By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Judicial Reforms As War Of Words Escalates

Top Israeli officials were caught off guard by reports that Washington is considering cutting off U.S. aid to a Jewish Orthodox battalion accused of committing human rights abuses in the West Bank before the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. If that occurred, it would mark the first time that Washington has announced such measures against an Israeli military unit.

Israeli Minister of Culture and Sport Miki Zohar on Tuesday deleted a tweet accusing Biden of being a victim of “fake news” about the judicial reforms.

“It breaks my heart to see how much damage has been done to Israel from all the fake news that has been spread in connection with our justified legal reform,” Zohar wrote in a follow up after the deletion.

Knesset Deputy Speaker Nassim Vaturi, also a Likud MK, questioned the reliability of the US-Israel security partnership in the wake of Biden’s comments and went so far as to accuse the Obama administration of having imposed an arms embargo during the 2014 war in Gaza that resulted in the deaths of Israeli troops. The Wall Street Journal in 2014 reported that the Obama administration had halted a military-to-military request for Hellfire missiles in order to individually scrutinize Israel’s arms shipments from the US.

The extraordinary pushback follows remarks President Biden made to the media on Tuesday that are among the sharpest criticisms that the US has yet made about Israel’s judicial reform proposals.

“Like many strong supporters of Israel, I’m very concerned,” President Biden told the press Tuesday. “I’m concerned that they get this straight: They cannot continue down this road. And I sort of made that clear. Hopefully, the prime minister will act in a way that he can try to work out some genuine compromise, but that remains to be seen.”

Asked if his comments constituted interference in Israel’s affairs, Biden said, “We’re not interfering. They know my position. They know America’s position. They know the American Jewish position.”

He added that he does not intend to invite Netanyahu to Washington “in the near term.”

Biden’s remarks prompted a late-night response from Netanyahu, whose office posted a statement after 1AM Israel time on Wednesday.

The statement said that Netanyahu appreciated Biden’s commitment to Israel and called the US-Israel alliance “unbreakable,” but pointedly added that “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”

The question of foreign interference in the judicial reform process, including whether the US is actively supporting the opposition protests, has become a significant political issue. Yair Netanyahu, the adult son of the prime minister, has promoted allegations that the US is funding the protests, including through the NGO Movement for Quality Government.

That allegation was repeated by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in condemning Biden’s remarks Wednesday.

“Utterly disgraceful. Biden gleefully hosts anti-American radicals like [Brazilian President] Lula, while shunning close American allies like Netanyahu,” Cruz wrote on twitter. “It’s clear that Biden and his officials are high from funding what they believe to be successful anti-government protests in Israel.”

The State Department has rejected that premise.

“These accusations are completely and demonstratively false,” State Department Deputy Spokesman Vedant Patel said on Monday. “The Movement for Quality Government is an NGO, and it received a modest grant from the State Department that was initiated during the previous administration, and the latest disbursal of funds came in September of 2022 –  prior to the most recent Israeli elections. And this grant supported an educational program for Jerusalem schools that supplemented their civic studies curriculum.”

Speaking remotely Wednesday morning at the Biden administration’s Summit for Democracy 2023, Netanyahu seemed to strike a more conciliatory tone.

“I want to thank the world leaders and President Biden, who’s been a friend of 40 years,” Netanyahu said. “Israel and the United States have had their occasional differences, but I want to assure you that the alliance between the world’s greatest democracy and a strong, proud and independent democracy – Israel – in the heart of the Middle East is unshakable. Nothing can change that.”

Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid Wednesday presented a different view.

“For decades Israel was the USA’s closest ally,” Lapid wrote. “The most extreme government in the country’s history spoiled that in three months.”

The unit in question is the Israel Defense Forces’ Netzah Yehuda battalion, which was established in 1999 for ultra-Orthodox and religious nationalist soldiers. In one of Netzah Yehuda’s most public human rights controversies, U.S. officials called for an investigation into the unit’s role in the death of Omar Assad, a 78-year-old Palestinian American man, in 2022.

The potential move comes in response to a ProPublica article published last week that revealed that an internal U.S. State Department panel recommended months ago that Secretary of State Antony Blinken cut off U.S. aid to multiple Israeli military and police units due to credible allegations that they committed serious human rights abuses, but Blinken had taken no action. The panel, called the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum, is tasked with ensuring that U.S. aid to Israel complies with the so-called Leahy Laws, which require the United States to cut off aid to any foreign military or police units that are credibly accused of gross human rights violations.

Blinken said last week after the ProPublica report came out that he had “made determinations” based on the panel’s recommendations and that the details of his decision would be made public in the coming days. He did not specify which Israeli military or police units were being evaluated, but U.S. sources told Axios that although several were investigated, only Netzah Yehuda would be cut off from U.S. aid, as the other units had remedied their behavior. Media and human rights organizations have documented alleged abuses including sexual assault, torture, and extrajudicial killings committed by Israeli security forces other than Netzah Yehuda, including Yamam, an elite Israeli border police unit that carries out counterterrorism operations.

The reports of the potential aid cutoff to Netzah Yehuda have alarmed and angered Israeli officials, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posting on X that doing so would be “the peak of absurdity and a moral low” and vowing that the Israeli government will “act by all means” against such a decision. Benny Gantz, a minister in the Israeli war cabinet, also urged Blinken to reconsider the decision in a conversation on Sunday, Gantz’s office said.

Yet even as the United States weighs pausing aid to the battalion, the Biden administration still appears set to funnel billions more in military assistance to Israel. Over the weekend, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a foreign aid bill that would send Israel some $26.4 billion in aid, with some money allocated toward humanitarian aid for Gaza. The bill now advances to the Senate, where it is widely expected to pass.

Separately, on Monday, Israeli military intelligence chief Aharon Haliva announced that he would resign over his department’s failure to warn of the impending Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault. Haliva is the highest-ranking Israeli official to step down from his post since the attack. “The intelligence directorate under my command did not live up to the task we were entrusted with,” Haliva wrote in his resignation letter. “I carry that black day with me ever since, day after day, night after night. I will carry the horrible pain of the war with me forever.”

 

 

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