Recent leaks in Israel and the United States highlight a pervasive absence of accountability for IDF war crimes. Congress should demand proper enforcement of the Leahy Law and call upon the State Department to produce a list of all IDF units for which credible information on abuses exists. In the longer term, it should work to explicitly require a uniform Leahy vetting process for all recipients of US security assistance.
Shortly after the ceasefire began in October, a bizarre turn of events further jeopardized the prospects for accountability for breaches of international law by the IDF in the war in Gaza and for settler violence inflicted on Palestinians in the West Bank. The Military Advocate General (MAG) of the IDF, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalemi, was arrested for leaking a video of Israeli soldiers allegedly sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee in August 2024, which she claims she did to counter the right-wing’s vilification of her office’s investigation of the offense.
The leak immediately became a rallying cry for the far right in Israel, championing impunity for the IDF forces – and by extension – violent settlers, for any violence toward Palestinians throughout the war. Combined with other leaks revealing the pervasive lack of accountability, this case exemplifies the need for change.
The Sde Teiman detention facility, created in the wake of October 7 at an IDF base near the Gaza border, operated outside the prison system, where most Palestinians held by Israel are detained. Almost immediately after its opening, media and human rights investigators revealed severe abuses against detainees there, including torture, persistent blindfolding – even during medical treatment, humiliation, and constant shackling that led to the need to amputate some detainees’ arms. In July 2024, the IDF, despite denying abuse, transferred hundreds of prisoners out of the facility. Meanwhile, the Military Advocate General (MAG) initiated an investigation of an incident of alleged torture and sexual abuse that was captured on video.
When military police detained nine soldiers for questioning in connection with the alleged sexual abuse, far-right activists, including two members of Netanyahu’s Knesset coalition, stormed the facility and demanded the soldiers’ release. Though they failed to free the soldiers, their assault on the military base went unpunished. Over a year later, after Israeli police discovered the MAG herself was responsible for the leak, the far right, and indeed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, sought to shut down not only the Sde Teiman investigation but all efforts at accountability for crimes committed by IDF soldiers during the war.
Meanwhile, a leaked State Department memorandum exemplified the pressing need for accountability for IDF conduct in Gaza. The classified memo revealed that various IDF units committed hundreds of potential violations of human rights in the Gaza Strip that, if substantiated, could require the cut-off of US arms transfers to those units.
The two leaks – one about detention practices and the other about US-supplied weapons – concern different legal issues and, of course, different investigative authorities. But the doubts both raise are whether there will ever be accountability, in Israel and via US arms transfer policy, for the serious violations of international law by Israeli forces since October 7.
For years, Israeli human rights organizations have filed complaints with the IDF for human rights and humanitarian law violations against Palestinians in the occupied territories – to no avail. Between 2000 and 2015, B’Tselem documented and filed more than 730 cases involving killings, beatings, and the use of Palestinians as human shields; only 3 percent led to charges. In 2016, recognizing that the complaint process merely lent legitimacy to a system designed to avoid accountability, B’Tselem announced it would stop submitting complaints altogether. Data from the Israeli military reveals that others continued submitting, with even poorer results: from 2017 and 2021, out of 1,260 complaints regarding harm to Palestinians or their property, fewer than 1 percent resulted in indictments.
The same pattern held in previous IDF operations in Gaza. Yesh Din revealed that of 664 complaints reaching the IDF’s fact-finding mechanism across the last three campaigns, only 19 criminal investigations were opened and just one indictment was issued.
Unsurprisingly, the trend persisted since October 7. The UK-based NGO Action on Armed Violence reported that of the 52 IDF cases opened between October 2023 and June 2025 – investigating incidents linked to the deaths of over 1,300 Palestinians – 88 percent were either closed without any finding of fault or left unresolved, and only one indictment was issued.
An example of the use of investigations as cover-ups is the IDF investigation’s claim that a Golani Brigade attack on Palestinian first responders, which killed 15 civilians in March 2025, was due to an “operational misunderstanding.” A New York Times video investigation proved that the IDF’s investigation dissembled on the facts. The Times report also included video evidence of the brigade commander telling his troops, in a gross violation of international law, that “everyone encountered is an enemy. If a figure is identified, open fire, eliminate them, and move on. Don’t get confused about this.” The IDF deputy commander of the unit who ordered the assault was dismissed, but no criminal charges were brought.
