by Natan Galula
Reut Ben-Chaim, a mother of eight and co-founder of Tzav 9, a group opposed to the entry of aid into Gaza, was slapped with U.S. sanctions targeting “extremist” individuals "undermining peace in the region."
It was supposed to be a relaxing vacation for Reut Ben-Chaim. Her husband, Yossef, aka “Sefi,” just came back from another round of IDF reserve duty, and the couple decided to spend time with their eight children in a bed and breakfast before his next army call-up.
“The atmosphere was great,” Ben-Chaim told JNS on Tuesday. The family was staying in Ramot, a small moshav on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, on July 11, 2024. “The kids were having fun in the pool and in the hot tub. We were there all alone in the compound, finally, cut off from the world,” she said.
Then the world’s most powerful nation placed Ben-Chaim on the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Sanctions List.
“I was talking to Sefi’s mother on the phone when a flood of phone calls and text messages started pouring in,” she recalled. The spokesperson of Tzav 9 (“Order 9,” a reference to IDF reservists’ “Tzav 8” emergency call-up orders), an Israeli organization that aims to prevent aid supplies from entering Gaza, told her that she had been slapped with sanctions.
“Truth is, I was frightened,” said Ben-Chaim, one of Tzav 9’s founders. “I had a flurry of questions: What does this mean, what should I do, can I quickly get my money out [of her Israeli bank]? This distant, surreal threat turned into something real. … My children wanted to understand why mommy suddenly disappeared, where the magical family vacation suddenly went,” she said.
“I received an official message with my name, my [Israeli] ID number, date of birth and my personal details, [announcing the sanctions]. And messages kept coming: ‘Your credit card is blocked; [payment app] bit—blocked; [payment app] Paybox—blocked.’
“The next morning, I received a call from the bank. ‘Hello, you are designated on the OFAC Sanctions List, therefore we must freeze your account. You can’t perform any actions online, you can’t perform actions abroad, you can’t perform foreign currency exchanges. From now on every financial operation requires special permission. You must prove the purpose of your every financial request.’
“From that moment on, the walls began closing in on me,” Ben-Chaim said.
Not all restrictions were communicated to her in the beginning, she noted. They became clearer and tighter as time went by.
“Even though my husband is an American, the bank started to restrict his personal account too. For example, he wasn’t allowed to deposit cash. The rope was tightening around us. The restrictions became stricter with every passing day,” she said.
For more than six months, Ben-Chaim could not provide for her family. A self-employed independent worker, the mother of eight also runs a business in which her husband is an employee, but she was prohibited from paying Sefi and two other workers their salaries.
Anyone who tried helping them financially ran the risk of financial restrictions imposed on himself, Ben-Chaim said. “My sister tried to help us by raising donations through Paybox and received a phone call from the company saying, ‘Either close this crowdfunding account or you’ll get hurt yourself,’” she said.
Sefi’s bank account turned into the family’s account and Ben-Chaim’s business account ran at a very limited capacity.
“It was the darkest days, like I’m not a citizen of a free country,” she said.
‘Extremist settler violence’
On Feb. 1, 2024, in a move unprecedented in U.S.-Israeli relations, then-President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14115, targeting Israelis accused of “Undermining Peace, Security, and Stability in the West Bank.”
In July, the Biden administration announced a new round of sanctions against Israeli entities and individuals, pursuant to E.O. 14115, among them Tzav 9 leaders Ben-Chaim and Shlomo Sarid.
On Jan. 25, 2025, both were removed from the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN List), after President Donald Trump rescinded Biden’s Executive Order 14115.
Richard Goldberg, senior adviser at the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that Executive Order 14115 was part of a broader effort, to be used as leverage with regard to the war in Gaza, as well as to impose on Jerusalem a political agenda hostile to Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria.
He said that had Kamala Harris won the presidential election, this “sanctions regime” would have continued to expand, eventually cutting ties between world Jewry and Jewish causes in Judea and Samaria, in line with the objectives of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
This executive order “was the Trojan horse for BDS to become United States government policy,” Goldberg, a sanctions expert who served as a National Security Council official during Trump’s first term as president, told JNS on Tuesday.
He explained that while the sanctions’ targets started with a couple of examples of individuals or incidents that most would be reluctant to defend, they have expanded to cover anyone who did not comply with the administration’s political line.
