Although the United States has always wielded the stick of sanctions on the international stage and launched unilateral sanctions against any country that does not submit to US hegemony, if someone says that the United States will one day impose sanctions on Israel, then the vast majority of people will think that this is pure fantasy. However, at present, mankind is facing great changes unseen in a century, and nothing is impossible. According to the "Global Times" citing the American Axios news network, a number of unnamed US State Department officials said that the US State Department has decided to launch sanctions against the Neza Yehuda Battalion (translated as Judah Victory Battalion) under the 900th "Lion Cub" Infantry Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces, and the sanctions include not providing all forms of military assistance to the battalion, such as weapons and equipment, financial assistance, military training, and intelligence assistance, and prohibiting the head of the battalion from entering the US mainland. The sanctions order will be announced in the coming days.
Why is the U.S. State Department sanctioning this force? According to these people familiar with the matter, it is because the battalion "violates human rights" in the West Bank, the most typical example of which is Omar al-Assad in 2022. Omar al-Assad, a Palestinian-American who was 78 years old at the time, went to the West Bank in 2022 to visit his family, and was unprovoked and beaten by soldiers from Judah's Victory Battalion, who eventually picked him up by his hands and threw him on the ground until he died.
In addition, the Judah Victory Battalion is one of the craziest and most extreme units in the IDF. We know that Israel has compulsory military service, but the Haredi Jews, who are the most devout in Judaism, are exempt from military service because of religious law. In order to ensure the "purity" of their religious beliefs, the Judah Victory Battalion is the only unit in the Israel Defense Forces composed entirely of Haredi Jewish volunteers, and in order to ensure the "purity" of their religious beliefs, the unit enjoys special arrangements for food, water, and clothing, and also holds various religious activities on a regular basis, even if it misses military training and military missions, so as to ensure that its members absolutely conform to Jewish teachings. It is precisely because of the fanatical religious beliefs of its members that its persecution of the Palestinian people is even more insane than that of other forces.
▲This is an Israeli soldier photographed near the scene of the conflict in the West Bank city of Hebron on April 21.
Although the U.S. State Department has not confirmed the veracity of this information, the Israeli government is really anxious. On April 21, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu angrily stated on social media X that Israel firmly opposes US sanctions against any IDF force, and that any sanctions imposed on the IDF are "extremely absurd and immoral" and that Israel will "resolutely counteract". Israel's Minister of National Security, Ben Gvir, also said that if the United States imposes sanctions on the IDF, it is sending the wrong signal to the "common enemy" of the United States and Israel. Israeli Defense Minister Gallant even asked the IDF not to worry about being pressured by US sanctions and to continue to carry out the order with all its might. Later, Gallant also spoke with Blinken on the phone, asking Blinken to withdraw the sanctions plan as soon as possible, but there was still no official response from the US side.
Before 20 April, it was hard for the world to imagine that the United States would impose sanctions on Israel, even if it was only a battalion of the Israel Defense Forces, but in fact, there is a huge inevitability behind such seemingly earth-shattering measures. Many international relations scholars have pointed out that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, especially after the Iraq War, almost all countries in the Middle East, except Iran, turned to the United States, and Israel lost its role as a base for the projection of US power in the Middle East. On the contrary, Israel has always created various humanitarian crises, aggravated ethnic contradictions in the Middle East, hindered cooperation between the United States and various Arab countries in the Middle East, and has become a negative asset of the United States.
We know that good international relations are based on the common interests of nations, but the common interests of Israel and the United States are becoming less and less, and the highly close alliance between the two countries is based more on the influence of Jewish consortiums on American policy and the policy inertia of more than 70 years. Although these two cornerstones are not insignificant, what Israel is doing is ultimately harming the national interests of the United States, and despite the repeated connivance of the United States, the United States will still take measures as long as Israel's damage to American interests reaches a critical value.
