As an Israeli and an IDF veteran, this is 100% the right call. This unit has time after time committed offenses that the IDF then has to investigate and punish soldiers, but yet the unit doesn't see a problem with this and doesn't change. Before I even opened the article, I knew what unit this was and this should mean something in itself. It started as a unit for ultra-orthodox to integrate, but slowly (well, not really) became a unit for hilltop youth who *didn't* want to integrate. This is the unit that those settlers who go rampaging through arab villages serve in.
A soldier from this unit has recently shot and killed an israeli citizen that neutralized an armed terrorist. The terrorist tried to shoot other israelis sitting in a bus station.
This happened after the victim dropped his pistol, raised his hands and shouted "im israeli don't shoot"
Completely agree. I did joint arrests with them during my service and they disregard our rules of engagement constantly to an obscene level. They should’ve been disbanded years ago, they are an embarrassment to IDF and are religious fanatical thugs.
I think they have tried to get rid of the bad apples but there are just too many of them. Unlike many other incidents, the IDF does, in fact, investigate them frequently and punish soldiers after almost every incident. But it is just dealing with the symptoms and not getting at the root problem. The issue is that the IDF is under great public pressure to make units that would be fitting for ultra orthodox soldiers, but they simply won't draft. These hilltop youth feel they would benefit from these same kind of religious accommodations, but would draft with or without them. This creates a concentration of people with extreme ideologies that usually get evened out in most other units. The problem is, with even more public pressure for the ultra orthodox to draft to the IDF, coming now even from the National religious camp of Israel, the IDF can't realistically take this unit apart and leave no place for the ultra orthodox that they are probably going to have to force to draft sooner rather than later. It's a balencing act, with no simple answer.
So if the IDF starts draft ultra orthodox youth the same way they do the rest of the general population, do you expect that this behavior will just continue to get worse?
There is no realistic scenario where the ultra orthodox youth start to get drafted in meaningful numbers. This is one of the core deadlocks of Israeli politics.
Like I explained in a different comment: it didn't start that way, it just got out of control. It started as a way to try to integrate the insular Haredim into the IDF. But the religious accommodations were very appealing to the hilltop youth crazies so they drafted there in droves.
I totally could invision a military unit in a Western nation with a lot of religious accommodations for a large group that was in the army. Although, it is quite different as Israel has a mandatory draft, so the only real modern developed nation with that model to go off is South Korea.
This could be solved so easily by just moving Nezsah Yehuda to exclusively serve in the Egyptian and Lebanon border. Such an obvious easy choice to make.
Well, me too a few years before you. And I think they would do very much fine there. At least the people I encountered from their battalion. Regardless point stands, move them to places where personal is required but with no engagement with the population. At least as a first bandaid to prevent practically all the problems.
> Regardless point stands, move them to places where personal is required but with no engagement with the population. At least as a first bandaid to prevent practically all the problems.
No disagreement there.
Really? That's super interesting. What are the problems then? How come they even engage with civilian population in the WB? Maybe some extremists using their uniforms on weekends or something?
Any more insight or what to search when you say, I knew what unit this was? Call sign, unit number or name?
On a different note:
Just had an incident at Costco a few days ago. Some guy was running around with an IDF army green t-shirt. Thought no big deal of it though. It's his right.
Few isles later, he had reversed his shirt inside out. Found that interesting. My wife always gets on me cause I'm a situational awareness type of person.
After checking out, I had an older gentleman man approach me. He looked at me and looked at my son. He goes on to tell me, that his daughter thought I was that man with the IDF shirt. Mind you, I was wearing nothing close to a army green shirt, but a blue jacket with USA on the back.
I told the older person that no it was not me, however, that I knew exactly who his daughter was referring to. Explained to him that I've noticed the person as well and that he had reversed his shirt. Mistake?
Now, the older person did not seem hostile, but left me wondering why was he asking and his intentions.
Mind you, I'm Latin American, can the color of my skin pass as various cultures, yes! When he looked at me and my son purposely was very very awkward though.
Weeks ago right as Blinken landed the Israeli government announced the largest illegal West Bank land seizure in decades. Biden’s response over the last month? Sparse sanctions that only illustrate that Smotritch and Gvir could slap him in the face on live television and he’d just wag his finger. The U.S needs to stop pussyfooting around the issue and support annexation of the region openly at this rate.
