The senior U.S. State Department official who resigned on Wednesday in protest of the U.S.’s arms deals with Israel said in an interview that the department’s leadership repeatedly ignored flags about human-rights violations by units within the Israeli Defense Force. Calling it “a broken system,” Josh Paul told PBS News Hour that the Leahy vetting process for Israel “has never found an Israeli unit to be guilty of a gross violation of human rights.” That’s despite staffers identifying “many”—“but they have not been able to come to a conclusion, which requires senior level sign-off within the department.” “Are you saying that there have been units inside Israel’s Defense Force that the State Department has been concerned about… their violations or their actions, you have brought that to senior officials and over the years consistently they have not acted on them?” journalist Nick Schifrin asked. “That is correct,” Paul replied. The laws are designed to prevent the State and Defense Departments from providing military aid to countries that break human rights policies. Human Rights Watch has come out against Israel for its use of white phosphorus and its bombings in Gaza. “The problem is that the laws are intentionally vague in some cases,” Paul said.
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