The international attention on Gaza has obscured Israel’s other current war on the West Bank.
Jewish settler rampages there have metastasized since Oct. 7, leaving hundreds of peaceful Palestinian civilians dead. Settlers have attacked Palestinian villages in the south Hebron hills with the explicit purpose of ethnic cleansing. These attacks do not arise in a vacuum: they are encouraged and approved by members of Israel’s most right-wing government in history.
It creates a serious problem for the Biden administration. How can President Joe Biden crack down on these settlers—and their backers in Israel’s Cabinet—while still backing Israel’s right of self-defense against Hamas? This question could generate the shock of recognition for many American Jews, who detest the current Israeli government but want to preserve Israel’s security.The answer is straightforward: use the legal authority he already has to sanction right-wing Cabinet ministers directly.
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In 2016, Congress passed the “Global Magnitsky Act,” which authorizes the president to sanction foreign government officials who violate human rights, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the U.S.
Its 2012 predecessor focused on Russia, and in particular those Kremlin officials responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian tax lawyer who had exposed corruption in Putin’s Russia. But in Dec. 2016, Congress expanded presidential authority, and both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have used it against high-ranking officials in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, China, Nicaragua, and other nations that have abused human rights.
These sanctions have bite; Vladimir Putin was so enraged by the original Magnitsky Act that he briefly threatened to go nuclear, and has been pressing friendly GOP legislators to repeal it ever since.
Israeli Cabinet officials should be next.
In particular, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Internal Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have empowered settlers to kill Palestinians. Ben-Gvir infamously called for Palestinians “not loyal to Israel” to be expelled (and reserved for himself the right to determine loyalty), leads marches of violent Jewish right-wing thugs through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem, and has called for an apartheid-style system of pass laws for Palestinians because “my right, the right of my wife, and my children to move around Judea and Samaria is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs.” He has been convicted of incitement to anti-Arab racism and been indicted 53 times for similar offenses.
For his part, Smotrich has called for Israeli annexation of the West Bank and bombing of Palestinian towns there, denied the existence of the Palestinian people, and supported the segregation of Arab and Jewish women in hospital maternity wards. After settlers rampaged through the Palestinian village of Huwara, Smotrich called for the village to be “wiped out,” and said that if he had his way, Palestinian children who throw stones should face three choices—“shoot them, jail them, or expel them.”
When it comes to the West Bank, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are essentially running Israeli policy, and they are bolstering violent settlers to act with impunity. Using his authority as national security minister, Ben-Gvir has increased the distribution of firearms to settlers. Finance Minister Smotrich has ensured the transfer of government funds to settlers—even while the rest of the nation must sacrifice for the war effort.
Sanctioning Smotrich and Ben-Gvir has historical precedent. In 1995, President Bill Clinton issued an executive order allowing U.S. officials to freeze the assets of those blocking the Middle East peace process.
Two of the organizations mentioned on the initial sanctions list were the far-right Kach Party (founded by the right-wing, Brooklyn-born extremist Meir Kahane) and Kahane Chai (a fascist organization founded after Kahane’s assassination). Both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir come out of the Kahanist movement, and indeed, founded their organizations as a way of getting around the Israeli Supreme Court’s own banning of the Kach Party.
Were the Biden administration to sanction Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, it would not only send a strong signal that it will not tolerate settler violence against West Bank Palestinians, but will take concrete measures to actually crack down on them. The Act’s sanctions could have real bite, because many of the most violent settler groups draw funds from American organizations—whose own bank accounts will now be in the cross-hairs of U.S. law enforcement. And it will not be lost on other members of the Israeli government—very much including Netanyahu—that they could very well be next.
In 1939, confronted both by Nazism and by the British government’s “Palestine White Paper,” which restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine just as Nazi tanks began rolling across Europe, David Ben-Gurion’s strategy was clear. “We shall fight Hitler as if there was no White Paper,” he told associates, “and fight the White Paper as if there were no Hitler.”
Biden should take inspiration from Ben-Gurion’s formulation. For too long, the United States has acceded to West Bank settler brutality for fear of undermining Israel’s legitimate national security interests. But the Global Magnitsky Act provides a way to square the circle.
It can now fight the settlers as if there were no Hamas, and fight Hamas as if there were no settlers. It’s time.
