++How to understand Hamas’s alleged sexual attacks on October 7. +
++As Israeli officials piece together the attacks of October 7, evidence is mounting that Hamas committed crimes of sexual violence against the people it attacked in Israel — both women and men, both dead and alive. +
++UN testimony delivered earlier this month implicates Hamas and other militants in potential sexual crimes during the rampage in Israel, including shooting at the genitals of the victims, inserting foreign objects into sexual organs, as well as, potentially, rape and other forms of sexual violence. But as the testimonies shared before the UN indicate, investigations into what happened on that day are ongoing and will be complicated by the fact that many of the victims and witnesses are dead. +
++Sexual violence is horrific in any context, and is always connected to power and domination. But it takes on a different dimension when it is utilized as a tool of war — as it has been for centuries. And even though it is an unfortunately common feature of broader conflict, it’s often misunderstood and is difficult to prosecute — as all war crimes are — making justice for victims a complicated prospect at best. +
++In the case of the October 7 attacks, high-profile figures, like Sheryl Sandberg and Hillary Clinton, who has also firmly backed Israel’s war in Gaza, have called for more attention to be drawn to the allegations. There has been a fraught discourse over claims the allegations were insufficiently covered and ignored by the United Nations, followed by scrutiny of the motivations of those who are highlighting it and how this all plays into the world’s understanding of October 7 and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza. It’s worth pointing out: Sexual violence in conflict is often under-covered relative to the gravity of the harms inflicted. +
++The United Nations and Israel are now seriously pursuing these allegations. The UN secretary-general on conflict-related sexual violence has requested access to information to investigate the assaults, and a UN Commission of Inquiry collecting evidence of war crimes — including sexual violence — committed by all sides in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories since October 7 was established in the days following the attacks. +
++Testimony and evidence available so far indicates that some horrific forms of sexual violence did occur on October 7. (Hamas, for its part, has denied that its fighters would engage in that specific kind of brutality.) But it’s not yet clear how widespread that sexual violence was, and it may be unclear for many months to come, in part because Israel has been somewhat circumspect in releasing information, given the sensitive nature of the alleged crimes. +
++What is known is that violent conflict almost always includes sexual violence — in fact, as one expert Vox spoke to said, it is actually an inherent, if under-examined, aspect of conflict. +
++What we know about sexual violence on October 7 +
++Israeli authorities have collected testimony from witnesses and first responders, as well as footage gathered from militants as they attacked towns and villages, as part of the Israeli government’s investigation into the sexual crimes that Hamas and other militants allegedly perpetrated. Evidence is still emerging and may be difficult to ascertain in full — gathering that evidence becomes forensically challenging as dead bodies decompose. And it may take time for survivors — including, potentially, hostages — to be able to recount their experiences and share them with the authorities, since sexual trauma often carries with it shame, doubt, and confusion. +
++Conflict-related sexual violence encompasses a broad and evolving set of crimes that don’t necessarily involve rape; sexually invasive searches, groping, stripping and public shaming, and damaging or maiming sexual organs are all forms of sexual violence, as is coercion into sexual acts to secure favorable treatment, shelter, food, or security in conflict or in captivity. +
++Following the October 7 attack in Israel, witnesses have presented testimony about nails and other objects being placed in the sexual organs of at least one victim, as well as evidence that militants shot at the sexual organs of victims. Israeli police have also collected witness testimony that indicates militants violently raped some of the victims, CNN reported earlier this month. However, the police do not have first-hand testimony from survivors, because it’s not clear there are any left. (Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after meeting with released hostages, has said that Hamas and militants in Gaza are sexually assaulting female hostages.) +
++The investigation thus far has released limited information, with authorities navigating the tension between respecting the privacy of victims and ensuring the world knows about the violence. +
++“There’s an effort by the [Israeli] government … to not really reveal yet a lot of what happened for various reasons, both to protect the people who were released, and the people who are still captive, and maybe other reasons that we’re not aware,” Mairav Zonszein, senior Israel analyst with the International Crisis Group, told Vox. “So there’s a lot of fog around all of it.” +
++Putting the sexual violence of October 7 in context +