“Over time, you can start hitting anybody who lives over the Green Line, any bank that’s processing transactions for activity over the Green Line, any NGO that is operating in Judea and Samaria, etc.,” Goldberg said.
This scenario was beginning to unfold, he continued. “We started seeing an expansion of these designations to individuals and NGOs that at best would be highly questionable as being part of the initial intended purpose of the executive order,” he said.
E.O. 14115 cited “extremist settler violence” as undermining U.S. foreign policy objectives, “including the viability of a two-state solution and ensuring Israelis and Palestinians can attain equal measures of security, prosperity, and freedom.”
It further read that settler violence has the potential “to lead to broader regional destabilization across the Middle East, threatening United States personnel and interests.”
Anti-Israel tool
Ben-Chaim is not a “settler.” Originally from northern Israel, today she lives in Netivot, a city situated near the Gaza Strip. On Oct. 7, 2023, a terrorist squad reached the outskirts of her city but security forces managed to thwart a potential incursion, she said.
When evening fell, the family quickly packed some belongings and drove north to the Golan Heights, to Sefi’s military base and his reserve unit. From there Ben-Chaim drove with the children to stay at her brother’s house, also in the Golan Heights.
During the first months of the war, she was “wandering around” the country, pregnant, while her husband was on duty. She gave birth to their daughter in the city of Ra’anana, north of Tel Aviv.
Ben-Chaim told JNS that during this time, she participated in all kinds of civilian initiatives in support of the soldiers but felt that it was not enough.
Then she came across a call from hostages’ families to block trucks transporting supplies into Gaza. The next morning, she and her spouse joined the effort. The protesters described their goal as “humanitarian for humanitarian,” demanding that aid be delivered into the war zone only in return for hostages kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023, Ben-Chaim said.
“We never thought we’d be effective in stopping the aid with our roadblocks,” she continued. “It was a means to bring this issue to public awareness, to cause public disruption that says, ‘This situation is unacceptable. One hand sending our soldiers to get killed on the battlefield, and the other hand is strengthening Hamas against them, enhancing its physical, logistical and financial strength due to this aid.’”
Media headlines in the wake of Tzav 9’s actions made its organizers realize they could affect the course of the war, Ben-Chaim continued. “We never opposed the transportation of aid. What we opposed is delivering aid without anything in return,” she stressed.
Tzav 9’s activities against the aid began in January 2024, following the first hostages-terrorists swap agreement between the Jewish state and Hamas in November 2023, in which Jerusalem agreed to permit the entry of more international aid into Gaza.
Before the increased aid entered, “Hamas was in dire straits. It was on the brink of surrender. We could have ended the war and brought back [all the hostages],” Ben-Chaim said.
“If we had conditioned the aid on the return of everybody, we could have brought everyone back. Today we have this opportunity again, and again we’re not using it,” she added, referring to Trump’s recent comments that Hamas should release all hostages or there will be “hell to pay.”
The Biden administration sanctions, she remarked, “were a policy that harmed Israel. [American interference] was anti-Israel. I acted for the sake of the people of Israel, aligning with the government’s defined goals for the war. For example, we demanded the closure of UNRWA [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, known for its affiliation with Palestinian terrorists]. Today its operations are illegal in the State of Israel, [but] I was slapped with European sanctions over this.
“Sanctions are typically used against terrorists and money launderers,” Ben-Chaim said. “I was restricted more than [slain Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar was. Sinwar could’ve gathered legal representation [in the U.S. to appeal against his sanctions]; I couldn’t,” she exclaimed.
Crossing the Rubicon
Goldberg said he was not familiar with Ben-Chaim’s claim, but stressed that generally legal representation is an exception to sanctions. However, “the Treasury Department needs to make that clear in regulations issued pursuant to a new sanctions regime.”
It could be that the Treasury never issued such regulations for Executive Order 14115, and thus it was not clear whether legal representation for Ben-Chaim was lawful or not, he said.
Sanctions are not a strategy in and of themselves but part of a larger strategy, he went on to say. They are mainly “a tool of economic warfare imposed on individuals, organizations or countries for some objective.
