Why the U.S. is investigating the ultra-Orthodox Israeli army battalion Netzah Yehuda
Dr. Islam Abu-Zaher was working the evening shift at Arab Medical Centre in the West Bank when he heard knocking on the door. “Doctor, doctor, we need help!”
Israeli troopers had arrested a number of folks, he was advised, and considered one of them had died. He grabbed his emergency bag and rushed to the scene, the place he discovered a well-known affected person: 78-year-old Omar Assad, whom he had handled for cardiac issues in the previous.
Dr. Abu-Zaher mentioned he discovered the aged man face down on the floor, certain and blindfolded, displaying no indicators of life. After a number of makes an attempt to resuscitate Assad, the physician pronounced him useless.
Assad had been arrested at a navy checkpoint that evening in January 2022 by members of the Israel Defence Forces’ Netzah Yehuda Battalion. An IDF investigation of the incident mentioned that troopers had tied Assad’s palms as a result of he “refused to cooperate.”
“He’s an old man,” mentioned Dr. Abu-Zaher. “He’s obese. He can’t walk properly. He has a lot of medical problems. He didn’t make any kind of risk for soldiers.”
Mahmdou Abu Eboud was arrested shortly after Assad, and says he noticed IDF troopers verify the man’s pulse earlier than abandoning him on the floor and leaving the scene. According to the Israeli navy’s investigation, troopers launched Assad from all constraints and didn’t determine any indicators of misery or unwell well being, explaining “the soldiers assessed that Assad was asleep and did not try to wake him.”
After the troopers left, Abu Eboud despatched for the physician.
“The man was sick, he’d had open heart surgery. On top of all this it was zero or below zero that night,” Abu Eboud defined. “If you put a [78]-year-old man in this position … with all these health issues, and handcuffed, laying on his chest and it’s cold, what would happen?”
Assad was an American citizen. The U.S. State Department issued an announcement at the time saying it was “deeply concerned” by the incident. And it is not the solely occasion the place members of the battalion have confronted accusations about their conduct.
Now, Israeli media studies point out that the U.S. is blacklisting the Netzah Yehuda Battalion underneath the “Leahy Laws,” which prohibit offering funds to help navy people or international safety forces implicated in gross violations of human rights.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken mentioned on Friday he had made “determinations” linked to accusations of human rights violations by Israel. An announcement by the U.S. is anticipated this week.
The Netzah Yehuda Battalion was created in 1999 to accommodate ultra-Orthodox Jews and spiritual nationalists in the army by permitting them to serve in a unit the place they might observe extra stringent spiritual practices. Reuters studies the battalion primarily operated in the West Bank however was moved out following U.S. criticism in late 2022.
Israel’s Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, mentioned in a latest assertion that the battalion has been preventing Hezbollah alongside Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, and “most recently, they are operating to dismantle Hamas brigades in Gaza.”
Israeli human rights teams have lengthy complained that Israel not often holds troopers to account for the deaths of Palestinians. In Omar Assad’s case, an officer was reprimanded and two others have been reassigned, however there was no legal prosecution.
Abu Eboud says “this step comes too late,” insisting “the whole government should be sanctioned, not that unit.”
“The American government and the Israeli government are allies,” he added. “This is their spoiled child.”