++Though sexual violence in conflict is not new, sexual violence at this scale in this particular conflict, at least by Palestinian actors, is, Zonszein said. (There is documented evidence of rape and sexual assault by Israeli troops against Palestinians during the Nakba, though since then, many scholars argue that sexual violence by Israel Defense Forces against Palestinians is rare during conflict. However, state-sponsored sexual violence against Palestinians does occur in other contexts, like in Israeli prisons and by Israeli settlers in the territories. As with all sexual violence, it’s difficult to evaluate how widespread these phenomena are due to limits in self-reporting.) +
++There could be many reasons for this; one is simply the unprecedented scale of Hamas’s attack, as well as the nature of it. Rather than the suicide bombings or rocket attacks Hamas has intermittently used against Israel over the last decade, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters who breached the Gaza border fence to attack Israeli towns and villages were face-to-face with their victims in ways Palestinian militants hadn’t been in previous conflicts — creating the opportunity to commit sexual violence. +
++Another possibility, if indeed the attacks were premeditated as Israeli officials have insisted, is that Hamas may have intentionally used the tactic as part of the group’s broader plan to provoke a massive reaction from Israel. If so, Jennie Burnet, director of the Institute for Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Georgia Southern University, said it’s worth asking if they picked up the tactic of using sexual violence from other extremist groups they are in contact with, such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which routinely uses sexual violence as a terror tactic against Iranians. +
++“It’s really important that it be investigated what precisely happened,” Burnet said. “Whether it was Hamas soldiers or militants taking their own initiatives, or whether it was planned and systematic, I think that is an important thing to uncover.” +
++Sexual violence is intrinsic to war throughout history +
++Sexual violence is extremely common throughout the history of conflict and conquest, though our understanding of what constitutes sexual violence within conflict is evolving. For example, the idea of enslaved people or concubines who were always at a ruler’s disposal for sex would have been thought of as slavery or membership in a royal court rather than as conflict-related sexual violence centuries ago. The taking of “brides” or sex slaves, as ISIS did to Yazidi women in Iraq as it captured land to build its caliphate, is now considered a clear-cut case of sexual violence. +
++UN peacekeepers in Haiti, insurgent groups like the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, state actors like Japan’s use of Korean “comfort women,” and Russian forces raping Ukrainians are among the wide variety of perpetrators. Academic literature, especially that which centers on avenues for justice, often focuses on cases of systemic sexual violence — most often in the Rwandan genocide and in the Bosnian war, as the violence was so widespread, systemic, and ethnically motivated. These conflicts also led to the first international tribunals to include prosecutions for conflict-related sexual violence, and the documentation, study, and prosecution of these cases greatly advanced the study of conflict-related sexual violence. +
++“The prosecution of sexual violence by the [International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia] transformed scholarly studies of gender and war, as well as international human rights law,” Burnet said. Other instances, like the abuse of Korean women by Japanese soldiers and longstanding patterns of sexual violence by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, remain under-studied. +
++But no matter who is perpetrating this violence or where it’s happening, it’s part of conflict because it serves a purpose — really, three purposes. First, experts say, it telegraphs to a community under siege that nowhere and no one is safe; second, it destabilizes the targeted society by fraying community and familial bonds, often by targeting women who often maintain those bonds; and third, it breaks the “gender contract” of a society, shattering the illusion that a society’s men can “protect” its women from violence. +
++“Sexual violence is very, very effective in destroying the women and girls of a particular community, but also the repercussions are massive, in terms of [disrupting] entire communities, entire families, entire communities, and entire nations,” said Joanna Bourke, a historian who has written extensively about sexual violence, war, and conflict. +
++This violence has devastating repercussions for women in terms of unintended pregnancies, disease, and injury to their sexual organs, Bourke said, but it also can create a cycle of harm, particularly for any children born from the sexual violence of the invading or adversarial forces. Significant evidence “shows that these children are highly abused, they have a real marginal existence within their communities, and have a disruptive presence within their communities, because they are constant reminders of the war, and what went wrong,” she told Vox. +
++This is not to say that men are never the victims of conflict-related sexual violence; they are, and likely far more often than is reported. There are more extreme examples, but one of the most jarring was the series of photos of detained Iraqi men coming from Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. American soldiers participated in and took photos of the men naked and piled on top of each other, and forced them to perform sexual acts, in a horrific pattern of sexual humiliation and abuse. +