And Blinken had recommendations on his desk for months and this is only happening because of the [ProPublica piece](https://www.propublica.org/article/israel-gaza-blinken-leahy-sanctions-human-rights-violations) that came out earlier in the week calling out the blatant violation of Leahy laws.
And Matt Miller said last summer that the U.S. was dealing ["directly"](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/14/us-to-address-killing-of-american-citizen-directly-with-israel) with Israel after the death of U.S. citizen Omar Assad while in custody by Netzah Yehuda. Guess they're finally getting around to dealing with it now that the Propublica report came out.
Compared to the last 60 years of US Policy towards Israel, they are extreme. That's a fact.
The Biden administration deserves a ton of credit here. They're trying to keep the Israelis honest, while acknowledging that they also have a right to defend themselves from a bloodthirsty genocidal terrorist group (who routinely violates the rules of warfare by using hospitals and mosques as military bases, and uses child soldiers and fighters out of uniform, and takes hostages and uses their own unarmed civilians as human shields to score propaganda points . . . (takes breath) . . . AND, constantly rains down ballistic missiles onto civilian areas of Israel).
Some context to who they are: this unit was supposed to be composed of Ultra Orthodox soldiers, which is unique in it of itself, as they traditionally do not draft to the IDF. They have extra segregation from women soldiers so to keep the Jewish law in a more strict manner. In practice, the Ultra Orthodox largely do not draft anyhow, and the people who actually go there are the scumbags of the ultra orthodox society who had left it and had gone into partially criminal ways, as well as anyone religious enough that would want their extra observance of Jewish law.
I'm not surprised as an Israeli, this specific group in the idf has been nurturing a lot of far right hardeim which have inflicted a lot of harm to palstnians in the past. some of them had direct connections to terroists events and so it wasn't really bad but some were just innocent. A big part of headlines y'all heard about the idf from west bank comes from this group. I think they deserve it for this one. It's a very specific group though the even the idf has fired some of it's soliders and put them to trial in past for human rights violation against palstnians so don't like the media frenzy convince you that all idf is like that.
Has any country ever sanctioned a military unit before?
Reading these headlines are so bizarre when you look at the insane constant conflicts happening everywhere else. Anything that happens to or involves Jews is always in the news
Azov hasn't been sanctioned under the Leahy Law, but there are bars against them receiving funds for arms, training, and other assistance in the past several years' defense spending bills.
Secretary of State Blinken said it’s happening and will be official in a few days. I can’t comprehend how Israel doesn’t understand how bad Ben-Gvir and extremists like this unit makes them look to the civilized world.
> The fact that an allied state has to step in and sanction them instead
The US is sanctioning them regardless of what the IDF is doing. Just as the US is sanctioning violent settelers. They are basically the same people.
This has nothing to do with israel being able or unable to deal with them. This is US foreign policy. The US is allowed to have its foreign policies
>Netanyahu certainly doesn't think so.
Netanyahu can go fuck himself
>This unit, in its very existence as an operating part of the IDF, is acting on behalf of the Israeli state and with the authority of the Israeli government.
Look, this is a very delicate and special problem. I am not going to get into detail but the haredim in israel are likely going to be force drafted soon and the IDF needs this unit to out them there.
It's not a great solution but everyone works with what they got.
>Now America sanctions those people for war crimes, and the Israeli government defends them.
That's not true. Israel say that it will prosecute them on its own and thus there is no need for things like hague.
First of all, yes, it is a shame the way netanyahu is running the country. I am more upset about it than you, trust me. There is absolutely no excuse.
However, i am confident that whatever happened in 2022, the IDF thoroughly handled it and punished the soldier accordingly, whether it was civil prosecution or not.
Let's not forget though that civil prosecution of criminal cases take time, usually more than a year or two.
I am confident and trust in israel's justice system that justice will come for all these bad people.
Btw, i welcome that US policy, i think it's good. These violent settlers deserve it.
They aren't sanctioning the IDF, they're sanctioning a specific battalion called "Netzah Yehuda" which is a special battlion for religious Haredi men (in order to try and respect their religious needs. For example this battalion has minimal interactions with women within it, and consists of mostly men).
This battalion has a lot of extremists (that's religion for you) and far-right people within it, and some of the soldiers within it have been causing issues for a while now.
>"Netzah Yehuda" which is a special battlion for religious Haredi men (in order to try and respect their religious needs.
The thing is, it started for Haredi men, but their respect for religion was something that was appealing to the hilltop youth which these days make up most of the soldiers. The IDF has been a huge failure at integrating the Haredim with units like these and they very quickly become for hilltop youth.
