“Obey the Law”: Palestinians Sue State Dept., Saying Arms Sales to Israel Violate U.S. Human Rights Law

AMY GOODMAN: Five Palestinian families have sued the U.S. State Department for violating U.S. federal law by continuing to fund Israeli military units despite their role in gross human rights abuses in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The lawsuit cites the Leahy Law, named after former Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy. The lawsuit says, quote, “The State Department’s calculated failure to apply the Leahy Law is particularly shocking in the face of the unprecedented escalation … since the Gaza War erupted on October 7, 2023,” unquote.

The lawsuit is supported by DAWN, the D.C.-based nonprofit that campaigns for democracy and human rights in the Arab world. This is a short clip from a video they produced about the lawsuit.

NARRATOR: For almost 30 years, the Leahy Law has prohibited the United States from funding foreign security forces that violate human rights. Yet for decades the United States has consistently ignored persistent and widespread abuses by the security forces of one country — Israel — and refused to block aid to any of its military units. Now DAWN is taking action. We are filing a lawsuit against the State Department to force it to finally enforce the Leahy Law and end military aid to abusive units of the Israeli Defense Forces. This lawsuit isn’t just about ending the Israeli exception from enforcing U.S. laws, but preserving the broader principles of accountability, human rights and the rule of law. We hope our lawsuit will force a long-overdue reckoning for Israeli impunity, but also crack down on U.S. foreign policies arming abusive regimes around the globe — in violation of our nation’s own laws and principles. This lawsuit also reflects the immense human cost of America’s failure to enforce its own laws, continuing to provide Israel with over $20 billion in weapons to terrorize Palestinians in Gaza, where it has killed over 45,000 people, the vast majority women and children.

AMY GOODMAN: That video from the D.C.-based nonprofit DAWN, that campaigns for democracy and human rights in the Arab world.

We’re joined now by two guests. Charles Blaha is senior adviser to DAWN. He retired from the State Department last year after over 30 years of service. From 2016 until his retirement, he served as director of the Office of Security and Human Rights, which is responsible for implementing the Leahy Law worldwide. He’s joining us from Washington, D.C. And from Philadelphia, we’re joined by the Palestinian American writer Ahmed Moor, born in Gaza. Moore is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and advisory board member of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Charles Blaha. You worked for the State Department, the agency that you are now suing, for over 30 years. Can you explain more fully the Leahy Law and what you’re charging in this lawsuit?

CHARLES BLAHA: Sure. And thanks for having me.

The Leahy Law, as you said, prohibits United States assistance to security force units that have committed gross violations of human rights. It’s actually very surgical, and it prohibits U.S. assistance to the specific units that have committed the violations.

The State Department has for years, in its own human rights reports, including the 2023 reports for Israel and for Gaza and the West Bank, set forth gross violations of human rights by Israeli security forces, things like torture, extrajudicial killings, like the killing of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi that you mentioned at the top. It deprived people of their liberty without due process, rape under color of law, enforced disappearances. These are allegations and credible reports set forth in the State Department’s own human rights reports, and they go back years.

Despite all that, the State Department has never once held any Israeli unit ineligible for assistance under the Leahy Law. The lawsuit, which is by the plaintiffs, is designed to try to compel the State Department to obey the law. So, in three words, what this lawsuit is about is the State Department must “obey the law.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Charles Blaha, what has happened to these reports once the department — once they’ve been issued to the higher-ups in the State Department?

CHARLES BLAHA: Well, that’s a good question, because usually the determinations about whether a unit is eligible or not are not made at the higher levels of the State Department. They’re made by experts. They’re made by action officers who are versed in the Leahy Law, who know the security forces — the security forces in question, and who know the facts in question. And these are legal determinations.

And one of the problems with the way the Leahy Law is applied, or really not applied to Israel, is that these determinations have been made at the political level. And they have, as I said, resulted in not one single Israeli security force unit ever being found ineligible for assistance.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how is U.S. military assistance delivered to Israel? In what form and where? And is this a standard practice, the way it’s delivered?

