The Biden administration is illegally punishing American citizens in Israel and the West Bank, a lawsuit filed Thursday.
National Jewish Advocacy Center, Inc. (NJAC), and Zell Aron & Co. and Marcus & Marcus LLC, filed a federal lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday, challenging the Executive Order (EO) of the Biden administration. ) 14115.
The case is the second of its kind challenging what lawyers say are unconstitutional, unprecedented sanctions against Jewish people living in Israel and the West Bank, including American citizens like plaintiffs Levi Yitzchak Pilant and Issachar Manne.
After the terrorist attack in Israel on October 7, President Biden signed the letter executive order (EO) in February 2024, imposing sanctions on “people who undermine peace, security, and stability in the West Bank.”
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Manne on his farm. (The Manne Family)
Biden said, in announcing the EO, that “the situation in the West Bank-especially the high levels of violence by extremist residents, the forced displacement of people and villages, and the destruction of property-has reached intolerable levels and is a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank. and Gaza, Israel, and the Middle East region.”
As a result, people who have been punished have had their bank accounts frozen, credit cards canceled and faced the inability to perform basic life activities. Critics say the move allows the administration to punish Israeli Jews who disagree with the administration’s policies, which they believe violates the constitutional rights of American citizens in Israel and their supporters in America.
EO 14115 authorizes financial sanctions against a “foreign person[s]”They are taking steps against the Biden administration’s policy in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank, but the lawsuit says the only people these provisions have been applied to are Jews.
“When you use a double standard in punishing only Jewish people, and when you punish Jews for the simple act of being Jewish in a place where you don’t want them to be, there’s a name for that, and it’s not good,” NJAC CEO Mark Goldfeder said.
Additionally, the lawsuit criticizes the State Department for not investigating the allegations, saying instead that they relied almost entirely on biased reports by anti-Israel groups filled with demonstrably false allegations.
Pilant was sentenced on August 28, 2024, for “evil acts outside of his authority” including leading “a group of armed settlers to set up roadblocks and conduct surveillance to track and attack Palestinians in their lands and forcibly expel them from their lands.”
The case is that he has never been involved in violence against Palestinians at any time.
“The State Department’s allegations are completely false and appear to be based on a ‘complete paper’ sent a few days before the approval by Democracy for Arab World Now (“DAWN”), an organization whose board members have ties to extremists. The Muslim Brotherhood also praised Hamas, which failed to even get a last name. of the Plaintiff Pilant,” said the lawsuit.
In fact, the lawsuit noted that the State Department admitted that Pilant is an Israeli government security official authorized to combat threats to the security of Israeli citizens and was in the military service while organizing patrols and roadblocks as part of the government. work.
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A photo taken in the village of Turmus Ayya near the city of Ramallah shows the nearby Israeli settlement of Shiloh in the background, in the West Bank on February 18, 2024. (Getty Images)
Manne and the “Manne Farm Outpost” were also sanctioned by the State Department on July 11, 2024, for establishing a farm in “Palestinian community pastures,” arguing that “the residents of this facility regularly attack community shepherds and prevent their access to the pastures through acts of violence.”
His lawyers, however, said he “has never allocated, and has never sought to acquire, land that is privately owned by the Palestinians or designated by the Israeli government as private or restricted.” In fact, he has a common goal of tending his flock of about 130 sheep in remote areas run by independent people, either Israelis or Palestinians.
Both Pilant and Manne argue that, as a result of the sanctions, their bank accounts and credit cards have been frozen, they are unable to make mortgage payments and have suffered financial and reputational damage.
Fox News Digital has previously filed a similar lawsuit filed by an Israeli group against the administration, challenging the state’s first-of-its-kind constitution, but this is the first challenge to the sanctions order brought by individuals who have been punished. The plaintiffs are US citizens who claim the sanctions violate their Due Process and equal protection rights.
Professor Eugene Kontorovich of George Mason University Law School, who served as legal counsel to the NJAC and was a member of the legal team in the first case challenging the sanctions, said the government’s actions are based on the appalling notion that certain land is inherently Palestinian.
“American Jews are having their bank accounts frozen and their lives upside down for no better reason than people who think they have no right to live in the West Bank are pointing fingers at them,” he said.
Kontorovich previously argued that “violence” is defined by anti-Israel groups and can be applied to Jews who defend themselves in the face of a Palestinian aggressor in an “absurd” manner by relying on data from the website of the United Nations Office. The Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), classifies Jewish self-defense and anti-terrorist operations by the Israel Defense Forces as civilian violence, according to the lawsuit.
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Israeli officials work at the scene of a shooting by Palestinian gunmen near Maale Adumim, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on February 22, 2024. (Reuters Photos)
For example, the lawsuit says, after a Palestinian was shot dead after breaking into a Jewish farm in the northern West Bank armed with a knife and explosives, the UN called him a victim of “settler violence.”
“This is particularly striking because there are thousands of Palestinians who have been involved in terrorist attacks against Jewish citizens who threaten the ‘peace, security, or stability of the West Bank,'” the lawsuit added.
In 2024, there were 1,040 major Palestinian attempts on Jewish life: 689 shooting attacks, 326 explosives, 13 stabbings, 9 driving attacks, 2 suicide attacks, and 1 kidnapping, according to the lawsuit. There were 231 successful attacks resulting in 46 deaths and 337 injuries.
Matthew Mainen, NJAC litigation counsel, added that the Biden administration’s “lazy and politically motivated EO clearly undermines Israel’s security by punishing people like Levi Yitzhak Pilant, an IDF officer who is the first line of defense in his community, and Issachar Manne, a Jew who has the courage to defend himself and his country from terrorist attacks.”
“The fact that the administration did not even bother to check whether these people are American citizens before condemning them as ‘immigrants’ shows a sad revenge that we now want to correct,” he said.
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Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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