Since October 7th, 2023, the U.S. has specifically implemented legislation to distribute at least $12.5 million in military aid to Israel. Analysts from Brown University further report that Israel received $17.9 billion in military aid from the U.S., accounting for the additional expense to the U.S. Defense Department for restocking the supply of weapons.
For decades, the U.S. has provided military and economic support to assist Israel’s ethnic cleansing, displacement, and execution of Palestinian communities. From 1948 to today, Israel has received $158 billion in military aid from the U.S., positioning it as the top recipient of foreign aid in history.
Through the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) Program, a government program that provides grants for the acquisition of U.S. defense equipment, Israel is given $3.3 billion of military financing annually. Most nation states that are FMF recipients receive assistance in quarterly disbursements, which is held in U.S.-monitored bank accounts until the country opts to select from its designated allocation to buy weapons. Israel, alternatively, is authorized to receive its FMF allocation as a single payment and in advance, within thirty days of the budget’s approval. Israel is also permitted to deposit these FMF funds into a U.S.-based interest-bearing account, ultimately resulting in significantly more than the annual allocation of $3.3 billion.
This assistance is subject to the Leahy Law, which prohibits the U.S. government from providing military assistance to foreign security units that have committed gross human rights abuses, such as torture, extrajudicial killings, or forced disappearances. The law not only demands that the U.S. government inspect foreign units to ensure they meet human rights standards, but that perpetrators of such human rights abuses are held accountable. If violations are deemed to have occurred, the U.S. is obligated to suspend assistance to such units.
To this day, the State Department has never categorized a single Israeli unit as ineligible to receive assistance, despite extensive documentation of Israel’s killing of over 44,000 people, with some studies listing the death toll as closer to 186,000 people. Among those identified include 11,300 children, officially positioning the occupied Palestinian territory as “the deadliest place in the world for children.”
This policy brief states the significance of the Leahy Law in providing justice and accountability regarding security assistance. It also explains how, by continuing to provide military and economic support to Israel, despite Israel’s continuous human rights abuses, the U.S. is violating its responsibility to enforce its own set of legislative provisions. By refusing to hold Israel accountable for its genocidal project, the U.S. has cemented the Israeli exception to the Leahy Law, an exception that is not provided for any other nation state that is a recipient of military aid. The U.S. must suspend the delivery of weapons utilized to conduct war crimes, enact an immediate two-way arms embargo, establish language within the government’s budget to withhold such assistance, and implement tracking mechanisms to monitor the flow of equipment to Israel. This policy brief proposes a series of measures to be followed in order to achieve this.
The Leahy Law was first enacted by Congress in 1997, and was named after Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont who introduced it. The law instructs that the State Department must screen units selected to receive assistance through conducting security, political, and human rights checks. Criteria assessed when conducting evaluations of the human rights record of the unit include: the unit's track record and identifiable patterns of abuse or professional behavior; extent of detail in the Gross Violations of Human Rights (GVHR) claims (including the identification of the violation, the perpetrator, and the victim); and the known political leanings of the original source.
Because of the challenges involved in identifying unit-level recipients of significant U.S. security assistance in certain countries, including Israel, Congress amended the Leahy Law in 2019 by adding Section 620M to the Foreign Assistance Act, which states:
“If assistance to a foreign security force is provided in a manner in which the recipient unit or units cannot be identified prior to the transfer of assistance, the Secretary of State shall regularly provide a list of units prohibited from receiving assistance pursuant to this section to the recipient government and . . . such assistance shall only be made available subject to a written agreement that the recipient government will comply with such prohibition.”
Israel is the only country where the United States does not currently possess tracking systems to monitor the distribution of weapons to specific military units. The vetting proscribed by the Leahy Law’s requirements is limited to Israeli military officers seeking to join U.S. training programs, which represent a tiny fraction of Israel's FMF allocation—only 0.02 percent of the FMF in 2018– resulting in “the remaining 99.98 percent of FMF untraceable.”
