August 28 2024- Americans for Peace Now strongly supports the Biden Administration’s imposition of new sanctions on extremist West Bank settlers and the institutions of Occupation. 

The sanctions on “farm outpost” Hashomer Yosh are long overdue: as our sister organization Peace Now reported in 2021, “the association supports at least 28 illegal outposts across the West Bank…Thus, with a relatively small investment (one family and a few young boys who herd sheep or cows upon a hill), settlers are able to take over huge amounts of land and dispossess Palestinian farmers from that same land.” The organization receives Israeli government funding and has been involved in violence against Palestinians.

Yitzhak Filant, “security officer” for the Yitzhar settlement, has played a major role in coordinating similar violent attacks against the residents of Palestinian villages.

“The sanctions against violent settlers and their organizations put teeth in US policy against illegal settlements and the violence they spawn,” said APN President and CEO Hadar Susskind. “We urge the State Department to continue its investigations and the implementation of further sanctions. And those sanctions should include leaders of the settler movement like Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, responsible for incitement and direct government support for violence, who should not be shielded by their government positions. Sanctions against them, as now recommended by the European Union Foreign Minister, would send a strong message that the US will not countenance expropriation and violence – unlike the Netanyahu government that tacitly supports these activities.”