"Zeteo" Publishes Excerpts of Unconfirmed Letter from US Attorneys to Attorney General Merrick Garland Providing a Legal Basis to Prosecute Members of the IDF (Israeli Defense Force).
On October 21, 2024, journalists at Zeteo published excerpts of a letter from Attorneys in the Department of Justice to Attorney General Merrick Garland laying out what appears to be a legal strategy to prosecute member of the Israeli Defense Force for killing American citizens in Palestine.
The contents of the letter are unverified.
Attorneys at the Department of Justice have sent a letter to Merrick Garland, pressing the US attorney general to “investigate potential violations of U.S. law by Israel’s government, military, and citizenry, and hold the perpetrators to account.”
REPORTED CONTENTS OF LETTER
The attorneys highlight three categories of potential US code violations the DOJ could investigate:
The killing of US citizens by Israeli citizens and soldiers in recent years (including Ayşenur Eygi, Kamel Ahmad Jawad, Jacob Flickinger, Tawfiq Abdel Jabbar, Mohammad Khdour, Omar Assad, and Shireen Abu Akleh).
Israel’s illegal settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, assisted by US citizens and organizations.
Evidence that Israeli forces may have committed war crimes and engaged in torture – including killing thousands of civilians, forcibly displacement and starvation, unlawful confinement, torture and inhumane treatment of detainees, and mass destruction of civilian property and infrastructure.
“Of course,” the attorneys note, “U.S. courts have jurisdiction over the more than 23,000 U.S. citizens currently serving in Israel’s armed forces, along with IDF members or other Israeli officials that travel to the United States.”
The letter, dated Oct. 21, is simply signed by “your colleagues.” The Attorney General’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The complete text of the Zeteo article can be viewed here.
There are several legal questions that Merrick Garland must address.
Do American citizens in Palestine have the same legal rights as American citizens in Israel?
The United States has recognized Israel as a nation, but not Palestine. Do American citizens still have legal rights in this geography of international legal limbo?
Has the label of “Terrorism” been applied discriminately against Palestinians while unfairly not being used against Israelis?
In their Indictment of leaders of Hamas, the Deparment of Justice made a very lengthy analysis of the history of terrorism and Hamas, and used a version of the word “terror” 147 times to describe Hamas.
The DOJ noted that “On October 8, 1997, the U.S. Secretary of State designated Hamas as an FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization) under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.”
Although neither Israel, the IDF, or their intelligence agency mossad have ever been listed as terrorist organizations or sponsors of terrorism by the United States, Israel is blatantly and publicly committing Terrorism for all the world to see.
Although the United States will not publicly acknowledge it, Israel has committed several overt and extremely serious acts of Terrorism against the United States.
The 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was a joint Israeli/LBJ plot to sink the Liberty to provide a basis for LBJ to order nuclear strikes against Egypt.
The FBI’s own partially-declassified files on the “Dancing Israelis” alone show more than enough evidence to take Israel’s role in the September 11, 2001 Terrorist attacks against the United States out of the realm of “conspiracy theory.”
The FBI’s partially-declassified report on the “Dancing Israelis” can be viewed here.
Does a definition of who or who has not been declared a “Terrorist” alone control who or who cannot be prosecuted by the Department of Justice?
In the case of Ayşenur Eygi, as was reportedly relayed by DOJ attorneys to Merrick Garland, it is impossible for me to consider a 26 year-old American citizen hiding behind an olive tree to escape danger in Palestine to be the “Terrorist,” instead of the Israeli sniper that shot her in the head.
The definition of “Terrorist” has been applied on far too broad of a basis. Essentially everyone in Palestine may now be executed under this “definition” because they have all been associated with Hamas in one way or another. It’s an area of the world where a huge number of people are systematically exterminated with the support of the United States for all the world to see. If a child picks up a rock to throw at a drone that killed his family, that child is a “Terrorist”- not the military establishments in the United States and Israel that killed the child’s family. The branding of the term “Terrorist” onto one group of people, and not the other, is one of the major enabling factors in the horrible Genocide in Palestine.
