Published February 1, 2024
Jewish groups and legal experts are slamming President Joe Biden’s executive order Thursday applying sanctions against what the White House calls “extremist settler violence” in the West Bank, saying that it effectively encourages moreHamas terrorism.
As Breitbart News reported, Biden issued the executive order as he was en route to Michigan, a key swing state in the election, with a large Arab and Muslim population. Leaders of those groups have threatened not to vote for Biden in 2024 because of his perceived support for Israel in the war against Hamas, which started when Hamas launched a terror attack against Israel on October 7. (As Breitbart News has noted, many leading voices in those communities are themselves “extremist” on the issue.)
The order would apply financial sanctions to individuals committing acts of violence in the West Bank (known to many Israelis as Judea and Samaria), who are already subject to prosecution and punishment under Israeli law.
But the executive order goes much further than that. It could also be used to sanction political leaders and political parties with no direct link to violence; it could also be used to sanction anyone who verbally defends settlers accused of violence.
The language of the executive order claims, without evidence, that settler violence has reached “high levels.” In fact, Israeli officials say, it has declined. Statistically, there are also many times more attacks by Palestinians against Jews than vice versa.
As Israeli legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich notes, the order “does not require acts of violence — anyone vaguely involved in doing or not doing anything the [White House] thinks undermines ‘peace’ and ‘security’” can be punished. It is also only being applied to Israeli Jews — not to Palestinians — even though the Palestinian Authority actively encourages violence against Jews through the “pay-to-slay” policy, which gives stipends to terrorists imprisoned in Israel, and pensions to the families of dead terrorists.
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) issued a blistering statement, noting that Biden’s executive order created a false moral equivalence between Hamas and Israeli settlers, the overwhelming majority of whom are peaceful and law-abiding. The RJC said:
Biden has to know that this executive order will be taken by many as suggesting a moral equivalence between Hamas terrorists, who massacred, raped, and kidnapped defenseless civilians, and a small number of Israelis whose reported actions are investigated and prosecuted where appropriate by the authorities.
Let’s be clear: we stand unequivocally against criminal violence – there is no moral equivalence because there can be no equivalence between a democracy governed by the rule of law and a brutally corrupt terrorist organization.
This first-of-its-kind executive order sends precisely the wrong message at absolutely the worst time, emboldening the terrorists and undermining the Jewish state. Joe Biden has needlessly damaged the US-Israel alliance yet again.
Yaakov Katz, former editor of the Jerusalem Post, called the executive order a “terrible mistake” that “is meant to create a moral equivalency between Hamas and Jewish attacks” and showed a “deep confusion” within the White House. He added:
Hamas is a terrorist organization that rules Gaza, has tens of thousands of fighters and is in possession of tens of thousands of rockets. It has massacred over 1,000 Israelis and is state run. The other is a tiny fringe and scattered group of people that has maybe at the most been involved in a handful of violent incidents that are mostly still under investigation.
These violent settlers should all be arrested and tried by Israel, but to issue this executive order now and to impose sanctions is to try and tell a story of how the US is tough on both sides.
Keep in mind that Biden is off to Michigan today, home to the largest Arab population in the US. Michigan is a swing state. This is about politics.
More importantly though, there are not two sides here and this is the mistake that Biden is making. He is sending a dangerous message to the world, one that will sadly embolden terrorism.
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SOURCE: www.breitbart.com
RELATED: With unprecedented executive order, US sanctions settlers behind ‘intolerable’ violence
First series of financial penalties, travel ban slapped on 4 violent Israeli extremists; move creates tool that could be used to cut off entire settler movement from US financing
Illustrative: Israeli soldiers stand by as Israeli settlers throw stones at Palestinians during clashes in the town of Huwara in the West Bank on October 13, 2022. (Oren Ziv/AFP)
Published February 1, 2024
US President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Thursday declaring a national emergency that allows him to implement new measures to combat settler violence, including sanctions concurrently announced against four Israeli extremists who carried out acts of violence in the West Bank.
The action is the furthest that any administration has taken to address the phenomenon, which has persisted despite repeated US warnings for Israel to address it, including after a series of first-of-their-kind visa restrictions were announced in December. The announcement also comes amid growing heat Biden has been feeling from progressive Democrats over his continued support for Israel in the war against Hamas and his opposition to a permanent ceasefire.
“The situation in the West Bank — in particular high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction — has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security and stability,” Biden said in the order.
Reacting to the move, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that “the vast majority of residents of Judea and Samaria are law-abiding citizens, many of whom are fighting right now in active and reserve duty to protect Israel.”
“Israel acts against all violators of the law in all places,” the PMO statement continued, “and therefore there is no place for drastic steps on this matter.”
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SOURCE: www.timesofisrael.com
RELATED: Biden’s sanctions target extremist Israeli settlers for violence against Palestinians
Published February 1, 2024
The Biden administration announced Thursday it is imposing sanctions against four Israelis involved in attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, penalties issued under a new executive order aimed at cracking down on extremist Israeli settlers.
President Biden issued the executive order giving the State Department and Treasury Department the authority to sanction the individuals, employing a U.S. tool often directed at criminals, terrorists and human rights abusers.
The sanctions against the blacklisted individuals block their access to any property or interests held in the U.S., imposes a visa ban on entry to the U.S., and prohibits any American from transacting with the sanctioned person.
A senior administration official said the decision to issue the executive order was aimed at promoting “peace, security, and dignity,” in the West Bank, and is part of the administration’s larger goals of working toward establishing a Palestinian state while also supporting Israel’s war to eliminate Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Violence in the West Bank over the course of 2023 rose to some of its highest levels in years, including attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis, and Israeli security raids against terrorist threats.
Hamas’s attack against Israel in October — where about 1,200 people were massacred and about 240 taken hostage, with more than 100 still in captivity — fueled already-high levels of violence in the West Bank, a territory divided to varying degrees among Israeli and Palestinian control.
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SOURCE: www.thehill.com
