JERUSALEM—The Biden administration sanctioned two Israeli-Americans as part of a regime targeting settlers in Judea and Samaria, aka the West Bank, a federal lawsuit filed on Thursday revealed.
The Americans, who are also Israeli citizens, sued the Biden administration in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming the sanctions violated their constitutional rights to due process and equal protection. According to attorneys for the plaintiffs, the obviously incompetent administration appears not to have known it was sanctioning Americans.
Who did they think they are, chopped liver?
"The Biden administration has carried out this sanctions program with scant regard for the underlying facts and scant independent investigation, relying instead on the say-so of virulently anti-Israel groups in order to impose life-changing penalties on people," Eugene Kontorovich, a legal consultant on the lawsuit and a professor at George Mason University Law School, told the Washington Free Beacon.
Because the sanctions are based on an executive order by President Joe Biden, President-elect Donald Trump could reverse them after he takes office on Jan. 20. But the lawsuit is about more than sanctions relief for the plaintiffs. It also takes aim at the notion, pushed by a global network of anti-Israel organizations, that the settlements are a root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"These groups have basically co-opted the State Department to help them make Judea and Samaria ‘judenrein,’" Kontorovich said, using the biblical name for the West Bank. "That’s what they’re trying to achieve."
The State Department declined to answer questions about the lawsuit, telling the Free Beacon, "As a general matter, we do not comment on ongoing or pending litigation."
Biden created the sanctions regime in February with an executive order saying "the situation in the West Bank—in particular high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction—has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region." Based on the directive, the Biden administration has imposed several rounds of sanctions on Israelis over the past year, targeting 17 individuals and 16 organizations for alleged involvement in violence against or displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank.
Of those sanctioned, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Issachar Manne and Levi Yitzchak Pilant, were the first to be publicly identified as U.S. citizens. Both men are residents of the West Bank who were born in Israel to parents who immigrated from the United States.
Manne, 41, a farmer and shepherd in the South Hebron Hills and a married father of six, was sanctioned in July. The State Department claimed he had established a farm "on pastureland belonging to the Palestinian community, and settlers from this outpost regularly attack community shepherds and prevent their access to pastureland through acts of violence." His farm was also sanctioned.
Pilant, the head of security in Yitzhar, a settlement in the northern West Bank, and a married father of eight, was sanctioned in August. The State Department alleged, "Although Pilant’s role is akin to a security or law enforcement officer, he has engaged in malign activities outside the scope of his authority. In February 2024, he led a group of armed settlers to set up roadblocks and conduct patrols to pursue and attack Palestinians in their lands and forcefully expel them from their lands."
Manne and Pilant’s attorneys said the Biden administration’s sanctions on the men are based on allegations that are "completely false and lack support or evidence."
Manne leases land from the World Zionist Organization, and none of the area that he farms or uses for grazing is recognized by Israel as private Palestinian land. Manne has "never engaged in violence against Palestinians" and has "never appropriated, nor has he sought to appropriate, land under private Palestinian ownership or otherwise designated by the Israeli government as private or restricted," according to the lawsuit.
Pilant leads an armed civilian security force that defends a defined perimeter around Yitzhar as authorized by the Israeli military.
"In carrying out his official duties to combat Palestinian terrorism and as instructed by his superior officers, on February 17, 2024, Pilant set up roadblocks in order to prevent the smuggling of ammunition and terrorists. These roadblocks were authorized by the [military], the maintenance of which was a formal part of Pilant’s duties," the lawsuit said. "Pilant has never engaged in violence against Palestinians at any time."
According to the attorneys, the Biden administration appears to have targeted Manne and Pilant on the basis of flawed reporting by activist groups that are ideologically opposed to any Jewish presence in the West Bank.
B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group funded mostly by international donors, including anti-Israel billionaire George Soros, has for years focused on Manne as an icon of Israel’s "apartheid regime." In a 2020 report, B’Tselem claimed that the farm had greatly "expanded" in the past year and that "[v]iolence by settlers from the farm has significantly limited the pastureland used by local Palestinian shepherds."
DAWN, a Soros-funded anti-Israel group led by Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers, called on the Biden administration to sanction Pilant two days before it did so. A dossier that DAWN submitted to the administration made allegations against Pilant that closely resembled those in the sanctions announcement, including in relation to the February 2024 incident involving roadblocks and alleged violence against Palestinians. The State Department even matched DAWN’s misspelling of Pilant’s name as "Filant."
As a result of the sanctions, Manne and Pilant have had their bank accounts frozen and their credit cards disabled, making it difficult for them to make or receive essential payments. Manne has struggled to pay his mortgage or keep his cell phone plan active.
"This is something I might expect from Russia," he told the Free Beacon. "But I thought the United States was a democratic country. It’s really unbelievable."
A number of other Israelis sanctioned by the Biden administration have publicly disputed the allegations against them. In July, the administration mistakenly sanctioned an Israeli reserve soldier whom it confused with a leader of Tzav 9, a protest movement that has sought to block humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza. After the soldier complained, the mistake was corrected.
When it comes to the Americans, the Biden administration’s mistakes amount to a violation of constitutional rights, according to the lawsuit. The attorneys argued that Biden’s executive order cannot be applied to U.S. citizens since the language refers to "foreign person[s]."
"There was no statutory or other lawful basis to sanction Plaintiffs under [the executive order], and absent such a lawful basis, the Defendants’ deprivation of their aforestated interest violated their right to Due Process under the Fifth Amendment," the attorneys wrote. "Additionally, Defendants failed to perform any basic fact-finding prior to implementing and enforcing the [executive order] in such a one-sided and draconian manner."
The Biden administration also violated Manne and Pilant’s right to equal protection by targeting them as Jews, according to the lawsuit.
"This is all the more striking because there are thousands of Palestinians who have engaged in terrorist attacks on Jewish civilians that unquestionably threaten the ‘peace, security, or stability of the West Bank,’" the attorneys wrote.
The lawsuit cited data released earlier this week by the Shin Bet that showed Israel’s internal security service thwarted 1,040 major Palestinian terrorist attacks in the West Bank in 2024.
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