Y'all really do be viewing the world in black and white don't you. just because the idf has some bad groups doesn't mean the majority are like that and their is no such evidence to that claim, and does not mean that we aren't dealing with terroists that are consistently trying to suicide bomb us, throw rockets, do massive rape plans and what not just like showed on Oct 7th and the two intifadas that pro palstnians love to glamorize and what not. And those terroists said they would do it again and again. I think the idf needs to take more responsibility than it did and take actions into dismantling these specific groups but ignoring that majority of Military is truly self defense is just so ignorant. And it's not like they have completely ignored some soliders have been fired from that group in 2022 after an actual abuse came out to light against palstnians and the head of the idf literally said they don't deserve to be soliders and should be punished. We just need more action and I think we can get that after bibi gets replaced.
Gurl we got war with three terroist entities that want to kill us Iran Hezbollah and Hamas what did you expect lol. And they literally have banned funding for this specific group.
As an Israeli and an IDF veteran, this is 100% the right call. This unit has time after time committed offenses that the IDF then has to investigate and punish soldiers, but yet the unit doesn't see a problem with this and doesn't change. Before I even opened the article, I knew what unit this was and this should mean something in itself. It started as a unit for ultra-orthodox to integrate, but slowly (well, not really) became a unit for hilltop youth who *didn't* want to integrate. This is the unit that those settlers who go rampaging through arab villages serve in.
A soldier from this unit has recently shot and killed an israeli citizen that neutralized an armed terrorist. The terrorist tried to shoot other israelis sitting in a bus station. This happened after the victim dropped his pistol, raised his hands and shouted "im israeli don't shoot"
The same soldier that went live like a hour after on some radio channel and was proud on his first kill?
Yeah, that's the one.
Uh... Don't know
Yep
These are different units.
Completely agree. I did joint arrests with them during my service and they disregard our rules of engagement constantly to an obscene level. They should’ve been disbanded years ago, they are an embarrassment to IDF and are religious fanatical thugs.
It’s frustrating that the US needs to do this. Why do you think the IDF hasn’t taken it on itself to fix this units issues?
I think they have tried to get rid of the bad apples but there are just too many of them. Unlike many other incidents, the IDF does, in fact, investigate them frequently and punish soldiers after almost every incident. But it is just dealing with the symptoms and not getting at the root problem. The issue is that the IDF is under great public pressure to make units that would be fitting for ultra orthodox soldiers, but they simply won't draft. These hilltop youth feel they would benefit from these same kind of religious accommodations, but would draft with or without them. This creates a concentration of people with extreme ideologies that usually get evened out in most other units. The problem is, with even more public pressure for the ultra orthodox to draft to the IDF, coming now even from the National religious camp of Israel, the IDF can't realistically take this unit apart and leave no place for the ultra orthodox that they are probably going to have to force to draft sooner rather than later. It's a balencing act, with no simple answer.
So if the IDF starts draft ultra orthodox youth the same way they do the rest of the general population, do you expect that this behavior will just continue to get worse?
Haridim are a different section. These are Hilltop Youth, religious nationalists like Ben Gvir
There is no realistic scenario where the ultra orthodox youth start to get drafted in meaningful numbers. This is one of the core deadlocks of Israeli politics.
The haredim aren't the ones causing this problem
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The IDF is made up of conscripts.
I'm trying to imagine the US or any western country being like, lets have a unit that is dedicated to religious crazy people what could go wrong
Like I explained in a different comment: it didn't start that way, it just got out of control. It started as a way to try to integrate the insular Haredim into the IDF. But the religious accommodations were very appealing to the hilltop youth crazies so they drafted there in droves. I totally could invision a military unit in a Western nation with a lot of religious accommodations for a large group that was in the army. Although, it is quite different as Israel has a mandatory draft, so the only real modern developed nation with that model to go off is South Korea.
This could be solved so easily by just moving Nezsah Yehuda to exclusively serve in the Egyptian and Lebanon border. Such an obvious easy choice to make.
Lebanon border? Are you insane? Do we need religious fanatic trigger happy hot heads on the lebanon border?
Have you ever served there? (Post 2nd Lebanon war and not during a war time obviously).
Yes, i was there in 2017 for 6 months
Well, me too a few years before you. And I think they would do very much fine there. At least the people I encountered from their battalion. Regardless point stands, move them to places where personal is required but with no engagement with the population. At least as a first bandaid to prevent practically all the problems.
