A group of Christian supporters of Israel has sued the Biden administration in federal court over sanctions on Israel that, it says, violate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because it targets protected speech and assembly.
As Breitbart News has noted, the Biden administration has — in the middle of Israel’s war for survival against Hamas terror — slapped sanctions on Israelis for supposed “extremism.” None of these Israelis has been convicted of a crime.
One set of sanctions targets a protest movement, Tzav 9, which opposes the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza while Hamas still holds Israeli hostages and steals aid for itself. Tzav 9 has blocked roads, a common protest tactic.
The sanctions have often come at the direction of radical anti-Israel groups, including one founded by the late Jamal Khashoggi, that have lobbied the Biden administration with “reports” that are unconfirmed and uncorroborated.
As international law expert Eugene Kontorovich, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of a Christian group called Texans for Israel, and on behalf of American Jews living in Israel,, explained in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday:
The first part of Mr. Biden’s executive order permits the imposition of sanctions on anyone the administration regards as involved in undermining “peace” or “stability” in the West Bank—even if there is no allegation of criminal conduct or violence. This directive is far-reaching because the administration deems Jews merely living in the West Bank—and certainly building or buying homes there—as “obstacles to peace.” An internal administration memo described the sanctions as targeted at those who “disrupt or prevent efforts to achieve a two-state solution.” The administration also views Jews visiting their holy sites as “provocative.”
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Last month the U.S. froze the bank accounts of Reut Ben Haim, a mother of eight who lives inside the Green Line. Her offense? She is one the founders of a grassroots movement known as Tzav 9, which has demonstrated against the U.S.-backed provision of supplies to Gaza, much of which is usurped by Hamas, since the start of the war. Tzav 9 protests involve blocking traffic (a tactic common to protest movements, including pro-Hamas demonstrations in America), and it has categorically denounced violence. Indeed, senior U.S. officials have described it as engaged in “protest activity.”
Vice President Kamala Harris raised money to bail out demonstrators during the sometimes-violent Black Lives Matter protests that rocked Minnesota in the summer of 2020. Yet members of Tzav 9 who protest against material support to Hamas, a U.S. designated terror organization, find themselves in the Biden administration’s crosshairs.
The sanctions have furthered the agenda of the broader “boycott, divestment, sanctions” (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel. On one occasion, the sanctions targeted an uninvolved man with the same name as one of the people the Biden administration sought to punish for so-called “extremist” activity. Israel has protested the sanctions.
European nations and Canada have also followed the Biden administration’s example, and have slapped sanctions on Israelis for supposed “extremism.” Similar sanctions are rarely applied to Palestinians, who commit violence against Israelis far more often than the opposite, by several orders of magnitude.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reassured leaders of Israel’s settlement movement in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) on Thursday that he was doing everything he could to reverse sanctions imposed on them by the U.S. and other countries recently.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
