The US Treasury Department has issued West Bank-related sanctions targeting five entities and three people, including the extremist Lehava organization, the department announced on Thursday.
Alongside them were several Tzav 9 activists who regularly attempted to block truckfuls of aid to Gazan civilians who were also listed in the new additions to the sanctions.
According to the Treasury notice, those cited included the nonprofit organization Lehava, several sheep and goat farms, and three individuals.
Sanctioned are Reut Ben Haim, Issachar Manne, Aviad Shlomo Sarid, Hamohoch Farm, Lehava, Manne Farm Outpost, Meitarim Farm, and Neriya’s Farm. They were sanctioned alongside Tren De Aragua, the largest criminal organization in Venezuela.
The sanctions are part of the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s Specially Designated Nationals List, a list of “names of individuals, entities, and groups designated by OFAC as well as the listing of maritime vessels and aircraft that are blocked by OFAC,” according to the Office.
Lehava stands in Hebrew for “For the Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land.” It is a Jewish supremacist organization that opposes Jewish assimilation. They oppose miscegenation; that is to say, they oppose marriage between members of different races.
The other entities sanctioned are all farms from which settlers with extremist ideologies allegedly come.
The individuals on the list are members of Tzav 9, an organization regularly blocking humanitarian aid trucks from entering Gaza.
Oops! Did the Biden administration mess up?
According to Israel Hayom journalist Hanan Greenwood, the US made a mistake in their listing of one of the people on the sanctions list, Aviad Shlomo Sarid, and accidentally sanctioned a completely innocent man.
“This is a resident of Samaria, an active reservist who is not active in the Tzav 9 organization,” said Davidi Ben Zion, deputy head of the Samaria Regional Council. “His only ‘sin’ in quotation marks is that he bears the same name as an Order 9 operative.”
