This post was originally published on Truthout.org under a Creative Commons 4.0 license.
I want to quickly respond to this headline: DUH. —Editor
A classified State Department report released just days before the current ceasefire agreement went into effect found that Israel has committed “many hundreds” of potential human rights violations in Gaza that would render it illegal to continue sending weapons to many Israeli military units, reporting finds.
According to The Washington Post, officials say that the possible violations were reported by the State Department’s watchdog, known as the Office of Inspector General. These reports would take “multiple years” to investigate, officials told the Post, as former officials have noted that the U.S. maintains a special process for potential Israeli violations to give preference to the Israeli military.
The office’s website has a page for the report, but it is listed as “Classified” and “not available for public viewing.”
The report is notable as it’s the first confirmation of the State Department’s acknowledgement of the scale of Israel’s violations in relation to the Leahy Laws. The Leahy Laws bar the U.S. from sending weapons to foreign military units credibly accused of human rights violations, and have been cited countless times by advocates for Palestinian rights calling for an arms embargo to Israel.
The report includes incidents like Israel’s bombing of a World Central Kitchen aid caravan in April 2024, which killed seven workers of international backgrounds.
It also includes the killing of 78-year-old Palestinian American Omar Assad by Israeli forces in 2022. Soldiers stopped Assad at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, dragged him out of his car, bound him, and left him on the ground to die overnight; Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in 2024 that the unit responsible was “remediated” and still eligible for military assistance.
However, U.S. officials familiar with the report cast doubt on the possibility of the U.S. acting upon any findings in the report “given the large backlog of incidents and the nature of the review process, which is deferential to the Israel Defense Forces,” the Post reported.
Indeed, the U.S. maintains a different process for assessing potential Israeli violations, which is distinct from that of any other country. The protocol is known as the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum, and, unlike other such processes, has burdensome requirements like in-person meetings with high-level officials in order to make assessments, in which every official must agree on the conclusion.
The protocol heavily favors Israel, with assessments also requiring a request for information from Israel directly in order to proceed — meaning that Israel could theoretically indefinitely delay the process.
This is in sharp contrast to other countries where even a single official’s objection to sending a unit arms could trigger a withholding of assistance, former State Department official Josh Paul told the Post.
Tellingly, though it has existed since 2020, the Israeli Leahy Vetting Forum has never found an Israeli unit to be ineligible for receiving U.S. assistance, former State Department officials have reported.
“What worries me is that accountability will be forgotten now that the noise of the conflict is dying down,” Charles Blaha, a former State Department official under the Biden administration, told The Washington Post. Blaha was in charge of the office that oversees Leahy Law implementation.
Blaha said that the U.S. has consistently sought to give Israel a pass across administrations, amid its genocide in Gaza. “I don’t see any difference between the Biden administration and the Trump administration on this issue.”
