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HARRIS CAN CHANGE BIDEN’S POLICY ON ISRAEL JUST BY UPHOLDING THE
LAW  
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Peter Beinart
August 18, 2024
New York Times
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_ The law in question has been on the books for more than a decade.
It prohibits the United States from assisting any unit of a foreign
security force that commits “gross violations” of human rights.
But it has never been applied to Israel. _

, Nathan Howard/Reuters

 

Kamala Harris is in a bind. Despite rallying Democrats behind her,
she’s still being heckled by protesters who want to end U.S. support
for Israel’s war in Gaza. Many of those activists want her
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endorse an arms embargo against the Jewish state. Her chief foreign
policy adviser, Phil Gordon, has ruled that out
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refusal risks alienating progressives in key states like Michigan and
sparking an ugly confrontation at this week’s Democratic convention.

There’s a solution that allows Ms. Harris to go beyond merely
calling for a cease-fire and saying that “far too many” civilians
in Gaza have died. Without supporting an arms embargo, she can still
signal a clear break with Joe Biden’s near-unconditional support for
an Israeli war effort that many legal scholars
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has led to genocide. And she can do so in a way befitting a former
prosecutor: When it comes to Israel, Ms. Harris should simply say that
she’ll enforce the law.

The law in question has been on the books for more than a decade. It
prohibits the United States from assisting any unit of a foreign
security force that commits “gross violations” of human rights.
Aid can be reinstated if the foreign country adequately punishes the
perpetrators. Passed by Congress in 1997, it bears the name
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former Senator Patrick Leahy — and it has been applied hundreds of
times
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including reportedly against U.S. allies like Colombia and Mexico.

But it has never been applied
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Israel, the country that over the past eight decades has received
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aid, by far, than any other. That’s not because the Israel Defense
Forces don’t commit serious abuses. “There are literally dozens of
Israeli security force units that have committed gross violations of
human rights” and should thus be ineligible for U.S. aid, a former
State Department official, Charles Blaha, told
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in May.

Mr. Blaha should know. From 2016 to 2023, he oversaw the office
charged with enforcing the Leahy law. While a U.S. State Department
spokesman in April claimed that Israel receives “no special
treatment
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under the Leahy law, Mr. Blaha says his own experience proved
otherwise. When it came to every country except Israel, he has
explained [[link removed]],
career officials generally had the last word. In the case of Israel
alone, he says, the decision rested with the State Department’s top
political appointees.

Those appointees are failing to enforce U.S. law. This spring,
ProPublica reported that an expert State Department panel
had recommended
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken cut off assistance to several units
of the Israeli military and police after reviewing allegations that
they had committed human rights abuses preceding the current Gaza war.
In May, Mr. Blinken told
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that Israel had adequately punished the members of units accused
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serious abuses, and U.S. aid would thus keep flowing. (Because the
department’s vetting process is not public, it’s unclear whether
any of the units Mr. Blinken cleared were among those the panel
flagged.)

Mr. Blinken has reportedly decided to even allow
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United States to continue arming Israel’s Netzah Yehuda battalion.
In 2022, members of the battalion dragged
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78-year-old Palestinian American man from his car near his home
village in the West Bank, blindfolded, bound and gagged him, and left
him near a construction site. He was unconscious when they came back
and removed the bindings, about 40 minutes later
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(Soldiers said they thought he was sleeping.) He was later pronounced
dead from what an autopsy determined was a stress-induced heart
attack. Seventeen months later, Israel’s military advocate general
said the soldiers would face disciplinary measures but declined
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press charges.

That’s typical. According to the Israeli human rights group Yesh
Din, less than 1 percent
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Palestinians’ complaints against Israeli soldiers between 2017 and
2021 led to prosecution. Even before Mr. Blinken’s reported decision
to continue to aid this battalion because its violations had “been
effectively remediated
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former Senator Leahy declared
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America’s lack of enforcement toward Israel “makes a mockery of
the law.”

It makes a mockery of the Biden administration itself, which
often boasts
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its commitment to the “rules-based order.” To ignore your own
experts as well as global human rights groups and claim that not a
single unit of the Israeli military is committing grave human rights
violations — or that Israel is adequately punishing those who do —
is absurd. It’s also lawless. And lawlessness is supposed to be what
Ms. Harris is running against.

Some might argue that Israel can’t adhere to U.S. human rights laws
and still fight its enemies. But if that’s the case, why does the
United States apply the Leahy law to Ukraine, which is resisting a
great-power invasion? For several years, the United States prohibited
assistance to a battalion of Ukraine’s National Guard; the ban
was lifted only this past June
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The deep wisdom of the Leahy law is that violating human rights
isn’t only morally wrong; it’s also strategically foolish. Those
who believe killing Palestinian civilians makes Israel safer should
remember that Hamas often recruits
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from the families of the bereaved. As Ami Ayalon, a former head of
Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, wrote in 2020
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“If we continue to dish out humiliation and despair, the popularity
of Hamas will grow.”

Granting Israel impunity may also encourage criminality at home. Last
month, when Israeli military police tried to question reservists
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of sexual assault at the Sde Teiman army base, which has housed
detainees from Gaza, several dozen protesters were joined by a
far-right member of the Knesset who pushed his way through the army
base’s gates
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If Benjamin Netanyahu understood that units whose soldiers escape
justice will lose their funding from the United States, he might more
severely punish such thuggery.

Israel’s defenders often claim it is singled out for condemnation.
But the beauty of the Leahy law is that it’s universal. When asked
about Gaza, Kamala Harris doesn’t have to invent a new standard. She
can just endorse the one enshrined in U.S. law. That won’t change
U.S. policy overnight. But it will send a message, to officials such
as Mr. Blinken and the officials Ms. Harris appoints if elected
president, that the Israel exception to the Leahy law must end.

Ever since the declaration that “all men are created equal,”
America’s leaders have been making statements of universal principle
that they don’t apply universally. And ever since, other Americans
have been fighting to make those words mean what they say. We’re in
a moment like that again. The premise of the Leahy law is that all
lives, including those of Palestinians, are equally precious. Kamala
Harris can show, finally, that a major-party nominee for president
agrees.

_Peter Beinart is a contributing Opinion writer. He’s also a
professor of journalism and political science at the Newmark School of
Journalism at the City University of New York, an editor at large of
Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter._

 

* Israel-Gaza War
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* Joe Biden
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* Kamala Harris
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* Arms to Israel
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