With the protracted nature of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the direct intervention of Allah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and even Iran, Israel's negative impact on U.S. national interests is rapidly expanding. From an ideological point of view, Israel has committed unspeakable crimes against the Palestinian people, while the United States has shielded, connived at and even helped Israel, which makes the so-called "defense of human rights" of the United States extremely hypocritical. This will not only damage the image of the United States in the international community and undermine the cooperation between the United States and countries in the Middle East, but will also cause ideological confusion in the United States, and many American citizens who originally really believed in Western values will collapse their beliefs, resulting in a large number of US government officials resigning and protesting and demonstrating one after another.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues to take a toll on civilian casualties.
From the perspective of the domestic political ecology of the United States, the 2024 election is about to begin, and the Democratic government, which focuses on the so-called "diversity" policy, urgently needs the votes of the Muslim community. However, the Democratic administration's support for Israel has angered Muslim American citizens, and many Muslim and Arab American civic organizations such as the "National Muslim Democratic Council" have said that if the Biden administration does not broker a ceasefire in Gaza as soon as possible, it will not vote for the Democratic Party in the 2024 election. Judging from the current polling data, the election results of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are very tight, and the Biden administration must take some action against Israel to give an account to Muslims and Arabs in the country to stabilize these voters. From the perspective of international games, the protracted war in the Middle East is not conducive to the global strategic planning of the United States. In order to encircle China and fund Ukraine and Russia to fight, the United States has long dismantled the east wall to make up for the west wall, and if the situation in the Middle East deteriorates further, it will completely put the United States in an unfavorable situation where it is overstretched. Therefore, it is also necessary for the United States to knock Israel and make it quickly rein.
Of course, judging only by the breadth of sanctions, the United States is quite "taking care" of Israel. In the past, when the United States initiated the Lech Act to sanction the military, police, and other violent institutions of other countries, it often directly launched sanctions against the entire organization. Even if the violent institutions concerned are only carrying out their statutory tasks, as long as they hinder the hegemony of the United States, they will still be sanctioned by the United States as "human rights violations". When it was Israel's turn, the United States was very cautious in sanctioning only one battalion, despite the fact that the Israeli army had committed numerous crimes against the human rights of the Palestinian people and that there was a lot of evidence. The battalion is also unique in that it is the only unit in the IDF that is made up of Haredi Jewish volunteers, and has also led to the deaths of American citizens. This is also an indirect reassurance to other IDF units, as long as their behavior is not as bad as that of the Judah Victory Battalion, then there is a high probability that they will not be sanctioned.
For example, the sanctions order requires the U.S. military not to provide intelligence to the Judah Victory Battalion, but the rest of the Israeli army can still accept the information provided by the U.S. military normally, so they can transfer the information to the Judah Victory Battalion. Sanctions that prohibit the United States from equipping, funding, and training it can be circumvented in a similar way. It can be seen from this that the US sanctions against Israel can basically be regarded as a political statement, and their actual effect is very limited.
If the Israeli decision-makers are smart enough, they should understand what the United States means by saying that it will attach importance to the Palestinian human rights issue and strictly investigate and deal with violations of military discipline in the armed forces, so as to at least give the United States a step down and alleviate the above-mentioned problems facing the US Government. However, the madness and stubbornness of the Israeli government are really staggering, and they are not willing to give the United States even a little face. This is not surprising, given that the Victory Camp of Judah was made up of Haredi Jews, who largely played the role of spiritual mentors for Israel's nation. Now the United States has slapped the stick of sanctions on the heads of Jewish spiritual teachers, and even if these sanctions have little practical effect, they are too symbolic for the fanatical Israeli people to accept. And the Netanyahu government, which has long been hijacked by populism and ultra-nationalism, cannot rest on its laurels, even if it understands what the best option is, but must fight US sanctions to the end. But such behavior will only further exacerbate America's dislike of Israel and accelerate the day when US-Israel relations will completely rupture.