“Post 9/11, we started using sanctions in the United States for the interdiction of illicit financial networks that were supporting terrorism. If you put people on a sanctions list, you are both ordering banks to freeze their assets, if they’re within U.S. jurisdiction, [and] denying their travel to the United States, but also creating a very public blacklist for banks and companies around the world to understand that these individuals walk around with the scarlet letter of the United States, that these are malign individuals or networks, and you should not be doing any business with them—[or else] you expose yourself and your organization to potential sanctions in the future,” Goldberg said.
He added that although sanctions usually target actors like Iran, North Korea, the Taliban and Russia, it is “rare but not extraordinary” for individuals in allied countries to be designated on a sanctions list—if these individuals violated the sanctions regime. Individuals engaged in human trafficking or money laundering in democratic countries have been sanctioned in the past, Goldberg noted.
However, “The idea of constructing entirely new sanctions architecture to specifically target a democratic ally is unprecedented,” he continued.
Biden’s executive order imposing sanctions on Israelis for alleged “settler violence” moved this tool “across the Rubicon,” he emphasized.
Sanctions could in theory now be imposed against France or Canada, “but sanctions are intended to impose costs on a malign actor for malign activity. And what the Biden administration did was they took off the shelf all of the BDS campaign’s work of many years, the U.N. Human Rights Council [UNHRC], terror-affiliated NGOs in Judea and Samaria, which had been feeding into the UNHRC for reports on ‘West Bank extremism,’ and they decided to make this as an equal malign activity that must be addressed with its own executive order—akin to an Iran sanctions regime or a terrorism sanctions regime,” Goldberg said.
“There are bad apples in every democracy,” he continued. “We don’t have sanctions regimes to go after people who have views that we don’t agree with. I do not support a sanctions regime against somebody in another democracy who happens to be racist, homophobic and sexist. I am fine speaking out against them. If they come into the government, it’s definitely appropriate in bilateral relations to discuss that disagreement. If somebody is a criminal, it’s wholly appropriate to deny them a visa to the United States.
“But the idea that you would form an entire sanctions regime to target the economy of your ally with much broader implications is not justified. It speaks to an alternative political agenda at work.”
The State Department BDS ‘pipeline’
The Biden administration justified its sanctions regime against Israel on the base of “the fabrications and distortions of the BDS campaign of several years,” Goldberg said.
“The idea that there is a crisis of West Bank extremism is fabricated. If you go through the Israeli police numbers year by year, you do not see the spike that has been reported by the United Nations and anti-Israel organizations,” he added.
Official data gathered by Israeli authorities show that the number of violent incidents committed by Israelis against Palestinians in Judea and Samaria dropped significantly from Oct. 7, 2023, to Feb. 24, 2024. Compared to the same period a year earlier, the number of violent incidents dropped 50%.
Goldberg went on to say that the U.N. Human Rights Council has been claiming a spike of violence in Judea and Samaria every year, and “suddenly, when the Biden administration was looking for tools to pressure Israel to slow down or halt the war against Hamas, this became a helpful intellectual foundation to justify the executive order.”
He mentioned NGO such as the Qatar-funded Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and affiliated members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) that created a “pipeline” into parts of the State Department, promulgating ideas to pressure Israel.
DAWN “were the ones trying to cut off all U.S. military assistance to Israel over the last 16 months [of the war],” Goldberg said.
“They’re the ones that worked and helped on this executive order and coordinated all the bad actors to work inside the State Department to weaponize the U.S. government against Israel,” he stressed.
Goldberg said that although the language of the executive order highlighted “settler extremism,” he knows that its purpose was different.
The executive order was signed alongside a notice from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). This notice was issued twice to all banks and law firms in the world, warning about processing any transaction that originates or relates to Judea and Samaria that could possibly finance “West Bank extremism,” he said.
This had a “chilling effect,” he continued. It created a legal requirement to over-comply to ensure these bodies do not violate U.S. sanctions.
“It’s the slippery slope. We went after a couple of bad apples; now we’re going after NGOs that simply disagree with us. Then we’re going after individuals who disagree with us, etc.,” he said.
“Had Harris won the election and you would continue down this path, they would have gone after banks, they would have gone after specific companies, and the next step would’ve been to try to enforce the sanctions against U.S. persons who raise money for causes in Judea and Samaria,” Goldberg said.
“That was the entire point from the beginning. That’s where it was going.”
