A group of American Jews and evangelical Christians filed a lawsuit in federal court this week challenging the Biden administration’s sanctions regime against Israelis accused of undermining “peace, security and stability” in Judea and Samaria, their attorneys announced Tuesday.
Texans for Israel, a Christian Zionist nonprofit, the Israeli NGO Regavim and three U.S. citizens living in the Jewish state filed the suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, contesting the legality of U.S. Executive Order 14115, under which Washington has sanctioned 11 Israeli individuals and 11 Israeli entities since February.
According to the complaint, President Joe Biden’s order, which extends to U.S. citizens, chills constitutionally protected speech, violates due process requirements and denies equal protection under the law.
“Sanctions have never been used to silence policy disagreements like this,” international scholar Eugene Kontorovich, one of the plaintiffs’ legal advisers, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Wednesday.
“One of the plaintiffs, Ari Abramowitz, is a U.S. citizen from Texas who runs a sheep farm overlooking the Dead Sea. He has been repeatedly attacked by rock-throwing Palestinian terrorists,” Kontorovich said.
“Because the administration affords even U.S. citizens no due process before imposing sanctions, if Mr. Abramowitz, who is not subject to sanctions, is ambushed again, he must choose between his safety and the possibility of financial ruin. Palestinians face no such threat. No Palestinian terrorists have been sanctioned under this order.”
Another plaintiff is Yosef Ben Chaim, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen who lost access to his bank accounts after his wife, Reut Ben Chaim, was sanctioned for protesting humanitarian aid to Hamas in Gaza.
According to Kontorovich, the Biden administration is “putting the lives of American Jews living in the West Bank at risk and denying them the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the laws.”
On Feb. 1, Biden issued Executive Order 14115, which targets “persons undermining peace, security and stability in the West Bank.” The order claimed “high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages and property destruction” in Judea and Samaria.
The executive order places those sanctioned on the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s specially designated nationals and blocked persons list. It blocks property and interests held in America that belong to any designated individual and prohibits U.S. citizens from contributing or providing funds, goods and services to or to benefit those designated.
The sanctions have been criticized by Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu protested to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in February, calling the measure “highly problematic.
“If the U.S. wanted to use it in an equal manner, it would have imposed sanctions on hundreds of thousands of Palestinians,” the prime minister said at the time.
Official data shows that the number of violent incidents committed by Israelis against Arabs in Judea and Samaria has significantly dropped.
Meanwhile, in the first six months of 2024, Israeli first responders recorded 3,272 Palestinian attacks, including 1,868 cases of rock-throwing, 456 fire-bombings, 299 explosive charges and 109 shootings.