CHARLES BLAHA: Well, Israel is a special case, and we give massive security assistance to Israel. And part of that is a lump sum of over $3 billion annually that goes into an account. And where it goes after that is controlled by Israel. We don’t know all the places it goes. We don’t know the units it goes to.

And that’s a problem, because the Leahy Law requires vetting units. In that situation where we can’t trace the units to which the assistance is going, the law requires the State Department to give the countries in question — and Israel is one of those, there are a few others — to give the countries in question a list, a list of ineligible units. The State Department has never done that. That has been the law since 2019. And in five years — five years — the State Department has never given Israel a list of ineligible units. It’s given lists to the other countries that this law applies to, but not to Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Charles Blaha, you often hear commentators on television, or, I should say, U.S. government officials, saying, “Don’t be so concerned about this amount of money, $3 billion, because it’s really going mainly to U.S. military, you know, to the weapons manufacturers.” You hear that not only around Israel, but other countries that get U.S. military aid. Can you explain what actually happens? And is Israel a separate case, where you don’t know where the money goes, but in other cases, we insist that the money stays with U.S. weapons manufacturers?

CHARLES BLAHA: Well, part of the money does go to U.S. weapons manufacturers. Part of it actually goes to their competitors in Israel. But the problem from the Leahy Law is, regardless of where that money goes, this is U.S. taxpayer money that’s going to weapons that are being used in gross violations of human rights, being used by units that commit gross violations of human rights. That’s the problem.

AMY GOODMAN: And Blinken’s role, your former — well, I don’t know if you worked under him, but the secretary of state? When did you retire exactly?

CHARLES BLAHA: I retired in August 2023, so before the — before October 7th. And when I retired, I was frustrated at the slowness of the implementation of the law. It wasn’t the reason I retired. I retired because I had been in the State Department for 32 years and it was time to retire. But I was frustrated. But I became more and more frustrated as I saw mounting evidence of gross violations of human rights by Israeli security force units and nothing being done about them.

AMY GOODMAN: And did you have conversations with Blinken about it specifically?

CHARLES BLAHA: No, I was an office director, so I was not what they call up on the seventh floor, up in the highest levels of the State Department. I was in office director, but an office director with really good knowledge of the Leahy Law and how it is applied.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring into the conversation Ahmed Moor, is a Palestinian American writer, advisory board member of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. Welcome to Democracy Now! Could you talk about your involvement in the lawsuit? You were born in Gaza and still have family there?

AHMED MOOR: Yes, that’s right. So, I was born in Gaza, moved to the United States as a child, still have most of my extended family in Gaza. And as you can imagine, conditions there have been unlivable for over a year, 14 months now. And so, my direct participation in the lawsuit goes to my increasing inability and increasing likelihood — inability to speak with family members in Gaza and increasing likelihood that they’re going to be subjected to further inhumane conditions and harm. My family has experienced direct loss through the genocide. Most recently, my cousin’s 19-year-old son was killed by an Israeli sniper in Rafah. And so, the urgency surrounding this lawsuit goes to the fact that the conditions are getting worse. The danger that people are exposed to continues even as we speak.

AMY GOODMAN: Ahmed, you wrote a piece recently in The Guardian, “The Palestine-Israel nightmare won’t end until we accept these basic truths.” Lay out your argument.

AHMED MOOR: So, I mean, basically, anybody who’s been — you don’t need to be a sophisticated geopolitical analyst to take a look at a map and realize that there’s never going to be a Palestinian state. The pronouncements that emerged in 1993, the White House Lawn, the famous handshake between Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister at the time, did generate a lot of hope. You know, I lived as a child in the West Bank, and people were ready, I’d say, to accept a future of two states, with everything that that entailed, with all of the losses that they had experienced personally through the Nakba. At that time, Israel was less than 50 years old. People were ready to move on and accommodate themselves to the reality, because Israel exists.

But over the course of the past 30 years, the acceleration of the settlement project has basically rendered a Palestinian state unrealizeable. And you really only need to take a look at how the settlements are arrayed across Jerusalem and the West Bank to realize that there’s no contiguous Palestinian state possible in that land. And so, people like me accommodated themselves to the idea of one binational state, equal rights for everybody. And it’s the framework that we live under here in the United States, and it’s workable in lots of different places. And we said, “Well, why not Palestine-Israel?”