Terrorism simply is as it is, and is not defined by declarations of “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” by the Israeli-controlled State Department of the United States. I urge the Department of Justice to create a definition of what Terrorism is, and apply it to all parties equally, affording all citizens of the United States equal protections under the law against Terrorism, and to drop selective prosecutions based on definitions of huge numbers of people as “Terrorists” based on nationality, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status- all explicitly forbidden by the Constitution of the United States.
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE INDICTMENT OF HAMAS
The letter which was reportedly sent by DOJ Attorneys to Merrick Garland noted that the Department of Justice indicted “six senior leaders of Hamas” for charges related to a history of terrorism, the killing of at lesat 43 American citizens in the “October 7 Hamas Massacres,” and for the cases of “at least ten American citizens were taken hostage or remain unaccounted for.”
The Department of Justice indicted:
Ismail Haniyeh
Yahya Sinwar
Mohammad Al-Masri
Marwan Issa
Khaled Meshaal
Ali Baraka
The Indictment was unsealed on September 3 and can be viewed here.
INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT ARREST WARRANTS FOR HAMAS AND ISRAELIS
Karim Khan, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, sought arrest warrants for the following members of Hamas for crimes committed on and subsequent to October 7, 2023:
Ismail Haniyeh
Yahya Sinwar
Mohammed Al-Masri
And for the following of Israel:
Benjamin Netanyahu
Yoav Gallant
Hinayeh, Sinwar and al-Masri were sought by the ICC Prosecutor for the murder of “hundreds of Israeli citizens,” “the taking of at least 245 hostages,” rape, torture, and other related war crimes.
Netanyahu and Gallant were sought for “murder as a war crime,” “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population,” “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare,” and other related war crimes. The ICC did not quantify the number of people “murdered” or “starved” by Netanyahu and Gallant.
Estimates on the number of dead in Gaza range from “over 40,000” by the United Nations to “up to 186 000 or even more deaths” in a letter published in The Lancet.
The UN Commissioner of Human Rights, Volker Türk, said “most of the dead are women and children.”
The August 15 Statement of United Nations on the number of dead in Gaza can be viewed here.
The July 20 Article in Lancet on the number of dead in Gaza can be viewed here.
STANDING OF ACCUSED BY DOJ AND ICC
Ismail Haniyeh, accused by both the DOJ and ICC- assassinated by rocket fire in Tehran from an unidentifed party on July 31, 2024.
Yahya Sinwar, accused by both the DOJ and ICC- assassinated by rocket fire and gunfire on October 17, 2024.
Mohammad Al-Masri, accused by both the DOJ and ICC- the IDF claimed to have assassinated him on July 13, 2024, but Hamas denied it.
Marwan Issa- accused by the DOJ- assassinated by rocket fire on March 11, 2024.
Khaled Meshaal- accused by the DOJ- is reportedly still alive and now acting leader of the Hamas Political Bureau.
Ali Baraka- accused by the DOJ- is reportedly still alive and leads the “Hamas National Relations Abroad” in Lebanon.
Benjamin Netanyahu- accused by the ICC- the current “Prime Minister” of Israel.
Yoav Gallant- accused by the ICC- the current “Minister of Defense” of Israel.
Major General Pat Ryder would not specifically confirm or deny that the United States had provided Israel with the coordinates that were used to target Yahya Sinwa, but did say in a press conference that the Department of Defense had given intelligence to Israel on matters related to American hostages held in Gaza. Ryder elaborated:
“And again, as the president's statement highlighted, that included working side by side with their Israeli counterparts to help locate and track Sinwar and other Hamas leaders hiding in Gaza who've been holding people to include Americans, hostage since October 7th last year.”
The transcript of Ryder’s press conference can be viewed here.
Charles Wright