Regavim, US Zionists turn to courts to enforce West Bank settler violence

Alameen Templeton

The International Court of Justice has ruled Israel’s settler projects in the West Bank must end “immediately”, but while the White House dithers over what this means, Zionists in the US are trying to enforce it.
They’re suing the Biden administration over spaghetti-limp sanctions issued against a handful of settlers involved in the obscene violence that has continued unrelentingly since October 7 in the occupied West Bank.
Heading up the lawsuit is Regavim, Israel’s most notorious organisation backing up the illegal annexation of the West Bank and the enforcer of terror against Palestinians. Its joined by something called “Texans for Israel” and two Israeli-based settlers.
They filed the lawsuit in Amarillo, Texas, against the US Department of Treasury; US Department of State; Department of Homeland Security; Office of Foreign Assets Control; Financial Crimes Enforcement Network; and their department chiefs, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen.
It’s not like the “sanctions” are likely to stay the settlers’ bloody hands. They’re so weak that Palestinians have accused the US of giving a green light to more settler violence by making the measures to weak.
Effectively, anyone targeted by the sanctions won’t be able to visit the US, for a holiday presumably. And “financial sanctions” could also be slapped against them.
So, how is that supposed to stay the hand of genocide?
In February this year, president Joe Biden allowed federal agencies to impose financial sanctions and visa restrictions against settlers who attack or intimidate Palestinians and destroy or dispossess Palestinians of their property.
So that would include about 80% of Israelis who are overwhelmingly underimpressed with the sanctions because the Gaza genocide continues unrelentingly.
Biden says in his executive order the “high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region.
“These actions undermine the foreign policy objectives of the United States, including the viability of a two-state solution and ensuring Israelis and Palestinians can attain equal measures of security, prosperity, and freedom.”
The Amarillo plaintiffs claim Biden’s executive order “violates the plaintiffs’ free-speech rights under the US Constitution and illegally interferes with the exercise of their religious beliefs, providing a blanket sanctioning of Israelis who disagree with Biden’s policies.”
They also presumably want “blanket protection” for Israelis who disagree with ICJ rulings, Geneva Conventions, public international humanitarian law, countless diplomatic agreements and also US laws aimed at preventing genocides.
Regavim routinely cuts off water to Palestinian settlements, destroys their wells, appropriates the supply for their own settlements – and then supplies them with sewage water from the “settlements” built on stolen land.
Although the ICJ has ruled all settlements have to be returned to their rightful owners, the Palestinians, the Amarillo Four want the settlement policies to continue in contravention of international law.
“Texans for Israel’s support for Judea and Samaria settlements – by hosting speaking events or donating to Israeli advocacy groups – is an exercise of its First Amendment rights”, said Israeli lawyer Eugene Kontorovich in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday.
Texans for Israel, Kontorovich details, “provides charitable support to Jewish farmers and communities” in the occupied West Bank and organises speaking tours to Texas to “educate Americans about the importance of Jewish presence in the Holy Land”.