++“Sexual violence [against] men in military conflicts has been kind of ignored, mainly because it doesn’t or doesn’t always … involve rape,” Bourke said. “But it does involve sexual humiliation, it does involve the crushing of testicles, it does involve all those sorts of things,” which researchers had previously classified as torture. “It turns out to be extremely high levels of sexual abuse against men in modern conflicts, but it simply was being categorized differently, because they were men and not women.” +
++Can victims of sexual violence in war find justice? +
++The Geneva Conventions, the post-World War II international agreements that form the basis for international humanitarian law (IHL), “require the parties to an armed conflict to protect women against rape, and to protect women and children from indecent assault,” Adil Haque, a professor at Rutgers Law School who specializes in the law of armed conflict, told Vox. +
++Though it is unlawful under the Geneva Conventions, sexual violence in conflict is difficult to prosecute in ordinary civilian courts, especially in places where gender inequality is pronounced and societal understanding of sex crimes is limited, as it was in Rwanda following the genocide of the Tutsi people by the Hutu militias. “In Rwanda before the genocide, there [was no] precise word for rape or sexual violence in the local language, Kinyarwanda, and most Rwandan traditions are around dealing with sexual impropriety,” Burnet said. “They didn’t address rape, they addressed inappropriate sexual relationships between men and women.” And although rape was against the law at the time of the genocide, “at the time rape was not clearly defined.” +
++However, in both Rwanda and Bosnia, “women survivors of sexual violence in the conflict … wanted legal recourse, and they wanted their perpetrators held to account before courts whenever possible,” Burnet told Vox. “And there’s documented cases in both countries of women going to great lengths and breaking lots of social taboos by giving testimony before courts about how they were violated, as part of that effort,” as well as, in Rwanda, demanding that the post-conflict national law categorize sexual violence among the most severe crimes of genocide. +
++Both Rwanda and Bosnia used their national courts to try (largely lower-level) perpetrators of conflict-related sexual violence. Under IHL, national courts are the right venue to try war crimes committed by regular troops, as long as they have the appropriate laws to prosecute conflict-related sexual violence. However, even with the right laws on the books, that doesn’t mean survivors get the justice they deserve; as of 2017, less than 1 percent of the estimated 20,000 Bosnians who suffered conflict-related sexual violence had their cases tried, according to Amnesty International. +
++Bosnia and Rwanda also set up special tribunals in cooperation with the United Nations, which were intended to go after those in power who directed or facilitated sexual violence in those conflicts, as well as other war crimes and crimes against humanity. Though the international tribunal courts arguably did not go far enough in providing reparations and support for victims of sexual violence, they were the first international criminal tribunals to bring charges pertaining to conflict-related sexual violence. +
++But many people who have suffered the life-long consequences of conflict-related sexual violence never find a measure of justice, whether that’s in court or a formal apology. Over the decades, disagreements over how to recognize, characterize, and provide reparations for “comfort women,” the Korean women and children who were used as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during that country’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula, have greatly contributed to the strained relations between the two countries. Despite a 2015 agreement and apology from Japan, it remains contentious; over the past decade, the issue has been litigated in South Korean courts, with Japan denying that the victims were forcibly taken from their homes and objecting to the use of “sexual slavery” to describe the events. +
++In the context of October 7, Israel has already indicated that it is taking claims of sexual violence seriously, as has the International Criminal Court (ICC). +
++“Importantly, rape is a war crime under the ICC Statute … as well as a crime against humanity if committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population,” Haque said. “The ICC prosecutor, from his very first public statements about the conflict, alluded to clear evidence of sexual violence, and has repeatedly identified rape as one of the war crimes that his office is investigating.” +
++Though the ICC and Israeli police are investigating the reports of sexual violence during Hamas’s attack, Israel is not cooperating with the UN Commission of Inquiry due to perceived anti-Israel bias, which could greatly impede the investigation into war crimes that the commission is mandated to perform. Israel has invited the special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, Pramila Patten, on an official visit to the country, but Israel hasn’t invited the UN agencies with a mandate to investigate the allegations to do so yet. Israel’s investigation into the reports of sexual violence indicates a willingness to try the perpetrators in court, and the ICC could potentially have jurisdiction over some crimes that occurred on October 7, even though Israel is not party to the ICC. +
