The U.S. will sanction an Israeli protest movement called Tsav 9, which has interfered with some aid shipments to Gaza in recent weeks because of opposition to providing aid that will be stolen by Hamas while it holds hostages.
The Biden administration has already sanctioned Israel over “extremist settler violence,” targeting individuals who have not been convicted of any crime — while giving Iran, which backs terrorists, billions of dollars in sanctions relief.
The Times of Israel reported Friday:
The Biden administration will later today announce sanctions against a far-right Israeli group that has been behind attacks on humanitarian aid convoys en route to Gaza, a US official confirms to The Times of Israel.
The sanctions will target Tsav 9, a group with ties to Israeli army reservists and Israeli settlers over activities including blocking, harassing and damaging aid shipments.
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“For months, individuals from Tzav 9 have repeatedly sought to thwart the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, including by blocking roads, sometimes violently, along their route from Jordan to Gaza, including transiting the West Bank,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller says in a statement seen by Reuters.
An anti-Israel group, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), claimed credit for prompting the sanctions:
“We welcome the Biden Administration’s announcement of sanctions against the extremist and violent group Tzav 9, about which we submitted a dossier of evidence to the Treasury Department,” said Michael Omer-Man, director of research for Israel-Palestine at DAWN.
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“Tzav 9’s violent attacks to block humanitarian aid for Gaza could not take place without the well-oiled network of companies and organizations funding and supporting them,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN. “We will keep pushing the administration to step up and sanction the companies and organizations who are funding these heinous attacks.”
“Sanctioning Israeli settlers involved in attacks on humanitarian aid to Gaza is an important first step, but these settlers are not lone wolves,” said Raed Jarrar, DAWN’s advocacy director. “The U.S. government should now sanction Israeli officials, organizations, and companies linked to these violent Israeli extremists.”
The term “Tsav 9” refers to the call-up orders for military reservists.
DAWN was founded by Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist and activist who was murdered by Saudi Arabian agents in Turkey in 2018. He was known to have had ties to Islamists, though DAWN describes him as opposed to extremism.
DAWN has been connected to the other sanctions that the State Department has imposed on Israel. Israeli critics say that the State Department is basing its information on reports from DAWN that are not independently corroborated.
The protests have not prevented aid from reaching Gaza; there is enough aid reaching Gaza every day to feed the entire population, Israeli officials say. A recent poll of Palestinians found that 64% have enough food for a day or two.
The aid, however, is very unpopular in Israel. Many Israelis believe that it is prolonging the war by providing food and fuel to Hamas, which is thought to steal much of the aid, while Israeli hostages are starved of proper nutrition.
The new sanctions will likely be viewed with alarm in Israel, as Tzav 9 is largely seen as a peaceful movement, one with significant popular support, whose only violent act has been to dump goods from aid trucks onto the road.
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 recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
