‘Different rules’: special policies keep US supplying weapons to Israel despite alleged abuses

“Nobody said it but everyone knew the rules were different for Israel. No one will ever admit that, but it’s the truth,” said one former state department official.

First, under the Israel process, all of the parties involved in an ILVF review must reach a consensus that a potential violation has occurred, and must then be approved by the deputy secretary of state, according to three people familiar with internal deliberations. In theory, a single bureau could raise a potential violation to the deputy secretary of state level as part of a “split memo”, in which other bureaus would air their disagreement, but no such thing has occurred. Among the groups that are involved in the process are the bureau of near eastern affairs, the bureau of democracy, human rights and labor, the bureau of political-military affairs and the US embassy in Jerusalem.

For other countries, former officials said, such a Leahy law determination is made by state department staff, does not require the consensus of all parties, and would not require notification of and approval by the secretary of state or deputy.

Crazy

America runs on exceptions to the rule, as Aaron Good documents in his book American Exception.

MR Online: Exceptionism in U.S. Empire

This is the best summary I could come up with:

In Omar Assad’s case, the Israeli military said last June it was not bringing criminal charges against soldiers who were involved in his death, even after he was alleged to have been dragged from a car, bound and blindfolded after being stopped at a checkpoint.

Paul told the Guardian “numerous people”, including himself, raised concerns over the years inside the state department that the Leahy process “is not working” and that gross violations of human rights were occurring “without accountability”.

For advocates of the Leahy law, like Rieser, the lack of accountability for the killing of Abu Akleh, the prominent Al Jazeera journalist, is particularly galling, and has been the subject of criticism by senior Democrats on Capitol Hill.

A CNN investigation found that there was no active combat or Palestinian militants near Abu Akleh in the moments before she was killed, and footage obtained by the network corroborated witness testimony that suggested Israeli forces had taken aim at the journalist.

In questions to the administration, the senators asked what, if any, steps the United States Security Coordinator (USSC), who conducted an independent forensic analysis of the bullet that killed Abu Akleh, took to try to establish who specifically shot her and why.

A February 2016 letter from Leahy to the then secretary of state, John Kerry, cited a “disturbing number of reports of possible gross violations of human rights by security forces in Israel and Egypt”, including “extrajudicial killings by Israeli military and police”.

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Potemkin would be proud of those 'rules'.