PA Arab families who claim they have been affected by alleged Israeli human rights abuses in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria, on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit accusing the State Department of failing to enforce a US law that restricts military aid to foreign security forces implicated in human rights violations.
The lawsuit, brought under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and supported by the group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), claims the State Department has disregarded its obligations under the Leahy Law, which conditions US security assistance on human rights compliance.
The Leahy Law is a key US human rights provision that restricts military aid from the State and Defense Departments to foreign security forces implicated in serious human rights violations. Named after Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt), the law requires thorough vetting of foreign security units to ensure they do not engage in abuses with impunity.
To enforce the Leahy Law, US embassies, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and regional bureaus of the State Department examine potential recipients of military assistance. If a security unit is credibly linked to human rights violations, such as torture or extrajudicial killings, US assistance is withheld until the host government takes meaningful action to hold perpetrators accountable.
Although the US government does not typically release details about which foreign units are cut off from aid, reports have surfaced indicating that countries like Australia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Nigeria, Turkey, Indonesia, Lebanon, and Saint Lucia have faced restrictions under the Leahy Law. However, Israel has consistently received US military assistance, despite persistent allegations of human rights violations involving Israeli security forces.
According to the plaintiffs, the State Department has imposed extraordinary procedural barriers that effectively exempt Israeli security units from accountability, despite what they describe as extensive evidence of abuses. These include allegations of torture, prolonged detention without charges, enforced disappearances, and violations of fundamental rights, including arbitrary killings and the deprivation of essential resources like food, water, and medicine.
DAWN is a US-based non-profit organization founded in September 2020 with the mission of promoting democracy and human rights in the Arab world. The organization was established by Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, by agents of the Saudi government, at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. DAWN claims to be working to address human rights abuses, advocating for political reforms, and supporting the rights of individuals in the Arab region, carrying forward Khashoggi’s legacy of activism and commitment to justice.
Vanity Fair reported that several House Republicans have launched a whisper campaign aimed at discrediting Jamal Khashoggi, attempting to tarnish his reputation by highlighting his connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and his past as an embedded journalist who covered Osama bin Laden.
“This lawsuit demands one thing and one thing only: for the State Department to obey the law requiring a ban on assistance to abusive Israeli security forces,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN’s Executive Director. “For too long, the State Department has acted as if there’s an ‘Israel exemption’ from the Leahy Law, despite the fact that Congress required it to apply the law to every country in the world. As a result, millions of Palestinians have suffered unimaginable, horrific abuses by Israeli forces using U.S. weapons.”
During her tenure at Human Rights Watch (HRW), Sarah Whitson faced frequent accusations of bias against Israel. Martin Peretz, former editor of The New Republic, has been particularly critical, calling her “a mendacious lady” who had led “a jaundiced crusade against Israel.” He further characterized her approach as one marked by “laughable indiscretion,” suggesting that in more discerning times, her views would have placed her on the fringes of public discourse. Peretz has also described Whitson as having an “obsession with an evil Israel that faces no enemies but itself.”
Stephen Rickard, a former State Department official and former Senior Staff Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who was accused by Haaretz of trying to sabotage US-Israeli relations (Why Does This Man Want to End the U.S.-Israel Special Relationship?), and who helped pass the Leahy Law and worked on and monitored its implementation for more than a quarter of a century, stated:
“There is only one country where the Department of State has a ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ policy: Israel. Longstanding concerns that the State Department was not cutting off aid to specific Israel units as required by the Leahy Law… have been given dramatic urgency by the tragic ongoing crisis in Gaza. If the State Department will not comply with the law, then it is time for the courts to vindicate the rule of law and order it to do so.”
State Department officials have declined to comment on the pending litigation.
