The lawsuit, announced on Tuesday, accuses the Department of State of failing to implement a federal law that prohibits the transfer of funds to foreign military units engaged in gross violations such as extrajudicial killings and torture.
“The State Department’s calculated failure to apply the Leahy Law is particularly shocking in the face of the unprecedented escalation of Israeli [gross violations of human rights] since the Gaza War erupted on October 7, 2023,” the lawsuit reads.
Israel’s bombardment and ground operations in Gaza have killed more than 45,000 Palestinians since early October 2023, and the United Nations and the world’s leading rights groups have accused the Israeli military of carrying out war crimes, including genocide.
The lead plaintiff in the case, a Gaza teacher referred to by the pseudonym Amal Gaza, has been forcibly displaced seven times since the war began and 20 of her family members have been killed in Israeli attacks.
“My suffering and the unimaginable loss my family has endured would be significantly lessened if the US stopped providing military assistance to Israeli units committing gross violations of human rights,” she said in a statement accompanying the lawsuit.
The case centres around what’s known as the Leahy Law, a federal regulation that bars the US government from providing funds to foreign military units when there is “credible information” implicating them in gross violations of human rights.
Those violations include torture, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and rape, the US State Department says in a factsheet explaining the law.
“We’re asking the government to obey the law,” Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at DAWN, a US nonprofit that campaigns for democracy and human rights in the Arab world and is supporting the plaintiffs in the case, told Al Jazeera.
For months, lawyers and human rights advocates have urged President Joe Biden’s administration to restrict assistance to the Israeli military amid multiple reports of violations against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Rights groups have documented Israel’s use of US-made weapons in several deadly attacks in Gaza, including indiscriminate strikes that killed dozens of Palestinian civilians.
Palestinians in the West Bank have also experienced a surge in deadly Israeli military and settler violence since the Gaza war began with the UN’s humanitarian office reporting that 770 Palestinians were killed there from October 7, 2023, to the end of November 2024.
The US provides Israel with at least $3.8bn in military assistance annually, and researchers at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, recently estimated that the Biden administration provided an additional $17.9bn since the start of the Gaza war.
Observers said that if the US were to cut off that assistance, Israel would not be able to continue with its war effort.
“The violations committed by Israel are so widespread – very severe – that most if not all Israel’s [army] units will actually be deemed ineligible for US military assistance” if the Leahy Law were applied, Jarrar stated.
“If the US were to stop sending weapons, there is no way for Israel to continue its military operations,” he added.
But efforts to pressure Washington to apply the Leahy Law to Israel have largely failed.
This year, the Biden administration considered cutting off assistance to an Israeli army unit notorious for its use of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank as well as its involvement in the death of an elderly Palestinian American.
However, the State Department ultimately determined that the Netzah Yehuda Battalion could continue to receive American military aid after it said allegations of abuse had been “effectively remediated”.
The Leahy Law includes an exception that allows the US to resume assistance if the secretary of state determines – and reports to Congress – that the foreign government has taken “effective steps to bring the responsible members of the security forces unit to justice”.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in August that Israel had provided new information in the Netzah Yehuda case, but he did not provide details. The decision to continue funding the unit fuelled widespread criticism.
While the Leahy Law should be applied equally to countries around the world, experts say Washington has created a specific set of procedures – via what’s known as the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum (ILVF) – that benefits the top US ally.
The US applies “a unique, complex, time-consuming, high-level Leahy process” for Israel, Charles Blaha, a former State Department official who was responsible for implementing the Leahy Law, explained in a June column on the website Just Security.
For example, while Leahy Law decisions are typically made by lower-level US government experts, in the case of Israel, the vetting involves higher-level, in-person meetings as well as formal requests for information to the Israeli government that slow down the process.
Blaha also explained that “information that for any other country would without question result in ineligibility is insufficient for Israeli security force units”.
As a result, in the four years since the ILVF held its first meeting, the process “has failed to approve the identification of a single ineligible Israeli unit”, Blaha noted.
Ahmed Moor, a Palestinian American plaintiff in the case, said he got involved in the proceedings over fears for his loved ones in the Gaza Strip.
“My surviving family members in Gaza have been forcibly displaced four times, … living in constant fear of indiscriminate Israeli attacks carried out with American weapons,” Moor said in a statement.
“The US government’s military assistance to these abusive Israeli forces, which our own laws prohibit, is enabling these Israeli harms to me and my family.”
Ultimately, the lawsuit is asking a US federal court judge to declare the State Department’s actions as well as its ILVF procedures “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion” and not in accordance with the law.
It is also asking the judge to order the US government to send Israel a list of military units that are not eligible to receive American assistance and issue an injunction prohibiting Washington from providing aid to units that have committed rights violations.
While other legal attempts to end US support for Israel have been blocked by the courts on the grounds that the judicial branch has no say over foreign policy decisions, Jarrar noted that the case is asking for an administrative law to be applied.
Tuesday’s lawsuit was filed under what’s known as the Administrative Procedure Act. “This is not an issue of foreign policy. It’s not an issue of politics,” Jarrar said.
“We’re just asking the judge to instruct the State Department to obey the law.”
