 case was not adequate. They said the decision to continue the support was another example of special treatment for Israel.
Community service is “not what would be considered appropriate punishment,” said Tim Rieser, a longtime aide to former Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chief author of 1997 laws that the State Department is meant to enforce.
Rieser said Blinken’s justification was “not consistent with how the law was written and how it was intended to be applied.” A former State Department official said it was a “mockery.” Both officials, along with another congressional aide, were especially troubled that during the years it had taken to assess whether Israel had sufficiently punished the perpetrators, the State Department had apparently not disqualified the units from U.S. support.
A State Department spokesperson did not answer questions about Blinken’s memo but told ProPublica the agency has taken “extensive steps to implement the Leahy law for all countries that receive applicable U.S. assistance, including Israel.” The spokesperson said the agency is continuing to review reports of violations. “Israel has a moral obligation and a strategic imperative to protect civilians,” the spokesperson added.
ProPublica previously reported that a panel of internal State Department experts, known as the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum, had sent Blinken multiple cases of violations, along with recommendations to cut units off from assistance, months ago. The recommendations were an unusual escalation after years of deferential treatment of Israel, according to people close to the forum’s activities.
Following the report three weeks ago, Blinken promised to announce his determinations “in the coming days.” At the time, several media outlets reported that the…
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