++Regardless of how these investigations play out, justice for victims of conflict-related sexual violence is not guaranteed, despite forward steps in its study, understanding, and prosecution. +
++
++
++Social media is a stressful place. Keeping things in perspective is important. +
++We’ve all been there: scrolling through a heated Facebook comment section, and some troll says the most offensive trash ever. You know you should let it go, take some space, but you can’t hold it in. You need to fight back. Or do you? +
++Holding a rational debate can be impossible when you are feeling triggered. Whether it occurs online or in person, over political stances or who does the most chores — when a dispute ignites, all bets are off. You might have a split-second reaction, jump to conclusions, and feel willing to risk it all just to claim victory. +
++“A lot of folks are in it for the quick win. They go with an impulse and abandon themselves as a person,” says Henry Ortiz, a Gestalt psychologist in Los Angeles, California. “Arguing and having the last word never wins people over to your perspective. You’re playing a tug of war and the harder you pull your end of the rope, the more the other person resists you.” +
++Especially online, a comment can trail you forever, says Brad Bushman, a social psychologist and anger expert. “It’s always best to prevent a problem from occurring than to try to solve it after it’s already occurred.” +
++More than ever, American discourse feels incredibly polarizing. Although it might be tempting to sound off when you’re angry or when you disagree with someone, you aren’t likely to win any friends by ranting in a comment section. Nor are you going to get your significant other to see it your way while you are both fuming. So what can you do? I asked five experts about the best ways to stop and think before you say something that you might end up regretting. +
++Put things in perspective +
++When you give in to impulses during a heated debate, your reaction is filtered through many of the pains, fears, and losses you’ve endured in the past. “We bring all these different experiences into every relationship,” says Bernasha Anderson, a psychologist in Washington, DC, who specializes in interpersonal therapy. “Sometimes they’re dormant, they’re underneath the surface, but they’re there.” You may be fighting with your new boo, but deep down, you could be evoking issues from your childhood. “Once our nervous system regulates, we find ourselves looking back and saying, ‘That’s not even my value system. That’s not who I want to be,’” Anderson says. +
++Be aware of your circumstances. Fights are more likely to strike when people are overwhelmed in other areas of their life. A dispute with your partner about doing the dishes, for example, may actually be about not having enough child care. When we feel powerless, we may be more likely to lash out, pushing our negative energy out at any cost. +
++The same goes for frustrations we might encounter online. On the internet, it can feel like we have no choice but to be pulled into arguments, especially when algorithms are tailored to our own opinions. Any break in those feedback loops can be jarring. “There’s a lot of pressure to make public statements that align with your group’s interests in order to be accepted by that group,” says Michelle Drouin, a psychology professor and the author of Out of Touch: How to Survive an Intimacy Famine. +
++“It’s very easy to get baited into these online debates because we want to channel this anger and hopelessness and despair that we feel,” says Joy Harden Bradford, psychologist, host of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, and author of Sisterhood Heals: The Transformative Power of Healing in Community. But while it feels like fighting with trolls is a productive use of time, it almost never is. Sometimes, saying nothing at all can be powerful, too — especially when you feel vulnerable or unsure of how to calmly express yourself. +
++Pause and take it all in +
++Everyone has a window of tolerance where they are in a calm state and can take in information and tolerate emotions, explains Ortiz. When someone feels physically or emotionally threatened, they go outside of that window and either freeze or go into fight or flight. +
++Once triggered, your heart rate and blood pressure jump up, says Bushman. But shoving down your feelings can lead to rumination. “It’s like a tea pot boiling on the stove. You can vent the steam or you can try to contain the steam and stuff it inside. A better strategy is just to turn down the heat on that stove.” +
++Remember, the person you are arguing with is probably in fight or flight, too, says Ortiz. “Who you’re arguing with isn’t even that person anymore. You’re arguing with their pain, with their trauma, and with their past.” +
++Ortiz recommends asking to take a break from the conversation, saying something like, “I’m sorry. I’m feeling really overwhelmed right now, and I just need a moment. I didn’t mean to upset you.” You can even mark down a date on your calendar to revisit the discussion later that day or week when everyone is calmer. You’ll likely find that by then, you’ll feel a lot more levelheaded. +