In order to create a list of Israeli security force units deemed ineligible, the State Department formed the “'Israel Leahy Vetting Forum'” (ILVF). Embassy Jerusalem and departments within the U.S. government drafted standard operating procedures (SOPs) to determine the implementation of the Leahy vetting. The text of the SOPs has not been published nor made available to the public.
The ILVF’s ineffectiveness lies in its manifestation of a structural bureaucracy that slows vetting through requirements of in person meetings and approval by senior officials at the State Department and Embassy Jerusalem. While related processes exist for countries that receive untraceable support, like Egypt for example, these processes are more relaxed and conducted at a working level. In stark contrast to the ILVF, they have led to the compiling of approved lists of ineligible units.
Similarly, determinations that nation states’ units are ineligible to receive assistance under the Leahy Law are normally conducted by experts that possess extensive understanding of the background of the units being investigated. Any conflict surrounding determinations is usually resolved at that operational level, with disputes rarely reaching the approval needed by a higher director level. According to Charles O. (Cob) Blaha, Former Director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights, “During my tenure as office director, not a single Leahy ineligibility determination in the approximately 200,000 cases my office vetted annually worldwide went above my level for decision.”
Conversely, for Israel, and only for Israel, the IVLF SOPs mandate that a finding that Israeli units are Leahy ineligible can only be made with the Deputy Secretary of State, and not the expert levels permitted for all other countries. For an investigation to make it on the desk of the Deputy Secretary, however, all formal inquiries are required to be sent to the Israeli government directly for specifics of the claims made against any unit. This week-long, often month-long process entails the production of a “written demarche” to Israel, followed by awaiting a response from Israel’s government, and concluding with the request returning back to the ILVF for an in-person meeting months later. This requirement is unique to Israel and, again, is not applied to any other nation state.
The Leahy Law states that the standard for evaluating if a foreign security unit has committed a gross violation of human rights is based on whether “there is credible information.” According to the training course given to U.S. government employees involved in implementing the Leahy Law, the information provided “need not be admissible in a court of law,” but simply requires that the source be “deserving of confidence as a basis for decision-making.” This minimal legal standard accounts for delays in obtaining interviews from victims and intervention by foreign governments to resist the release of such information.
In practice, however, this standard is not applied as leniently as it was originally intended, particularly when it comes to Israeli units. Among the list of criteria assessed when implementing the Leahy Law, none includes the potential for reproach or condemnation from a foreign government or other foreign policy considerations. Yet the ILVF has included this potential for negative feedback from Israel as a legitimate variable in their assessment of whether Israeli units are Leahy-ineligible.
Under the Leahy Law, once a unit is determined to have committed GHVRs, the unit is deemed immediately ineligible to receive assistance. Opportunities for remediation are available, but only if the foreign government overseeing the units are shown to take all necessary measures to bring perpetrators of GHVRs to justice, or if the assistance is vital in national security or humanitarian emergencies.
As Secretary of State, Antony Blinken is obligated to deliver a list of ineligible units to the Israeli government. Instead, Blinken provided a list of four units in a memorandum of justification published on May 8, 2024 that had been perpetrators of GHVRs, all which include incidents that occurred years ago, and none that occurred in Gaza or post October 7th. Each of the four Israeli units carried out horrific abuses, including the extrajudicial killing and maiming of 20-year-old Palestinian Abed Al Fatah Al Sharif by IOF soldier Elor Azaria, as well as the forced coercion of two Palestinian women seeking work permits in Israel by a COGAT officer, who demanded sex in exchange for approval. The exceptionalism afforded to Israeli units by the U.S. government was further highlighted by Blinken’s affirmation that the Israeli government’s sentencing decisions were adequate in holding them accountable, despite one of the perpetrators only receiving a three month community service sentence.
In another case involving the death of 78 year old Palestinian American Omar Assad from a stress induced heart attack after the IOF’s Netzah Yahuda Battalion detained, restrained, and gagged him, Blinken held that the unit was still eligible for assistance. Although Blinken admitted that the unit was obviously guilty of GHVRs, the State Department would still collaborate with Israel and send assistance while “identifying a path to effective remediation for this unit.”
