Palestinian Arab families are taking the US State Department to court over military funding for Israel during the war in Gaza.
The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia by Arab residents of Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and the US. It accuses the US of circumventing the 1997 Leahy law, which blocks foreign military aid when there is evidence of human rights abuses.
"The State Department's calculated failure to apply the Leahy Law is particularly shocking in the face of the unprecedented escalation of Israeli gross violations of human rights since the Gaza War erupted on October 7, 2023," the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit was partially assisted by Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), an organization which, according to NGO Monitor, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. In a statement about the lawsuit, the organization quotes one of the plaintiffs, stating: “My surviving family members in Gaza have been forcibly displaced four times since October, living in constant fear of indiscriminate Israeli attacks carried out with American weapons."
While Israel has been extremely cautious to minimize harm to non-combatants in its war that began after the Hamas massacre in southern Israel, foreign governments and NGOs have been continuously leveling accusations of human rights abuses and even genocide against it.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Tuesday that he “wasn’t aware” of the case, “but in any event, I’d defer to the Department of Justice, who typically request that we not comment on cases that they’re going to have to respond to in court.”