++In disputes online, Drouin suggests pulling out of the conversation completely by making a boundary-setting public statement, saying that you will not have conversations about certain issues online but will have them in private. Conversations that take place over DMs instead of the world stage of a public feed or forum can often be more civil. +
++“My grandma used to tell me that before you say or do anything [while angry], you should count to 10 before you respond,” Bushman said. “Thomas Jefferson said, ‘If you’re really angry, you should count to 100 instead.’” Just taking that pause allows you to clear your thinking. +
++In addition, Anderson recommends using the acronym HALT — Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired — to take inventory of silent predators that can cause you to act out of character. Used in sobriety communities, HALT helps people recovering from addiction recognize overlooked stressors that may not seem major but can throw off someone’s ability to make clear decisions, leading them back to a drink or drug. She also recommends that you ground yourself in the present by meditating, taking a walk, or doing the five senses exercise, where you pause to identify five things surrounding you that you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste. +
++Lead with empathy +
++There’s a chance that you will realize the dispute isn’t even worth revisiting, but there are certain discussions that may still need to be had. In those cases, provide empathy from the jump. Tell the person how much the relationship means to you and that you understand that they were really upset. Explain your feelings too, saying something like, “I was really hurt by what you said, or I was very shocked,” Harden Bradford recommends. +
++Try to view differences of opinion as interesting and not a threat, says Ortiz. Often, people don’t need to be debated or preached to when they are triggered, he says, they just need someone to listen and hold their pain. Being the person to offer them an ear can be a magnificent gift. It’s similar to when a toddler gets a booboo and needs a quick cuddle and a kiss. +
++When someone is heard, they often drop their guard, says Ortiz. “Because you’re heard by me, you may be actually willing to listen to what I have to say.” +
++Remember, the person you were fighting with online may not be the person they are in reality, says Drouin, so take difficult conversations offline. “When people are posting online, they post one or two things a day. Going to them for the full story is probably a good way to move forward.” +
++Focus on a solution +
++Because fights with friends and significant others are often about something completely unrelated to the topic at hand, acknowledge that and focus on the real issue. Maybe you are both overwhelmed with kids and work and need a date night. Maybe a bud keeps canceling plans because they are afraid to tell you that they are struggling financially. “It is not you against your partner. It is you and your partner against whatever this thing is,” Harden Bradford says. “When you think about it, like, ‘We’re on a team together.’ That’s a very different approach than, ‘You’re my adversary, and I’m trying to win this battle.’” +
++Be willing to apologize for stepping out of line, and ask how you can repair the situation. This could mean monitoring your tone and approach in the future, or it may mean putting up a new post saying you published inaccurate information. +
++If your online battles stem from feeling powerless over world issues, “find a more productive way to channel that,” says Harden Bradford. “It could be making calls to politicians or making a donation.” +
++Plan for the future +
++Tough conversations will arise again, so discuss with your significant other or friend how you can handle them better in the future, especially when you are overwhelmed. Harden Bradford recommends saying something like, “We know the world is falling apart, but what kinds of things can we do to support each other? That might mean conversations, or that might mean we don’t talk about these things.” +
++You might even decide it’s better to unfollow certain friends online in the interest of your relationship. Maybe you don’t discuss politics with your buddy and simply bond over other shared interests. Maybe you just accept that you and your partner are going to be snappy for the next few weeks, and you will both try to be understanding of each other despite that. +
++When conversations emerge, be empathetic. Set boundaries for fighting fair, both in person and online. If someone is swearing, threatening to leave, or shutting the other down, it’s time to take a pause. +
++Try and remember, most of these fights don’t matter much in the lifespan of a relationship, says Bushman. “This issue might be important right now at this moment, but what about tomorrow or a week from now? Or a month from now or a year from now? How important is this issue?” +
++If arguments arise, stay accountable, but have self-compassion. Be willing to forgive yourself and the other person. “We have to humanize them,” Anderson says. “And we have to humanize ourselves.” The harder you are on others, the harder you are on yourself. “We must be intentional about giving ourselves compassion as well as giving compassion to others. We have to say to ourselves, ‘These people are human.’ Because right now, I see a lot of dehumanization.” +
++
++
++US law limits aid to countries that violate human rights. Here’s why it isn’t applied to Israel. +
