The Israeli ultra-Orthodox battalion that the United States would like to sanction – The Post

It is called Netzah Yehuda, is made up of many soldiers who come from the most radical and right-wing sectors of the Jewish nationalist movements, and has been repeatedly accused of violating Palestinian rights

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly protested on Saturday https://twitter.com/netanyahu/status/1781772418651975944 against the possible imposition of sanctions by the United States against Israeli military units accused of human rights violations. The news that the US government was discussing sanctions was given by the site Axios and then taken up and confirmed by its own sources also by various international media. It has been described as “imminent” and if it were actually taken it would be very significant: it would in fact be the first time that the United States has decided to impose sanctions on an Israeli military unit, and yet another confirmation of the growing tensions between Israel and the United States over war in the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu commented that the sanctions would be “the height of absurdity and moral baseness”. It is not yet clear which military unit is being discussed, but Israeli media have talked in particular about the Netzah Yehuda battalion, a controversial Israeli army unit made up of ultra-Orthodox Jews that until 2023 had operated mainly in the West Bank. The Netzah Yehuda battalion was defined by the Israeli progressive newspaper Haaretz «a kind of independent militia that does not respect the rules of the army».

The battalion is made up only of men of the Jewish religion (women cannot join) and has particular rules that allow the principles of the Orthodox religion to be safeguarded. In recent years it has been at the center of numerous cases of alleged violence against Palestinian civilians, which would be the basis of possible US sanctions. In recent months, several soldiers from the battalion have also been employed in operations in Gaza, first to guard the borders and then actively in the invasion of the Strip.

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Ultra-Orthodox Jews have been exempt from military service since the founding of Israel, not on the basis of state law but through a series of religious exemptions issued by the government as administrative provisions that are renewed periodically. In 1999 some members of the ultra-Orthodox community, also defined haredi, they founded a military battalion that would ensure that the soldiers respected their strict religious rules, from strictly eating kosherthat is, that permitted by Jewish religious laws, to safeguard parts of the day for the study of the Torah (the sacred book of the Jewish religion).

Starting from 2009 the battalion, initially called Netzah Haredi, assumed significant dimensions, even reaching 1000 soldiers. Women who are not soldiers’ wives cannot work or enter the Netzah Yehuda bases, and the strict separation between the sexes imposed by the ultra-Orthodox interpretation of the Jewish religion must be respected.

For fifteen years and until 2013 the battalion operated mainly in the West Bank. According to military analysts cited by Financial Times at least half of the battalion’s soldiers come from the most radical and right-wing sectors of the Jewish nationalist movements, including that of the settlers who illegally occupy increasingly large areas of the West Bank. The settlements are settlements that Israel has maintained and expanded for decades in the West Bank, which however is a territory that according to much of the international community belongs to the Palestinians: for this reason they are generally considered illegal, although Israel disputes this.

In 2022 the US State Department began investigating alleged human rights abuses by the battalion, which had been at the center of numerous incidents of violence against Palestinian civilians in previous years. In particular, the case of Omar Abdelmajed Assad, a 78-year-old man with a dual Palestinian and US passport, was of great importance. During a nighttime Netzah Yehuda operation in the town where he lived, Assad was handcuffed, gagged and left cold on the ground until he was found dead hours later of a heart attack. Three commanders of the unit had been found guilty of “conduct not corresponding to military rules”, but a criminal trial had never been instituted, because the military court had indicated that it was not possible to establish a link between Assad’s death and the conditions of his arrest.

Assad’s case was only the latest in a series of violence reported by Palestinian civilians. A few months later, in December 2022, it was decided to transfer the battalion from the West Bank to the Golan Heights (a plateau of approximately 1,800 square kilometers occupied by the Israeli army in 1967, after having removed it from the control of Syria): officially the relocation was independent from controversies and reports of violence.

(Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)

The possible US sanctions could be linked precisely to human rights violations in the West Bank and are based on a 1997 law which takes its name from its first signatory, Senator Patrick Leahy: it provides that foreign security, military and police forces cannot receive any type of support, financial or training from the United States if they are credibly found guilty of human rights violations.

The US House on Saturday approved $26 billion in military aid for Israel, along with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza. The law will now have to be approved by the Senate to come into force. According to US media, the sanctions could arrive together with the final approval of the financing, also to respond to criticism directed against President Joe Biden and coming from the left. Various movements and activists accuse Biden of unconditional support for the policies of the Israeli government and the war waged in Gaza, which has caused over 34 thousand deaths among Palestinians.

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