A federal complaint was filed on Thursday asserting that American residents in Israel and the West Bank are being sanctioned by the Biden administration in an unconstitutional manner.
On Thursday, the National Jewish Advocacy Center, Inc. (NJAC), Zell Aron & Co., and Marcus & Marcus LLC challenged the Biden administration’s Executive Order (EO) 14115 in a federal lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Plaintiffs Levi Yitzchak Pilant and Issachar Manne are American citizens residing in Israel and the West Bank. Their attorneys contend that the restrictions imposed on them are unprecedented and unlawful. This is the second case of its sort.
In February 2024, President Biden issued an executive order (EO) punishing “individuals undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank” in response to the terrorist assault on Israel on October 7.
In announcing the EO, Biden stated that “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.”
The sanctioned persons are now unable to do even the most fundamental of daily tasks, since their bank accounts and credit cards have been blocked. The move’s detractors argue that it violates the constitutional rights of American citizens in Israel and their American supporters by allowing the government to penalize Israeli Jews who disagree with the policies of the administration.
The complaint claims that the only persons sanctioned by EO 14115, who authorize financial penalties for “foreign person[s]” who violate the Biden administration’s policies in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), are Jews.
“When you apply a double standard to sanction only Jewish people, and when you punish Jews for the simple act of being Jewish in a place where you do not want them to be, there is a word for that, and it is not pretty,” Mark Goldfeder, the CEO of NJAC, stated.
The lawsuit goes on to say that the State Department should have investigated the charges instead of relying on biased reports from anti-Israel extremists that are full of unfounded accusations, and that they should have done so.
Among Pilant’s “malign activities outside the scope of his authority” that led to his suspension on August 28, 2024, was his command of “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.”
His alleged lack of involvement in any violent acts against Palestinians is a central claim in the case.
“The State Department’s accusations are entirely false and appear to be based on a ‘comprehensive dossier’ submitted just a few days prior to the sanctioning by Democracy for Arab World Now (” DAWN “), an organization whose board members have ties to the extremist Muslim Brotherhood and have praised Hamas, and which failed to even get Plaintiff Pilant’s last name right,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit pointed out that Pilant is a legitimate Israeli security official who is authorized to counter threats to Israeli citizens. He was also serving in the army when he organized roadblocks and patrols as part of a government mission, which the State Department has acknowledged.
According to the State Department, “settlers from this outpost regularly attack community shepherds and prevent their access to pastureland through acts of violence.” As a result, on July 11, 2024, the State Department sanctioned Manne and the “Manne Farm Outpost” for establishing the farm “on pastureland belonging to the Palestinian community.”
His attorneys claim that he 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.” Indeed, it is his policy to let his flock of about 130 sheep graze in regions that are not privately held by anyone, regardless of whether they are Israelis or Palestinians.
Pilant and Manne both claim that the penalties have blocked their bank and credit card accounts, rendered them unable to pay their mortgages, and damaged their reputations and money.
News headlinesIt is the first challenge to the sanctions order submitted by sanctioned persons; however, Forever Digital has previously reported a comparable case filed by a group of Israelis against the government, contesting the constitutionality of the first-of-its-kind penalty scheme. Citizens of the United States are suing, claiming that the penalties infringe on their rights to equal protection and due process.
Professor Eugene Kontorovich of George Mason University’s Law School, who was a part of the legal team that challenged the penalties in the first court case and a consultant to NJAC, claimed that the government’s actions stem from the surprising belief that certain property is intrinsically “Palestinian.”
“American Jews are having their bank accounts frozen and their lives turned upside down for no better reason than that people who think they have no right to live in the West Bank have pointed fingers at them,” according to him.
Using data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) website, Kontorovich has previously claimed that anti-Israel groups define “violence” in a “arbitrary” way, classifying settler violence as acts of self-defense by Jews and anti-terror operations by the Israel Defense Forces, as stated in the lawsuit.
case in point, the lawsuit claims that the United Nations characterized the killing of a Palestinian who had broken onto a Jewish property in the northern West Bank brandishing a knife and explosives as an act of “settler violence.”
“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,’” according to the complaint.
Palestinians attempted 1,040 serious acts of violence against Jews in 2024, including 689 shooting assaults, 326 explosives, 13 stabbings, 9 driving attacks, 2 suicide attacks, and 1 kidnapping, as detailed in the complaint. With 231 strikes going off without a hitch, 46 people were killed and 337 were injured.
The Biden administration’s “lazy and clearly politically motivated EO undermines Israel’s security by sanctioning individuals like Levi Yitzhak Pilant, an IDF officer who is the first line of defense in his community, and Issachar Manne, a Jew who dares to defend himself and his land from terroristic incursions,” commented NJAC litigation counsel Matthew Mainen.
“That the administration did not even bother to check if these individuals were U.S. citizens before sanctioning them as ‘foreign persons’ exposes a sad vendetta that we are now seeking to rectify,” according to him.