++The recent high-profile killings of three Israeli hostages, two women in a Gaza church, and 11 unarmed Palestinian men in front of their family members have raised new global alarm at Israel’s targeting of civilians amid its war in Gaza. The deaths came as part of its ground assault, and as it continues a bombing campaign that even staunch Israel ally President Joe Biden has called “indiscriminate.” Yet, he continues to push for additional, essentially unconditional aid to Israel — despite the fact that some foreign affairs experts say existing US laws meant to safeguard human rights should have long restricted the flow of such assistance. +
++“We always treat Israel with kid gloves when it comes to potential human rights violations of any kind,” said Josh Paul, who has become a prominent critic of the Biden administration’s Israel policy since resigning from his post as the director of congressional and public affairs at the State Department bureau overseeing American arms sales over concerns about the Israeli response to the October 7 attack by Hamas, a Palestinian militant group designated as a terrorist organization by many countries. “When it comes to suspending or curtailing lethal military assistance, there’s no sign of anyone willing to take any actual steps.” +
++The US provides more aid to Israel than to any other country, about $3.8 billion annually in recognition of the two states’ “special relationship” that dates back decades. Now, Biden wants Congress to approve an additional $14.3 billion in aid to Israel as part of a broader package that also includes aid for Ukraine and that has been held up over immigration policy negotiations. He also recently circumvented Congress to sell Israel $106 million worth of tank ammunition. +
++Biden administration officials told CNN that they are not currently considering placing conditions on aid beyond those that already exist in federal law, saying that the US expects Israel to abide by international humanitarian law and that the Israel Defense Forces conducts internal legal reviews of its strikes beforehand. +
++“We’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel in the process. Not a single thing,” Biden recently told Democratic donors. +
++But some foreign policy experts say that those existing legal conditions aren’t being adequately enforced against Israel given the high civilian death toll in Gaza, which has exceeded 20,000 since October 7. That includes policies designed to prevent arms transfers that may enable violations of international humanitarian law or to foreign forces suspected of using American weapons to harm civilians. But one law in particular has recently gotten more attention from progressive Democrats: the “Leahy Law.” They argue that the US may be shirking its legal duty to ensure that assistance to Israel is not being used to violate human rights. +
++First approved by Congress in 1997, the Leahy Law’s purpose is to prevent the US from being implicated in serious crimes committed by foreign security forces that it supports by cutting off aid to a specific unit if the US has credible information that the unit committed a gross violation of human rights. No security forces, not even American ones, are entirely immune to committing such violations. +
++A State Department spokesperson told Vox that the Leahy Law applies to all countries, including Israel, and that the agency is meeting the requirements under the law. However, some former administration officials and congressional staff say that the law has never had teeth against Israel, despite what human rights experts, both in the US government and outside of it, have identified as substantive evidence that Israel has committed human rights violations both before and during the current Gaza war. The Department of Defense referred Vox to the State Department for comment, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment. +
++“The Israelis too often seem to act as though international law does not apply to them. And our government has acted as though the Leahy Law doesn’t apply to [the Israelis],” said Tim Rieser, a longtime senior adviser to former Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) who was a key architect of the law. “As a result, there is a kind of culture of impunity — they can do almost anything to the Palestinians without being accountable.” +
++How the Leahy Law works — and how Israel gets special treatment +
++The US vets every foreign military unit designated to receive American assistance under the Leahy Law for almost every country. The US embassy in that country leads an investigation, and the information it produces, along with other source material, is reviewed by analysts at the State Department. +
++Those analysts are looking for “credible” evidence that the unit has committed a gross human rights violation, which is typically defined as torture, extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, or rape, but can also be interpreted more broadly. That information can come from a variety of reliable sources, including media and NGO reports, and is ideally corroborated by multiple sources, but it does not need to meet the strict legal standard required to be admitted as evidence in a court of law. +
++If there is such evidence, then the US must cut off aid to that unit under the Leahy Law — but it can be later reinstated if the State Department determines that the country is taking effective steps to bring responsible members to justice. In that sense, the law is designed to “address the problem of impunity and to build more accountable security forces that we partner with,” Rieser said. +
