‘Wild’ IDF unit faces US sanctions
The unit, made up of school dropouts and religious extremists, could face sanctions from the United States over alleged human rights abuses in the West Bank.
The wild Israeli soldiers from the “Haredi Unit” were never punished for the death of the elderly Palestinian American they blindfolded, beat and left out in the winter cold.
“They didn’t need to tie up an old man, even if he comes at you and swears at you or you fear he will commit an attack,” said Yanki Farber, one of the original soldiers of the Netzah Yehuda battalion, founded in 1999 and made up mostly of school dropouts and ultra-Orthodox extremists.
Now it could become the first Israeli military unit to be sanctioned by the United States over alleged human rights abuses in the West Bank.
“There was misbehaviour, not the way a soldier should behave,” Farber said, referring to the fate of Omar Assad, 78, who died of a heart attack in 2022 after he had been detained by Israeli troops and later was found abandoned at a building site. “The IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] ruled that the individual soldiers had no responsibility for his heart attack, despite his treatment, and Israel didn’t do anything with them. But now the Americans have had enough.”
US sanctions against the Netzah Yehuda battalion would be laid out “in the days ahead”, Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, said on Friday.
Binyamin Netanyahu has vowed to reject any such sanctions. “At a time when our soldiers are fighting the monsters of terror, the intention to impose a sanction on a unit in the IDF is the height of absurdity and a moral low,” the Israeli prime minister said. “I will fight it with all my strength.”
Israeli rights organisations have accused Netzah Yehuda of a series of incidents involving torture, unlawful killings and assault. Six months after the Assad incident the unit was withdrawn from the West Bank. Now it is “participating in the war effort in the Gaza Strip”, according to the military.
Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, visited the battalion yesterday (Monday) and told the troops: “If one or two soldiers do something wrong, that shouldn’t cast reproach on the whole battalion. No one in the world will teach us morals.”
However, Aaron Rabinowitz, a writer with the Haaretz newspaper, described the male-only Netzah Yehuda unit as “big trouble for the IDF, a chicken bone stuck in their throats.
“They are undisciplined and they cause a lot of problems, not only outside where they are stationed, but also within the IDF, as women cannot be around. They don’t fit in with the IDF in general. They are outsiders, the wild ones, the outlaws.”
He said the Israeli Defence Forces had to place these soldiers somewhere owing to the wider problem of drafting Hare
dim who are traditionally against joining the army - a conscription issue that has split the public and the Israeli government. “They hold a strong ideology to conquer all the land, but have no military background. They are very wild and they can’t follow orders.”
Farber believes the unit is no less compromised than any other in the military, but that it receives more attention because of its religious make-up. “It’s easy to fall on the Netzah Yehuda battalion,” he said. “What about all the violence that is committed against Palestinians in Gaza? None of them are from my unit.”
Palestinian activists and rights organisations say the American sanctions are not enough to make endemic change to a system that is dependent on the actions of individual soldiers. “While it’s important to target specific units, it is not enough and will not stop the violence against Palestinians,” Issa Amro, an activist based in Hebron, said. “What will stop it is to make all soldiers accountable within the Israeli system, and that’s not happening.”
Yossi Levi, chief executive of the Netzah Yehuda Organisation in charge of conscripting the ultra-Orthodox into the defence forces, said Israel was doing do all it could to combat the American sanction effort, adding that the battalion had been involved in “no negative incidents in Golan Heights or Gaza for the last two years”.
A source from the unit serving in Gaza said that any sanctions would not have an effect and that while it “bothers” them, they did not accept the criticism.
Farber said: “These sanctions will make no difference. Netzah Yehuda don’t train with American weapons and they can manage without them. There’s no meaning to these sanctions, but it doesn’t feel good.”
The Times
