Israel views US sanctions on settler organizations ‘with utmost severity,’ Netanyahu says

Sanctioned group has received gov't funding, provided security to settlements

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly criticized the U.S. decision to sanction an organization operating in Judea and Samaria on Wednesday, using unusually sharp language to express his disapproval.

“Israel views with utmost severity the imposition of sanctions on citizens of Israel. The issue is under a pointed discussion with the US,” Netanyahu's office (PMO) stated.

On Wednesday, the U.S. State and Treasury Departments announced their latest round of sanctions against Israeli Jewish settler organizations, including preventing entry to the United States, the ownership of U.S. assets or a U.S. bank account, and prohibiting foreign banks from working with the sanctioned entities.

The current sanctions targeted Hashomer Yosh, a group relying on volunteers to provide security to settler communities, farms and outposts, some of which were part of previous rounds of sanctions.

Army Radio reported that within 24 hours of the U.S. sanctions announcement, Israel's Bank Mizrahi Tefahot froze the organization's accounts.

Notably, Hashomer Yosh has received political and material support from the Israeli ministries for agriculture and the environment in the past, and some of its members are linked to the parties of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir (Jewish Power) and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionism).

“The volunteers also provided support by grazing the herds and purporting to ‘guard’ the outposts of US-designated individuals,” the U.S. State Department noted.

In addition, the sanctions targeted Yitzhak Levi Filant, an active IDF soldier and security coordinator for Yitzhar, an especially radical settlement whose members often clash with Palestinians in the area.

The State Department claimed that Filant led "a group of armed settlers to set up roadblocks and conduct patrols to pursue and attack Palestinians in their lands and forcefully expel them from their lands” in February 2024.

The group had provided “material support” to the Meitarim Farm in the South Hebron Hills, which is run by an Israeli male who was sanctioned in February for alleged violence against local Palestinians.

“The U.S. has just sanctioned an Israeli organization for guarding Jewish farms, which are subject to countless Palestinian terror attempts every year,” commented Eugene Kontorovich, an Israeli legal scholar and professor at George Mason University in Virginia.

“Their crime: guarding the farms of other Jews who had been sanctioned. The sanctions work as a mark of Cain, removing basic life protection from sanctioned individuals. All of whom are Jews,” Kontorovich added.

Knesset Member Ariel Kallner (Likud) said Hashomer Yosh is a “pioneering organization,” and called the sanctions a “gross violation of Israeli sovereignty.”

He also demanded the Israeli government increase its support and funding for the group.

“To the US administration: President Biden and Vice President Mrs Harris, to tell us ‘don’t’ after the massacre will not move us. Stop the antisemitic persecution and don’t forget: No power in the world has succeeded and will not succeed in severing the connection between the people of Israel and its land,” Kallner wrote on 𝕏.

In recent months, the Biden administration has announced an unprecedented campaign of sanctions targeting individuals and entities purportedly involved in violence against Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, internationally known as the West Bank, and even considered sanctioning an active IDF battalion.