++However, for Israel and a few other countries receiving levels of US military aid so high that it is impossible to track where the assistance is going — including Egypt and Ukraine, according to Paul — the process is different. “Rather than vetting and then providing assistance, we provide assistance and then we keep our ears out for potential violations,” he said, adding that both Egyptian and Ukrainian units have been found to have committed gross violations of human rights as part of that process. +
++In Israel’s case, any allegations of gross human rights violations against Israeli units come before a vetting forum comprised of representatives from various State Department bureaus handling human rights, security interests, and legal issues, as well as regional specialists at the agency’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and the US embassy in Jerusalem, Paul said. The forum can only determine that a gross human rights violation has been committed if it reaches a consensus, he added. Without one, the process stalls. If it’s determined a violation took place, the US will send Israel a list of the offending units, and Israel will not support those units with American aid, per a 2021 agreement between the two countries obtained by Vox. +
++However, neither Paul, Rieser, nor Harrison were aware of any time that the US had found that an Israeli unit committed any such violation. Sen. Bernie Sanders recently introduced a resolution asking the State Department to certify as much or else report on any violations committed amid the current Gaza war. The State Department did not indicate whether any such finding had ever been made when asked for comment. +
++The lack of confirmed offenses is not because Israel has a uniquely pristine record. Rather, it’s because the implementation of the Leahy Law has been biased in Israel’s favor. +
++For one, the 2021 agreement relies on Israel to police its own, presuming that “Israel has a robust, independent and effective legal system, including its military justice system” under which gross violations of human rights would not go unpunished. That’s a sentiment that has been echoed by US officials over the years, including former President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who went even further in giving Israel the benefit of the doubt: “Israel is a democracy whose army does not engage in gross violations of human rights,” he wrote in 2018. +
++But in reality, Rieser said, “they very rarely hold their own soldiers accountable.” Paul said that he has been “raising concerns for ages that the Israeli military court system is not an unbiased system when it comes to violations by Israeli officials.” +
++Nevertheless, neither Republican nor Democratic administrations have proven interested in dealing with the “inevitable criticism from the Israelis or their most ardent supporters in this country for accusing members of the Israeli Defense Force of a heinous crime,” Reiser said. And that kind of thinking has trickled down through the bureaucracy: Paul said that speaking up on issues related to Israel “can be a career killer.” +
++“I was shocked when I saw how differently, even at the lowest levels of the government, US officials treated Israel,” said Sarah Harrison, who coordinated with the State Department on Leahy issues related to Israel from 2018 to 2021 as a former Department of Defense attorney. “I’ve seen officers not even look at a case and say, ‘No, we’re not cutting off assistance to Israel.’” +
++Paul said that allegations often haven’t moved forward against Israeli units due to the objections of the Bureau of Near East Affairs and the US embassy in Jerusalem. +
++And Harrison said that she recalled incidents in which officials had testimony and video recordings that would in other cases constitute credible evidence, but still would not cut off aid. Instead, the department spent months trying to get information from Israel about its intelligence on the incidents, the perpetrator’s intent, and the kind of crimes they were charged with, if any. Though US officials consult with partner governments on Leahy matters, Harrison said the degree to which they do so with Israel is “extreme” and well beyond what is required by the law. +
++“The US is trying to make sure Israel has every opportunity to undermine the allegation because the US is loath to cut off assistance to Israel,” Harrison said. “It’s a completely different standard.” +
++Has Israel committed gross human rights violations? +
++Foreign policy experts say there is credible evidence that Israel has committed gross human rights violations that should have required the US to restrict assistance under the Leahy Law, both before and during the current Gaza War. +
++In one 2022 case, a UN investigation found that Israeli forces killed Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American journalist who worked for Al Jazeera, while she was covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank and was wearing a blue vest that read “press.” Immediately following her killing, Israeli officials argued that she had been “filming and working for a media outlet amidst armed Palestinians” and may have been killed by stray Palestinian fire, something that those on the scene rebutted. Israel later admitted that she was likely killed by Israeli fire, but ruled her death accidental and never charged the soldiers involved. +
