State Department officials privately took aim at a roughly $1 million grant to support investigations into alleged human rights abuses in Israel after the agency defended it, emails show.
The State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor announced in February 2022 it would award cash to nonprofit organizations to “strengthen accountability and human rights in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza,” which prompted outcry among Republican lawmakers over an apparent targeting of the Jewish state. However, not all Biden administration diplomats were apparently on the same page when it came to whether the agency should have proceeded, and it’s unclear if it did, according to documents.
“The issue isn’t that DRL funds programs in European countries or other countries we are allied with —the issue is that DRL is funding a program to collect evidence of human rights abuses and atrocities in a country that is our ally,” one State Department official wrote to colleagues after a March 2022 Washington Free Beacon story on the grant. “And the [notice] specifically says it may include documentation of violation of land property rights! (I mean, come on!) Who wrote this thing??”
Meanwhile, in March 2022, another official, whose name was also redacted in documents, wrote to their colleagues, “I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on this Israel [notice], but from what I saw, I think our DRL colleagues are in a bit of denial and don’t want to see the reality.” The official was pointing out that investigatory grants have been previously focused in countries committing human rights abuses, such as Syria and Libya.
The emails were obtained by the conservative America First Legal Foundation through litigation. The State Department said in a statement it cannot discuss “internal government communications” or “publicly share information on status or outcomes” of the program.
“Biden has illegally used hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to subsidize Palestinian terrorism, enriched and empowered Iran, and deployed the U.S. government’s intelligence apparatus and instruments of soft power to take down Israel’s elected government,” said Reed Rubinstein, senior counselor and oversight director for America First Legal.
The release of the emails comes as the State Department faces heightened scrutiny from GOP lawmakers for restarting aid to Gaza, which Hamas controls, in 2021 after the Trump administration had halted support. The United States and other countries paused aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency — the staffers of which Israel accused of participating in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
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President Joe Biden told reporters in early February that Israel went “over the top” in Gaza in connection to the Jewish state’s military operations after Oct. 7, which saw 1,200 Israelis killed. The U.S. on Tuesday vetoed a U.N. resolution pressing for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East.
The roughly $1 million grant proposal said groups should “collect, archive, and maintain human rights documentation to support justice and accountability and civil society-led advocacy efforts, which may include documentation of legal or security sector violations and housing, land, and property rights.”