Admin Biden’s executive order allowing US to sanction Americans undermining West Bank ‘stability’ prompts lawsuit

A Biden administration executive order allowing the US to sanction American Jews living in the West Bank has prompted a group of Israelis to file a lawsuit against the lame-duck administration, challenging the constitutionality of the first-of-its-kind sanctions regime.

Following the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, President Biden signed a executive order (EO) in February, imposing sanctions against “persons who undermine peace, security and stability in the West Bank.” As a result, sanctioned individuals have had their bank accounts frozen, credit cards cancelled, and faced the inability to carry out basic life activities. Critics say the move allows the administration to sanction Jews in Israel who disagree with the administration’s policies, which they see as a violation of the constitutional rights of American citizens of Israel and their supporters in America.

Biden said: in the announcement of the EO, that “the situation in the West Bank – particularly the high levels of extremist settler violence, the forced displacement of people and villages, and the destruction of property – has reached intolerable proportions and poses a serious threat to the peace, security and stability of the West Bank. and Gaza, Israel and the Greater Middle East Region’.

In response, the American Christian nonprofit, Texans for Israel, and several American Jews living in Israel filed suit in federal court in August, challenging the OE on the grounds that it was a violation of their right to freedom of expression, as well as their rights to due process and equal protection under the law.

“The scope of this sanctioning authority is unprecedented because it targets beliefs held by many, if not most, Americans,” the lawsuit states.

Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at George Mason University Law School who is a member of the legal team challenging the sanctions in federal court, told Fox News Digital that sanctions like those detailed in the lawsuit have been used as a way to silence political dissent .

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“The shocking thing is that after October 7, in February, while Israel was in a war for survival against an Iranian axis of several countries, the Biden administration took advantage of this time to implement a new sanctions regime without precedent, targeting Israelis and their supporters from America,” because they simply don’t agree with the administration’s foreign policy, Kontorovich said.

View from a new house overlooking the divided Palestinian West Bank and Israeli settlements on November 4, 2023, in Al-Ram, West Bank. (Getty Images)

If the Biden administration is allowed to impose such sanctions, Kontorovich also said it could lead to retaliatory behavior by another administration down the road.

“The executive order, if you read it carefully, says that people who are ‘destabilizing’ the West Bank and basically say that the views they have are harmful to the West Bank … through vague and tenuous connections,” Kontorovich. said Fox News Digital.

“They happen to have the power now, but obviously if that’s allowed then it can be used both ways and that’s why it’s important to uphold constitutional rights in a neutral and fair way,” he said.

In addition, the OE also states that anyone who engages in “violence” or “threats of violence” in the West Bank can be punished, but Kontorovich argues that “violence” is defined by anti-Israel groups and can be applied to Jews defending themselves in the face of a violent Palestinian attacker in an “arbitrary” manner.

The US government relied on data from the website of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), categorizing acts of Jewish self-defense and anti-terrorist operations by the Israel Defense Forces as settler violence. process.

“At the same time, there is no evidence of an independent finding or review by the USSC (United States Security Council) or any other US actor or independent investigator; instead, the USSC’s claims seem to respond to highly politicized statements and figures. and biased organizations such as OCHA, previously discussed, and the far-left Israeli NGO B’Tselem,” the lawsuit states.

“An examination of the OCHA and B’Tselem reports reveals that there was no consistent fact-finding methodology behind the data presented. Moreover, it shows several deceptive methods for inflating the data,” the lawsuit adds. “These reports are biased, inaccurate and inflammatory and should not form the basis of US policy.”

For example, after a Palestinian was shot dead after breaking into a Jewish farm in the northern West Bank, armed with a knife and explosives, the UN labeled him a victim of “settler violence.”

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Kontorovich said EO focuses on talking points about the oft-repeated idea of ​​an “epidemic of settler violence” in the West Bank, using “neutral” words that indicate it targets anyone in the West Bank, not just Jews. He said this was misleading because “it was only applied against Jewish people in a clearly discriminatory way.” In particular, no sanctions were imposed on non-Jewish American citizens of the West Bank acting in self-defense, the lawsuit states.

Kontorovich told Fox News Digital that the sanctions even targeted people outside the West Bank. Tzav 9, for example, is a group that protests in Israel against aid to Hamas in Gaza, which Kontorovich said demonstrates that the connection to West Bank and Gaza it doesn’t have to be direct. The Biden administration froze the bank accounts of Reut Ben Haim, a mother of eight living in Israel, under OE simply because she is an organizer of the grassroots movement of 15,000 people.

Reut and Yosef Ben Chaim at the border between Egypt and Israel.

Tzav 9’s members include families of hostages and bereaved families of soldiers, who have strongly denounced the violence, but the group has been labeled a “violent extremist Israeli group” by the State Department, which announced sanctions against the group on June 14. Notably, on June 10, the American human rights group, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), asked the State Department to sanction Tzav 9.

Shortly after she was fined, Reut’s bank accounts, including her small business account in Israel, were frozen. The administration’s sanctions also had a significant and detrimental effect on Reut’s husband, Yosef Ben Chaim, who is a dual American-Israeli citizen, according to the suit. Since his wife’s sanction, he has been unable to finance everyday basics including food, education, medicine, hygiene products, mortgage payments and other daily expenses.

“He’s an American citizen, so this is a violation of their First Amendment rights, a violation of their due process rights, and it’s a violation of equal protection, because this is really being done in a way that it clearly targets Jews,” Kontorovich said. to Fox News Digital.

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A photo taken in the village of Turmus Ayya, near the city of Ramallah, shows the nearby Israeli settlement of Shilo in the background in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2024. (Getty Images)

The Biden administration appears to be doubling down on its approach. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Treasury Department announced a new round of sanctions on Monday. In addition, last week, 88 congressional Democrats wrote a letter demanding that the Biden administration sanction members of the Israeli government and an Israeli NGO that reports on the destruction of illegal Palestinian activities.

“The sanctions announced this week abandon even the pretense of calling for acts of violence – this has created a clear chill on pro-Israel activism in the US, because it is impossible to know which partners in Israel will be sanctioned next,” he Kontorovich said.

He said the sanctions regime, which has received little media coverage, is an indication that the press is not interested in stories critical of the administration.

“This will be a case that will be heard in the federal courts, and hopefully they will say that the administration cannot use foreign sanctions in a way that essentially makes dissent on foreign policy impermissible,” Kontorovich said.

Fox News Digital contacted the White House for comment.

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