The Tarqumiyah incident
Ben-Chaim said that in the beginning of Tzav 9’s activities, they received a lot of public support. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, an Israeli volunteer group advocating for the return of all hostages, shared some of its budget with Tzav 9 to print flyers and other marketing materials, she related.
“We started [blocking the aid trucks] with a family of one of the hostages; then several others from the area joined us. After a few more days, we recruited about 30 people [who came to the protests],” Ben-Chaim said.
The protesters represented all Israelis, without a particular political leaning, she stressed. IDF reservists, relatives of hostages, left-wing individuals who had never protested before—people from all walks of life participated in the protests, she said. It was important for Tzav 9 to unite people in agreement on this one issue, Ben-Chaim added.
At first, the aid was transported into Gaza from one entry point, the Kerem Shalom Crossing to the southern Strip, and Tzav 9 was effective in disrupting its passage, Ben-Chaim said.
“On Wednesday, [Jan. 24, 2024], we blocked the entry of aid from morning to 4 p.m., and did the same thing the next day on Thursday,” she related.
Some 70 to 100 aid trucks would pass daily through Kerem Shalom, but on Jan. 25, no trucks entered the Strip due to the protests.
The Biden administration promptly intervened and informed Jerusalem that the aid must continue to pass through Kerem Shalom as usual.
Tzav 9 released a statement in Hebrew that read, “We’re very excited to hear about the involvement of the American government in their concern for aid and supplies to the murderous terrorist organization Hamas. We suggest that the administration and the president of the United States direct all their efforts and heartfelt concern for the immediate release of the one-year-old baby Kfir Bibas together with 135 abductees.
“We continue our activity with all our might and call on the entire public in the country, religious and secular, from the right and the left, from the city, the town and the kibbutz, to come with us and block the Kerem Shalom Crossing. No aid goes through until the last of the abductees returns.”
Ben-Chaim said that their message to Cabinet and Knesset members at the time was to prevent the aid from reaching Hamas’s hands. Speaking to JNS, she relayed how she told Israeli officials, “You are delivering gasoline into Gaza; it helps the operations of the [Hamas] tunnels. If you want aid to reach hospitals—control it. Make sure it reaches civilians and not Hamas.”
The protests continued to grow. But the flow of aid grew as well, with more Gaza entry points opened for the delivery of goods.
At one point, about a thousand protesters came to the crossing near Rafah. It looked “like a festival,” Ben-Chaim said.
When aid trucks started entering Israel from Jordan via the Allenby Bridge and from Egypt via Eilat, she continued, the protests got out of Tzav 9’s control, with spontaneous initiatives from civilians. “We were asked to help with the coordination, but we weren’t in the field anymore as others took the reins.”
In some instances, demonstrators looted trucks as the blocking initiatives started to get out of hand.
On Israeli Remembrance Day on May 13, 2024, a group of activists blocked a convoy of aid trucks at the Tarqumiyah checkpoint near Hebron in Judea. They reportedly looted the goods and set fire to two trucks. Four individuals were arrested on suspicion of participating in the incident.
“The [Jewish] population near Tarqumiyah is different,” Ben-Chaim said. “We appealed to the adults in the area and pleaded with them to restrain those teens. ‘Do something to stop it,’ we told them. But those on the ground didn’t listen and we were unable to stop them.”
Tzav 9 condemned the incident but the organization’s name was stained, she said. The Taqumiyah incident, as well as reports of imminent sanctions, caused the protests to come to a halt.
On July 11, 2024, the Biden administration imposed sanctions on Ben-Chaim and Sarid.
At the end of the day, “This isn’t just about me or Shlomo,” Ben-Chaim stressed. “The meaning of [these sanctions] is the trampling of our rights as citizens. This will reach government members, soldiers—and these things already happened. Now [with the Trump administration] it is irrelevant, but I believe this will come back in a future [U.S.] administration that doesn’t have conservatives in it,” she said.
When asked if Tzav 9 plans to resume its activity any time soon, Ben-Chaim said that as long as the hostages-prisoners swaps continue, “we will not do anything to disrupt it.” If the ceasefire collapses and the humanitarian aid continues to flow in, however, she vowed to “be there to stop it.”
Natan Galula
Source: https://www.jns.org/bidens-sanctions-on-israelis-were-trojan-horse-for-bds-in-us-govt/
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