The US state department has failed to act on internal reports of human rights abuses by Israeli army and police units, according to a new report, raising new questions over whether Washington’s continued supply of arms to Israel is breaking US law.
The ProPublica investigative journalism site quoted officials as saying that a special panel set up by the Biden administration had recommended that multiple Israeli military and police units be denied US funding because of serious human rights abuses. But the state department has yet to act on the recommendations.
The incidents involving alleged abuses mostly took place in the West Bank before the 7 October Hamas attack and the outbreak of the Gaza war. They included extrajudicial killings by the border police, a case in which an elderly Palestinian-American man was gagged, handcuffed and left to die, and an allegation that interrogators tortured and raped a teenager accused of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails…..more