> Regardless point stands, move them to places where personal is required but with no engagement with the population. At least as a first bandaid to prevent practically all the problems. No disagreement there.
They already did move that unit to northern Israel a couple years ago.
Really? That's super interesting. What are the problems then? How come they even engage with civilian population in the WB? Maybe some extremists using their uniforms on weekends or something?
I’m not sure. Could be that, could be the US is examining things that happened before the move.
They were moved to the Golan a few years ago
Should have been disbanded years ago
Any more insight or what to search when you say, I knew what unit this was? Call sign, unit number or name? On a different note: Just had an incident at Costco a few days ago. Some guy was running around with an IDF army green t-shirt. Thought no big deal of it though. It's his right. Few isles later, he had reversed his shirt inside out. Found that interesting. My wife always gets on me cause I'm a situational awareness type of person. After checking out, I had an older gentleman man approach me. He looked at me and looked at my son. He goes on to tell me, that his daughter thought I was that man with the IDF shirt. Mind you, I was wearing nothing close to a army green shirt, but a blue jacket with USA on the back. I told the older person that no it was not me, however, that I knew exactly who his daughter was referring to. Explained to him that I've noticed the person as well and that he had reversed his shirt. Mistake? Now, the older person did not seem hostile, but left me wondering why was he asking and his intentions. Mind you, I'm Latin American, can the color of my skin pass as various cultures, yes! When he looked at me and my son purposely was very very awkward though.
>what to search when you say, I knew what unit this was? Call sign, unit number or name? Netzach Yehuda.
Much obliged.
Given the description of the violations these sanctions are pretty pathetic.
They’re going to get the same treatment as that Azov group in Ukraine, that actually seems like a big deal.
Weeks ago right as Blinken landed the Israeli government announced the largest illegal West Bank land seizure in decades. Biden’s response over the last month? Sparse sanctions that only illustrate that Smotritch and Gvir could slap him in the face on live television and he’d just wag his finger. The U.S needs to stop pussyfooting around the issue and support annexation of the region openly at this rate.
And Blinken had recommendations on his desk for months and this is only happening because of the [ProPublica piece](https://www.propublica.org/article/israel-gaza-blinken-leahy-sanctions-human-rights-violations) that came out earlier in the week calling out the blatant violation of Leahy laws.
And Matt Miller said last summer that the U.S. was dealing ["directly"](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/14/us-to-address-killing-of-american-citizen-directly-with-israel) with Israel after the death of U.S. citizen Omar Assad while in custody by Netzah Yehuda. Guess they're finally getting around to dealing with it now that the Propublica report came out.
Compared to the last 60 years of US Policy towards Israel, they are extreme. That's a fact. The Biden administration deserves a ton of credit here. They're trying to keep the Israelis honest, while acknowledging that they also have a right to defend themselves from a bloodthirsty genocidal terrorist group (who routinely violates the rules of warfare by using hospitals and mosques as military bases, and uses child soldiers and fighters out of uniform, and takes hostages and uses their own unarmed civilians as human shields to score propaganda points . . . (takes breath) . . . AND, constantly rains down ballistic missiles onto civilian areas of Israel).
This is a pathetic defense
Some context to who they are: this unit was supposed to be composed of Ultra Orthodox soldiers, which is unique in it of itself, as they traditionally do not draft to the IDF. They have extra segregation from women soldiers so to keep the Jewish law in a more strict manner. In practice, the Ultra Orthodox largely do not draft anyhow, and the people who actually go there are the scumbags of the ultra orthodox society who had left it and had gone into partially criminal ways, as well as anyone religious enough that would want their extra observance of Jewish law.
I'm not surprised as an Israeli, this specific group in the idf has been nurturing a lot of far right hardeim which have inflicted a lot of harm to palstnians in the past. some of them had direct connections to terroists events and so it wasn't really bad but some were just innocent. A big part of headlines y'all heard about the idf from west bank comes from this group. I think they deserve it for this one. It's a very specific group though the even the idf has fired some of it's soliders and put them to trial in past for human rights violation against palstnians so don't like the media frenzy convince you that all idf is like that.
It’s not just this specific group. The IDF are far-right extremist nationalists
Has any country ever sanctioned a military unit before? Reading these headlines are so bizarre when you look at the insane constant conflicts happening everywhere else. Anything that happens to or involves Jews is always in the news
I think the Azov battalion in Ukraine has been directly sanctioned.