++“To me, that was a case in which the Leahy Law should probably have been applied,” Rieser said. “No credible or thorough investigation was ever done by either our government or the Israeli government, but there is other information compiled by nongovernmental organizations that directly contradicts the assertion that the shooter acted in self-defense.” +
++Paul described another 2021 case in which the NGO Defense for Children International Palestine brought to the State Department’s attention the alleged rape of a 13-year-old boy in an Israeli prison. He said it was “brought into the Leahy forum, was reviewed, was thought to be potentially credible, and was referred to the government of Israel.” The next day, he said the IDF went into the organization’s offices, took its computers, and declared it a terrorist entity. +
++As for Israel’s current war in Gaza, it might be difficult to argue the country’s bombing strategy runs afoul of the Leahy Law, which “wasn’t originally conceived as a vehicle for responding to large bombing campaigns,” Rieser said. “But that’s not to say that some of what’s occurring in Gaza would not trigger the Leahy Law.” +
++He cited the International Criminal Court complaint accusing Israel of committing war crimes against journalists covering the conflict in the Palestinian territories. One journalist killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon, Reuters reporter Issam Abdallah, was explicitly targeted, Reporters Without Borders argues in its forensic analysis of the attack. Israel has claimed that it was responding to an anti-tank missile fired by the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, which is designated by many countries as a terrorist organization, suspecting a “terrorist infiltration into Israeli territory” from Lebanon, only to later find out journalists had been harmed. +
++But Reporters Without Borders says that Abdallah and his colleagues were out in the open, not embedded with combatants, with their equipment, clothing, and vehicle clearly marked as “press,” and that an Israeli helicopter had flown over them twice in the hour prior to the attack, meaning that Israeli forces had time to identify them as journalists. +
++Paul said that other examples of extrajudicial killings under the Leahy Law could be the two women killed in a Gaza church by an Israeli sniper earlier this week and the killing of the Israeli hostages who were shot by the IDF, shirtless and waving a white flag. Israel has denied involvement in the church killings, but has since acknowledged that the hostage killings were against its rules of engagement and announced that the responsible soldiers would face disciplinary procedures. +
++What it would mean if Israel were actually held accountable +
++The State Department did not indicate whether it is evaluating some of these incidents as potential gross human rights violations or how many allegations the Leahy forum on Israel is currently considering when asked for comment. Harrison recalled “dozens” of open allegations against Israel detailed on a spreadsheet while she was in government, when it was unusual for any country, even others receiving large amounts of US aid, to have more than a few. +
++But if the State Department were to acknowledge gross human rights violations committed by Israel, Rieser said it would “demonstrate that the law applies to everyone and that no country is immune from the law when it comes to US assistance for their security forces.” +
++“I think it would be very significant if the administration finally were to make clear that our aid is not unconditional — that if you commit those types of crimes there’s a consequence,” he said. “Why shouldn’t we say that? We say that to other countries.” +
++Harrison said that doing so wouldn’t necessarily cause Israel to change its strategy in Gaza, since it can just ensure that any unit prohibited from receiving US assistance is being funded through its coffers instead. +
++“But it still sends a message politically that we’re not willing to tolerate this kind of egregious behavior,” she said. +
++That’s not only important for the protection of human rights on the ground, but also for US credibility globally. As the international community grows louder in its condemnations of Israel’s war, the Biden administration has tried to salvage some credibility by ramping up its critiques of Israel’s tactics. That’s included urging Israel to exercise more care for civilian life and pushing it to end the hostilities “as quickly as possible,” if not before the end of the year. But that has so far appeared to have little operational impact on Israel and on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which is only deteriorating further in the absence of sufficient food, water, sanitation, electricity, communications, and medical services. +
++“I think there is an increasing urgency to the demands coming out of the Biden administration to Israel, not because we suddenly care about Palestinian lives, but because this is doing damage to US interests,” Paul said. “There’s no incentive for Israel to listen for as long as we are expediting as many weapons as we possibly can.” +
++Update, December 22, 2:30 pm ET: This story was originally published on December 22 and has been updated with additional comments from a State Department spokesperson provided after initial publication. +