BREAKING: US AG Merrick Garland Charges Hamas With Terrorism
Meanwhile Garland remains silent as Netanyahu assassinates American journalists, kills American aid workers, kidnaps American citizens, and props up Hamas
I made clear on 10/7 that Hamas committed war crimes by targeting and killing civilians. I state this again to preempt the inevitable complaint that I haven’t condemned Hamas in the last 15 minutes. On Tuesday September 3, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland charged six Hamas leaders with terrorism for killing and kidnapping American civilians, and for helping fund Hamas. The DOJ press statement declared in significant part:
The Justice Department announced today the unsealing of terrorism, murder conspiracy, and sanctions-evasion charges against six senior leaders of Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization. The charges relate to the defendants’ central roles in the October 7 Hamas Massacres, involving the murders and kidnappings of countless innocent civilians, including American citizens.
I am glad the Department of Justice is pursuing those who commit acts of violence and terrorism against the United States and its citizens—an obligation upon any sovereign nation. The question is, when it comes to Palestine and Israel, why is the DOJ stopping with Hamas? If the DOJ wants to ensure its own legitimacy, and instead actually uphold justice, it must stop the hypocrisy of selective safety and security for the American people, and instead prosecute all war crimes committed against American citizens. It’s current failure to do so is indefensible.
Let’s Address This.
Assassinating American journalists
On May 11, 2022, Israeli soldiers killed prominent journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh. A detailed UN inquiry concluded that the Israeli military killed Shireen Abu Akleh “without justification:”
The Commission concludes on reasonable grounds that the Israeli security forces used lethal force without justification under international human rights law and intentionally or recklessly violated the right to life of Shireen Abu Akleh.
Abu Akleh was a U.S. Citizen and also a Palestinian Christian. Yet more than two years after her brutal murder, the Department of Justice has refused to take any action, or even so much as provide an update on holding the Israeli military accountable for assassinating this American citizen in broad daylight. Sarah Leah Whitson is executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a media company founded by the late Jamal Kashoggi—also assassinated by a regime that the United States refuses to hold accountable. Whitson wrote to AG Garland in late July:
Perhaps the DOJ thinks we will forget about the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh as well as the investigation it promised the American people two years ago, but we have not. The DOJ should take responsibility for its apparent failure to make progress on this investigation, which has fueled Israeli impunity, leading to the systematic and widespread killings of Palestinian journalists, at least 108 since Abu-Akleh's 2022 killing. Without an interim update on the investigation or a concluding report, it is hard to take seriously U.S. claims that it will vigorously investigate and hold accountable extrajudicial killings of American citizens.
Whitson’s statement is not hyperbole. Indeed, the case of Jacob Flickinger shows another example of stark hypocrisy on refusing to hold accountable those who kill U.S. citizens when the killer is not Hamas.
Killing American aid workers
In April 2024, multiple targeted Israeli strikes killed Jacob Flickinger, a World Central Kitchen aid worker and a U.S. Citizen. Since then, the DOJ has neither filed nor contemplated any charges against the Israeli military for this brazen murder. To be sure, killing aid workers is a war crime. As the United Nations has made clear on numerous occasions:
The Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) considers intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units, or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission a war crime, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
Instead, as NPR reports, while U.S. officials are loud in condemning Putin for killing Ukrainians, they’re silent about Netanyahu killing Americans:
After the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland and the U.S. Justice Department moved quickly — and publicly — to hold Russia to account for possible war crimes. Asked by a Fox News reporter, "where are you on war crimes relating to Hamas?" Garland replied: "Hamas murdered more than 30 Americans and kidnapped more during their terrorist attack on Oct. 7. We are investigating those heinous crimes, and we will hold those people accountable." Garland made no mention of examining Israel's actions in the conflict. NPR sent the Justice Department questions for this story [on Jacob Flickinger] about its approach to possible war crimes in the Israel-Hamas conflict. The department declined to comment.
On what grounds can Garland unequivocally condemn Hamas for killing American citizens, yet remain silent on the Israeli military’s murder of an American citizen and aid worker?
Likewise, AG Garland charged Hamas not only for killing U.S. citizens, but also for kidnapping U.S. citizens. If kidnapping U.S. citizens warrants terrorism charges, then where are the charges against the Israeli military for kidnapping American brothers Borak Alagha and Hashem Alagha?