The Leahy Law is clear in that all assistance must be suspended immediately upon a finding of a unit’s perpetuation of GHVRs. This penalty was founded in order to provide an enforceability mechanism that went beyond mere warnings, but that concretely denied the material support relied on by foreign governments. The suspension of assistance into practice is crucial in not only preventing human rights abuses, but in showing to the world that U.S. law will be enforced against any nation state that is breaking international norms. The U.S.’s agreement to continue providing assistance to Israel despite the killing of a U.S. citizen absolutely violates the remediation standard under the Leahy Law. Omar Assad is not the only U.S. citizen killed by Israeli forces since October 7th—17-year-old Palestinian-American Tawfiq Ajaq and 26-year-old Turkish American Aysenur Eygi were both shot and killed by the IOF. While the U.S. has opened an independent investigation into the killing of Eygi, military assistance has still continued to be provided to Israel in incredulous amounts.
It is clear that the remediation standard applied to Israeli units is not only inadequate, but also uniquely favorable to Israel. Contrast the application of the remediation standard to other security units determined to be Leahy-ineligible. For example, in 2013, the U.S. suspended a significant amount of military aid to Egypt after the overthrow of the government of Mohamed Morsi, citing the Egyptian army’s utilization of brute force to repress protests. In accordance with the Leahy Law, Egypt was instructed to demonstrate measures taken to hold perpetrators to justice, including the implementation of various human rights training and vetting processes for the military. Only after demonstrating the improvement of certain accountability mechanisms, did the U.S. government find Egypt’s actions sufficient to meet the remediation standard and resume sending military assistance in 2015, almost 21 months later. Furthermore, in the fiscal year 2021 budget it was decided that “$225 million of 1.3 billion in FMF for Egypt [would be] withheld from obligation until the Department of State certifies that Egypt is taking sustained and effective steps’ to strengthen human rights.”
This stark contrast in the application of the remediation standard highlights a troubling double standard in U.S. foreign policy, where Israel's actions are treated with far more leniency than those of other nations accused of human rights violations.
Continuing to provide military assistance to Israel is a blatant violation of international law. As grassroots groups have called for an immediate arms embargo, some elected officials have also stepped in and utilized their platform to highlight Israel’s genocidal project and the ever increasing death toll.
In a letter sent on April 10, 2024, Democratic representatives expressed their concern to Blinken regarding the U.S.’s refusal to apply the Leahy Law for assistance provided to Israel. According to the senators, Blinken’s response simply reiterated general laws and precedent regarding the matter. On November 18, 2024 the senators followed up with a letter demanding responses to some of the following questions: “Has the State Department provided a list of ineligible units to Israel? If not, why not? How do the ILVF procedures differ from Leahy vetting procedures for other countries?”
In November 2024, Senator Bernie Sanders spearheaded efforts to gain approval for a multitude of Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) that would prevent the transfer of $20 billion in arms to Israel. 19 U.S. Senators supported the resolutions, with Senator Elizabeth Warren from among them stating, “The failure by the Biden administration to follow U.S. law and to suspend arms shipments is a grave mistake that undermines American credibility worldwide.” The JRDs were ultimately defeated, with the U.S. Senate approving the new shipment of weapons, among them including joint direct attack munitions (JDAMs), high explosive mortar rounds, and 120 mm tank rounds. Despite the JRDs not passing, the fact that a bill to limit aid to Israel garnered approval from several different senators across the country indicates that support for a global arms embargo is strengthening.
Furthermore, several human rights groups and organizations have pursued legal means to put pressure on U.S. agencies to enforce the Leahy Law as it applies to Israel. In an effort to shed light on the procedures for the ILVF, which to this date have not yet been made available to the public, DAWN filed suit against the State Department to demand release of documentation surrounding the ILVF process. DAWN, a nonprofit organization dedicated to "promoting democracy, the rule of law, and human rights for all the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa," had submitted a Freedom of Information Act request in May seeking documents related to Israel's efforts to influence State Department investigations, as well as information on the killings of U.S. citizens by Israel. However, the State Department failed to produce the requested documents.
Although the lawsuit is still in its early stages, it serves as a strong reminder to the U.S. government of its responsibility to enforce and uphold the Leahy Law.
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