Axios and other sources are reporting that Secretary of State, Antony Blinken is expected to announce sanctions against a specific unit of the IDF — the "Netzah Yehuda" battalion — for human rights violations it perpetrated in Gaza.
This is the first time any U.S. administration has imposed sanctions on a military unit in Israel.
Specifically:
- The sanctions will ban the battalion and its members from receiving any kind of U.S. military assistance or training, the sources said.
- A 1997 law authored by then-Senator Patrick Leahy prohibits U.S. foreign aid and Defense Department training programs from going to foreign security, military and police units credibly alleged to have committed human rights violations.
The sanctions would bar the transfer of U.S. weapons to the unit and ban its soldiers from training with any U.S. forces or using U.S. funding, as stated in the Leahy Law.
The Netzah Yehuda battalion, for those unfamiliar, was put together for “ultra-orthodox” soldiers — in other words, far-Right, “radical” settlers who were refused acceptance into other combat units. In 2022, the State Department began investigating the unit for crimes against Palestinian civilians.
Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu isn’t happy about this, calling the sanctions a “moral low”.
The irony inherent in that statement speaks for itself.