That no longer seems likely or workable. You speak with people in Palestine, and they’re deeply traumatized, and it’s unreasonable to ask them, to say, “Well, you know, can you have a shared future in this land with Israelis?” So, I think the consensus that’s emerging is that we need some kind of separation, even though two states is unworkable. And it’s not clear where that goes.

In the article, though, I highlight a few conditions that need to be met before we can arrive at a negotiated conclusion or outcome to this horrible nightmare that we’ve all been living for so long. The first is recognition that Hamas is an ordinary political party, in the sense that it’s native to the Palestinian struggle. Hamas was founded long after the establishment of the state of Israel, and it rose in direct opposition to the conditions of the occupation in Gaza. Before Hamas, the chief organization, that was described as the terrorist and obstacle to peace, was the Palestine Liberation Organization. And, of course, the PLO accommodated themselves to Israel, and that was the commencement of the Oslo process. So we know that this outright description of people as hard-liners or as being fundamentally incompatible with the idea of negotiation and discussion just isn’t true. The second element of the argument — so, I guess the first one is Hamas is not going away. It’s an indigenous party in Palestine. It’s employed terrorist tactics, but that doesn’t mean that the party itself is going away or that Palestinian society is going to move away from Hamas just because the United States and Israel demand that it does.

The second part of the argument is that the Palestinians have a right to say that Zionism — have the right to say that Zionism is Jewish supremacy in Palestine, and that in order for us to have an equitable conversation about what a future looks like, we need to move past Jewish supremacy in Palestine. We need a basic framework for negotiation and discussion which moves past the idea that certain people have rights that accrue to them based on an identity which is immovable, an identity that you’re born with. And that’s basically the argument.

So, once we meet these — once we can set a framework, basically, for negotiation and discussion, we can begin to talk about resolving the Palestinian-Israeli crisis. Where we go from there, I’m not sure. I don’t think anybody really knows at this stage.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I’d like to bring Charles Blaha back into the conversation. Charles, what differentiates this lawsuit from previous ones — excuse me — against the U.S. government for providing military assistance to Israel, especially in view of the fact that Israel — with every war, Israel gobbles up more territory, creates more settlements and becomes more and more of a rogue state?

CHARLES BLAHA: Well, what makes this particular lawsuit by the plaintiffs different are two things. One, it’s being brought under the Administrative Procedures Act. And the contention under that act is that the special process that the State Department uses to Leahy-vet Israeli units — it’s called the Israeli Leahy Vetting Forum — that that process is arbitrary and capricious and does not advance the intent of the Leahy Law. In fact, it seems designed to frustrate it.

And the second thing about this lawsuit is that given the Supreme Court’s recent ruling overruling the Chevron case, which says that courts have to give deference to agencies’ interpretations of laws, that no longer exists. That’s been overruled. And as our lawyer laid forth in the complaint, now the courts can look more closely at how an agency — at how an agency or department implements — or, in the case of Israel, fails to implement — the law.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, but, Ahmed Moor, I wanted to ask why you’ joined this lawsuit. And given that so many of your family are still in Gaza, those that have survived, their response?

AHMED MOOR: The conditions are dire. I’m writing an essay now about child amputees, and I spoke with a child and her mother, double amputee in Gaza. The conditions of basic life are not being met. Gaza is unlivable. Never mind things like potable water or taking a shower in the morning, think about defecating in the open, being a woman or a girl who can’t — who’s menstruating. The basic conditions of life in Gaza aren’t being met. And the fact that they aren’t being met is a matter of policy, policy that our government is supporting.

AMY GOODMAN: Ahmed Moor, Palestinian American writer, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the State Department. And Charles Blaha, former State Department official, served as director of the office responsible for implementing the Leahy Law.

Coming up, we speak with the sister and husband of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the American human rights activist who just recently graduated from University of Washington in Seattle. She was killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank this year. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “Rumours of War” by Tony Tuff. The longtime conscious roots reggae singer passed away at the age of 69 in April.