Kidnapping American citizens
In February of this year, the Israeli military raided the home of Borak Alagha (18) and Hashem Alagha (20) in Gaza, detained them, and sent them to Ashkelon prison. That was the last anyone has heard from either brother, who are both Chicago based U.S. citizens. No charges have been filed. No trial date set. No access to counsel granted. These two American citizens are being illegally detained in a foreign country’s prison without any justification, charge, or reason to hold them. This is, by any logical definition, a kidnapping of American citizens.
Yet, since this kidnapping in February, the DOJ has provided no update and no insight on the status of these U.S. citizens. Given the horrifying and well documented fact that the Israeli military is torturing and raping prisoners with impunity, it is outrageous that AG Garland has remained silent on the Alagha brothers. Would Garland have been so silent if Hamas kidnapped and detained the Alagha brothers?
And finally, quite unfortunately, Garland’s silence does not stop here—it extends to selective outrage on funding Hamas.
Netanyahu’s strategy to fund Hamas
The United States government designated Hamas as a terrorist organization in 1997. In his September 3 press conference, AG Garland made explicit that his terrorism charges against Hamas leadership are, in major part due to, “extensive funding for Hamas’ terror wing.” This is not controversial. Criminal accountability for funding a designated terrorist organization has long been part of American legal jurisprudence. The next logical question is, therefore, when will AG Garland file charges against Netanyahu for helping fund Hamas—as Netanyahu himself has admitted? The Times of Israel reported in an article published on October 8, 2023:
Israel has allowed suitcases holding millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings since 2018, in order to maintain its fragile ceasefire with the Hamas rulers of the Strip. Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015. Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
This is not yesterday’s news that AG Garland has not had time to process. For at least the last decade, Netanyahu has explicitly and knowingly helped fund Hamas—openly ”propping up Hamas” as the Times of Israel reports—to undermine peace. If Garland can charge Hamas leaders with terrorism for ‘funding Hamas’ terror wing,’ why is he silent on Netanyahu’s explicit policy to undermine the Palestinian Authority and prop up Hamas with ‘suitcases full of cash’ for nearly a decade?
In Conclusion
The above examples are not anecdotes, but part of a disturbing trend. For example, last February Israeli terrorists killed two American citizens in the West Bank—both were young teens, still children. But aside from empty words of condolences offered to their families, the U.S. Government has offered no accountability for those who killed these American children. This hypocritical trend is unjust and unsustainable.
The precious lives of Shireen Abu Akleh, Jacob Flickinger, and Borak and Hashem Alagha—and many more American civilians killed or kidnapped by the Israeli military and extremists in Israel—are are no less valid than the precious life of Hersh Goldberg-Polin. This grotesque double standard additionally undermines the United States’ claims of being a just arbiter in ceasefire negotiations. It is no wonder that recent reports show that even after Hamas accepted the U.S.-Israel ceasefire and hostage release proposal on July 4, the United States allowed Netanyahu to continue to bomb Palestinian civilians indiscriminately.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco concluded her remarks at the press conference announcing charges against Hamas leaders by stating: “We will not rest until all those who kidnapped or murdered Americans are brought to justice.”
Perhaps someone can inform the DOJ that the American families mentioned above, and many more like them, are still waiting for justice.
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Sorely disappointed with Merrick Garland. That’s the long and short of it.
Disappointed with Biden administration with how much Netanyahu and Israel has been treated with so much leverage available and unused to make them stop their slaughter.
A stain on an otherwise amazing four years in which Biden was a surprise extraordinarily transformative and progressive president and administration.
Thanks so much for this great piece. A related point: like most Americans, I felt horror and grief when I looked at the front page photos a few days ago of the 6 Israeli hostages who had just been killed. They were so young and full of dreams. But overshadowing my sorrow was the knowledge that the little kids, teenagers and twenty-somethings who are killed almost daily in Palestine, are not making it onto the front pages of any US papers in the form of sweet photographic portraits. There are thousands and thousands of them. Each Palestinian death matters as much as an Israeli death. Each family left behind in Palestine is experiencing the same anguish and life-altering loss that Israeli parents are experiencing. Israeli lives are not more important, Israeli children are not more important. Why, oh why, is this simple concept too complicated for Joe Biden's brain?