Lawsuit seeks release of State Department documents reviewing US arms sales to Israel

Democracy For The Arab World Now (Dawn) filed a complaint on Thursday against the US Department of State in a bid for it to release documents related to allegations of human rights abuses by the Israeli military.

Dawn said it had filed a complaint against the State Department in federal court in the District of Columbia to make the records public.

The Leahy Law prohibits the US from providing arms or military assistance to foreign militaries that violate human rights. The US State Department has an "Israel Leahy Vetting Forum" as part of the law.

In May, the State Department released a report which found reasonable grounds to believe that Israel on several occasions used American-supplied weapons “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law in Gaza.

However, the Biden administration said it would not make a definitive assessment and refrained from halting arms exports.

Dawn filed a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request after the report was released, asking for documents related to the State Department’s review and internal deliberations during the vetting process.

The FOIA includes requests for documents going back six years and State Department reports related to Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist who was killed by Israel’s military in May 2022.

'Double standards'

Lawsuits can be filed in federal court to release documents that have not been released through FOIA requests.

"We believe the documentation in question will demonstrate the double standard the State Department has been applying to Israel to avoid applying Leahy restrictions to Israeli units such as the notorious Netzah Yehudah,” Dawn executive director Sarah Leah Whitson said in a press statement.

'There is no doubt that the State Department is in receipt of multiple credible allegations of gross violations of human rights against Israeli security forces, allegations which it has failed to act upon'

- Josh Paul, Dawn adviser

Netzah Yehudah is an Israeli military unit made up of ultra-Orthodox Haredi men. In 2022, the unit came under fire after Omar Muhammad Assad, an 80-year-old Palestinian-American man, died of a heart attack following a violent detention at the hands of their troops. 

Eyewitnesses said Assad was handcuffed, gagged and forced to lie on his stomach, before being left in that position by the departing Israeli soldiers. He was later found by the side of the road and pronounced dead from cardiac arrest.

In August, the Biden administration said it would continue to provide military aid to the unit despite widespread allegations of human rights violations.

Josh Paul, a former State Department official who directed political-military affairs, said it was in the “American public interest” for any credible allegations of human rights violations by Israel reviewed by the State Department to be made public.

"There is no doubt that the State Department is in receipt of multiple credible allegations of gross violations of human rights against Israeli security forces, allegations which it has failed to act upon,” Paul said in a statement released by Dawn, where he is now a senior advisor.

“The State Department's complicity in the Gaza war is dragging our entire nation down into the mire of Israeli war crimes,” he added.