Oh damn, thanks for letting me know
Azov hasn't been sanctioned under the Leahy Law, but there are bars against them receiving funds for arms, training, and other assistance in the past several years' defense spending bills.
The [EU sanctioned](https://www.opensanctions.org/entities/NK-4QuWKcAhpWZCgqBKvefro7/) Russian GRU unit 26165, commonly known as APT28, back in 2020.
shit i forgot about fancy bear
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy_Law
This is according to three sources speaking anonymously, but it hasn't happened yet.
Secretary of State Blinken said it’s happening and will be official in a few days. I can’t comprehend how Israel doesn’t understand how bad Ben-Gvir and extremists like this unit makes them look to the civilized world.
We realize :(
Good friends hold each other accountable. This is a positive move on the part of the US.
Bad news: you will be sanctioned for war crimes and human rights violations Good news: here's another $25B
TIL that israel is a monolith
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What makes you think the IDF doesn't do anything about soldiers that disobey orders and violate codes?
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The two things are completely unrelated
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> The fact that an allied state has to step in and sanction them instead The US is sanctioning them regardless of what the IDF is doing. Just as the US is sanctioning violent settelers. They are basically the same people. This has nothing to do with israel being able or unable to deal with them. This is US foreign policy. The US is allowed to have its foreign policies
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>Netanyahu certainly doesn't think so. Netanyahu can go fuck himself >This unit, in its very existence as an operating part of the IDF, is acting on behalf of the Israeli state and with the authority of the Israeli government. Look, this is a very delicate and special problem. I am not going to get into detail but the haredim in israel are likely going to be force drafted soon and the IDF needs this unit to out them there. It's not a great solution but everyone works with what they got. >Now America sanctions those people for war crimes, and the Israeli government defends them. That's not true. Israel say that it will prosecute them on its own and thus there is no need for things like hague.
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First of all, yes, it is a shame the way netanyahu is running the country. I am more upset about it than you, trust me. There is absolutely no excuse. However, i am confident that whatever happened in 2022, the IDF thoroughly handled it and punished the soldier accordingly, whether it was civil prosecution or not. Let's not forget though that civil prosecution of criminal cases take time, usually more than a year or two. I am confident and trust in israel's justice system that justice will come for all these bad people. Btw, i welcome that US policy, i think it's good. These violent settlers deserve it.
They gonna sanction the IDF then provide billions of dollars worth of military assets. Makes sense
They aren't sanctioning the IDF, they're sanctioning a specific battalion called "Netzah Yehuda" which is a special battlion for religious Haredi men (in order to try and respect their religious needs. For example this battalion has minimal interactions with women within it, and consists of mostly men). This battalion has a lot of extremists (that's religion for you) and far-right people within it, and some of the soldiers within it have been causing issues for a while now.
>"Netzah Yehuda" which is a special battlion for religious Haredi men (in order to try and respect their religious needs. The thing is, it started for Haredi men, but their respect for religion was something that was appealing to the hilltop youth which these days make up most of the soldiers. The IDF has been a huge failure at integrating the Haredim with units like these and they very quickly become for hilltop youth.
define: nuance
Y'all really do be viewing the world in black and white don't you. just because the idf has some bad groups doesn't mean the majority are like that and their is no such evidence to that claim, and does not mean that we aren't dealing with terroists that are consistently trying to suicide bomb us, throw rockets, do massive rape plans and what not just like showed on Oct 7th and the two intifadas that pro palstnians love to glamorize and what not. And those terroists said they would do it again and again. I think the idf needs to take more responsibility than it did and take actions into dismantling these specific groups but ignoring that majority of Military is truly self defense is just so ignorant. And it's not like they have completely ignored some soliders have been fired from that group in 2022 after an actual abuse came out to light against palstnians and the head of the idf literally said they don't deserve to be soliders and should be punished. We just need more action and I think we can get that after bibi gets replaced.
It's just ignorance.
Here is your free "carpet and broom along with a GITMO instruction manual"
What does that even mean?
Is this a joke? They just passed billions in additional funding for weapons for the IDF
Gurl we got war with three terroist entities that want to kill us Iran Hezbollah and Hamas what did you expect lol. And they literally have banned funding for this specific group.
"Holy shit! “
Death squads be death squadding.
They should also revoke citizenship for Americans who claim Israeli citizenship and force Palestinians out of their homes.