“US courts have jurisdiction over the more than 23,000 US citizens currently serving in Israel’s armed forces, along with IDF members or other Israeli officials that travel to the United States,” the unnamed lawyers wrote to Garland.
The DOJ has investigated and brought about sanctions on Russia for the war in Ukraine, and the Palestinian group Hamas, but it has yet to do the same when it comes to Israel and its war on Gaza – which was pointed out by the authors of the letter.
The DOJ, they added, “ has appropriately demonstrated its commitment to upholding the rule of law in the midst of ongoing geopolitical conflicts”, but that “against the backdrop of numerous potential violations of US law by individuals and entities affiliated with Israel, the Department’s silence and apparent inaction is a stark omission ”.
The internal letter is said to outline three areas for a DOJ investigation: the accounts of torture, starvation, and forcible displacement that may amount to war crimes in Gaza; the killings of American citizens like Shireen Abu Akleh, Omar Assad, and most recently, the activist Aysenur Eygi; and the illegal settlements in the West Bank supported by US groups with charity status.
In November 2022, the DOJ unexpectedly opened an investigation into journalist Abu Akleh’s killing by Israeli soldiers in Jenin six months earlier.
The norm had been for US administrations to defer to Israeli investigations and courts.
Israel refused to participate in the DOJ’s undertaking, and there has yet to be an update about the probe from the Biden administration.
Assad, 78, died of a heart attack after being manhandled by Israeli soldiers on his way home from a card game. The US considered sanctions against the Netzah Yehuda battalion that was responsible but eventually decided against it.
“You told us that ‘we must treat like cases alike’,” the lawyers wrote in their appeal to Garland. “You insisted that, guided by these norms, ‘we will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics’.”
The now 13-month-long war on Gaza has resulted in the known killings of at least 42,000 Palestinians, with at least 17,000 of those children, according to Gaza-based government media office.
The Palestinian civil defence says that at least 10,000 people are reported missing under the rubble of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed by Israeli air strikes and collapsed buildings.
Early this year, the International Court of Justice said “some of the acts” by Israel in Gaza “appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the [Genocide] Convention”.
The judges also said they were “gravely concerned” at the treatment of Palestinian detainees there. Eyewitness accounts and video from local journalists in Gaza have shown physical and mental signs of torture on freed detainees, many of whom return unable to speak.
