Gallant assures Netzah Yehuda army unit of Israel’s support before expected US blacklisting
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has told the soldiers from the Israeli military’s Netzah Yehuda Battalion, which is expected to be hit with US sanctions, that the army and the state support and “appreciate” them.
“Errors and mistakes happen wherever there is military activity, and they must not happen, … but the fact that one or two or [multiple] soldiers did something wrong, this should not vilify the [entire] battalion,” Gallant said, adding that in those cases, the soldiers are “taken care of”.
“No one in the world will teach us what morality is and what norms are,” he added.
The unit, made up of ultra-Orthodox soldiers, was previously stationed in the occupied West Bank, where it was accused of right-wing “extremism” and violence against Palestinians.
‘This opens up a Pandora’s box of potential sanctions on Israeli units’: Rights group
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a Washington, DC-based rights group, says Israel has ignored warnings about the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, which has been accused of committing human rights violations against Palestinians, and instead has allowed it to act with impunity.
On Saturday, Axios reported that Washington was planning to impose sanctions on the battalion.
“If the US puts Leahy sanctions on even one Israeli unit, what it is really saying is that it has lost confidence that the Israeli justice system is willing or capable of holding its soldiers and officers accountable,” said Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, director of research for Israel-Palestine at DAWN.
“That opens up a Pandora’s box of potential sanctions on a slew of Israeli units, but only if the Israelis don’t improve their accountability mechanisms. Leahy sanctions are intended to be corrective, not punitive.
“They disappear the moment the secretary of state certifies that the country is taking effective steps toward accountability. Netanyahu’s defiance suggests that his government isn’t willing to take such steps.”
