President Biden recently achieved a historic first for which he has received no credit. He is the first president to form an interagency team dedicated to imposing sanctions on an ally, namely, Israel.
To be sure, the United States sanctioned allies on many occasions. Recent examples of this kind include sanctions designed to prevent Germany from completing the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, and sanctions on Turkish defense industries to penalize Ankara for its procurement of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system. These sanctions resulted from a specific action by an allied government that Washington sought to reverse.
But the sanctions against Israel are of a qualitatively different kind. The Biden administration has assembled an interagency team of targeteers tasked with finding individuals and groups to sanction—not to reverse a specific policy, but to weaken if not topple the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The existence of this machine has been hiding in plain sight since last February, when Biden issued an executive order claiming that violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank was threatening the stability of the entire Middle East. The order laid out the justification for the interagency team of targeteers and provided it with the necessary legal authorities to generate sanctions packages.
The press has reported on the executive order and has taken note of the sanctions the administration has generated, but it has also failed to ask some basic questions, which I put to contacts in the government. Here is what I gleaned.
The White House has established an interagency initiative to produce sanctions against Israeli entities and individuals. The International Economics Directorate at the National Security Council (NSC) leads the effort. Ilan Goldenberg, who until April worked for Vice President Kamala Harris and has now moved to the Strategic Planning Directorate in the NSC, also plays a very enthusiastic role. In the State Department, the Office of Economic Sanctions Policy has the lead. It works closely with the Office of Foreign Assets Control at Treasury. Together they prepare evidentiary packages.
The team convenes frequently, to meet the goal, set by the president and his top advisers, of rolling out packages of sanctions with regularity. By my count, six tranches have been rolled out so far. The next tranche, I have learned, is already prepared, waiting for release after Iran attacks Israel, so that the administration can dodge the accusation of weakening Israel in time of war.
The regularity of the rollouts, which average about one tranche per month, matter to the administration more than the specific content of the sanctions. The goal is not to reverse any policy by the Israeli government but to create a climate of controversy around Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition partners.
Biden did not create this sanctions machine in response to any development on the ground in the Middle East other than the surprise attack by Hamas on Oct. 7. When the attack generated the fear in Washington that the resulting war would strengthen the Israeli right, Biden launched an initiative to counter it.
Tom Nides, Biden’s ambassador to Israel until July 2023, almost certainly reflected the current view of the Biden administration when, at a recent conference, he called for substituting right-wing ministers like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir with opponents of Netanyahu like former prime ministers Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid. “We need to get the crazies out. We need to bring the moderates back in,” Nides said.
It was undoubtedly with this goal in mind that Biden’s Israel sanctions machine proposed sanctioning Ben-Gvir. Biden personally nixed the idea, but someone in the administration made sure to leak to the press the fact that the proposal was under consideration. Even sanctions that do not receive approval can still generate press reports that further the goals of the campaign.
The administration’s cover story, that it is issuing sanctions in reaction to events on the West Bank, evaporates when one examines the specific content of the sanctions. Consider the case of Elor Azaria, whom Secretary of State Blinken sanctioned last month. An Israeli medic, Azaria shot Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, a Palestinian terrorist who was laying wounded on the ground. The administration homed in on Azaria’s story because it can be easily manipulated to support a headline, such as “The Radicalization of Israel’s Military.”
Under scrutiny, however, the propagandistic intentions of the administration become obvious. When I served on the National Security Council in the White House of President George W. Bush, I frequently helped with the sanctioning of specific individuals. This time-consuming process requires meeting strict evidentiary criteria. Treasury regulations require that misdeeds by potential subjects of sanctions must be recent, committed within the last five years.
It was eight years ago, however, that Azaria killed al-Sharif, when President Obama was still in office. Treasury regulations will not allow him to be fitted for economic sanctions. A different legal instrument would be required to make Azaria’s story newsworthy again. Biden’s team found it in a law that bars entry to the United States to foreign officials guilty of gross human rights violations. Azaria is not an official, nor is he the leader of a death squad. He’s a simple baker, who plays no role in politics, but the administration’s lawyers gave the green light, nonetheless.
Azaria served time in an Israeli prison for his crime. Azaria claimed that he used his gun because he feared that al-Sharif was wearing a suicide vest and had made a sudden movement. The Israeli military doubted this defense, tried him for manslaughter, and found him guilty. Stripped of rank, he also served half of an 18-month prison sentence and was released.
Regardless of whether Azaria acted appropriately, or whether he received a just punishment, two things are obviously true. First, his case has nothing to do with the very dubious allegation of a spike in settler violence. Second, he poses no danger to the peace and security of the Middle East—the ostensible reason for creating the interagency team targeting people and entities in Israel.
The rise of the Israel targeteers is not the only historic first of Biden’s presidency. On his watch, the International Court of Justice smeared Israel with the accusation of apartheid. An unprecedented number of American allies have moved to recognize the state of Palestine. Iran attacked Israel with the largest ballistic missile barrage ever launched by any country against another. And for the first time, Tehran mobilized all elements of its “Resistance Axis” in a coordinated campaign.
There is a clear connection between the elements on this list of firsts. Israel’s detractors and its mortal enemies feel they can act with impunity, because Biden has signaled clearly that the United States cares as much about weakening the Israeli right wing as it does with defeating Israel’s foes.
Enjoyed this article? Subscribe to 91’s newsletters to stay up to date with our latest content.