The Israeli military’s contempt for the law extended to high-level military planning, with Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir reportedly ignoring legal advice regarding potentially catastrophic harm to Palestinians in a major military operation in September 2025. As the IDF planned its assault on Gaza City, MAG Tomer-Yerushalmi questioned the legality of the operation because of the absence of the necessary humanitarian conditions for the million people who would have to be evacuated. She demanded that evacuation notices be postponed until those conditions were met. Zamir discarded her opinion, an action senior military officials told Haaretz was unprecedented for such a large operation.
If Israel refuses to hold its own soldiers and citizens accountable for grave violations of international law, the United States has tools of its own to do so. The prospects of their invocation, however, are currently dim. The Biden Administration importantly imposed sanctions on violent West Bank settlers, but declined to cease transfers of arms for use in Gaza despite overwhelming evidence of their use in violation of the laws of war.
We can expect nothing but hostility toward accountability from the Trump Administration, which revoked the sanctions on violent settlers. The administration also imposed sanctions against the International Criminal Court, closed the Pentagon’s program to prevent and mitigate civilian harm in its military operations, and dismantled the mechanism for assessing whether US-supplied weapons are being used in accordance with international law. In October, the State Department denounced as “corrupt” an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice affirming Israel’s obligation to provide humanitarian aid and to cooperate with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which the court also found had no ties with Hamas.
The leaked State Department memorandum on potential IDF violations, however, provides a new opportunity for US action on accountability. The memo identifies hundreds of cases that require review under the Leahy Law, which prohibits US security assistance to foreign military units when there is credible information that they committed gross human rights violations. While the Washington Post’s report on the memo did not disclose specific incidents, the Golani Brigade’s conduct both in the March 2025 ambulance case and in the August 2025 killing of 22 civilians, including journalists and first responders, at Nasser Hospital, suggests that credible information exists indicating gross human rights violations.
The primary obstacle to enforcing the Leahy Law, however, beyond the Trump Administration’s hostility toward accountability, is the uniquely complex, time-consuming and high-level process the State Department exclusively relies on in Israel’s case. For every other recipient of US military aid, Leahy vetting is relatively straightforward: working-level State Department experts review cases and determine whether credible information indicating abuses exists. Crucially, for other countries, this process actually works, resulting in agreed-upon ineligible units in countries such as Ukraine, Bangladesh, and Mexico.
But as the author of the law, former Senator Patrick Leahy, and Charles Blaha – the former State Department official who oversaw global Leahy vetting for seven years – have both explained, the State Department has a separate vetting process for Israel: the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum (ILVF). The ILVF uniquely requires formal written requests to the Israeli government for information on alleged abuses, and the Israelis can take up to three months to respond. It also mandates periodic in-person meetings, which further slows down the process (the regular Leahy vetting process occurs virtually). Most significantly, any final determination that an Israeli unit is ineligible to receive aid must be approved by the Deputy Secretary of State – a Senate-confirmed political appointee – rather than by the career professionals who handle determinations for other countries. The result of this arduous process is that not a single Israeli unit was barred from receiving US weapons for its conduct in Gaza.
Congress has a key role in promoting accountability. In addition to reimposing sanctions on violent West Bank settlers, Congress should call for annual reports from the State Department on Leahy vetting through the appropriations process, as it has done in the past. Further, given the now enormous trove of evidence of potential war crimes and crimes against humanity in the war, Congress should also instruct the State Department to produce a list of all IDF units that meet the credible information standard for gross human rights violations. Short of these actions, members of Congress can also demand proper application and enforcement of the Leahy Law, as Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) and his colleagues did in 2024. Members should also call on the State Department to vet Israel in the same way it does to other countries.
In the longer term, Congress can amend the Leahy Law to explicitly require a uniform vetting process applied at the same evidentiary threshold and by the same level of officials for all recipients of US military aid. It should also codify and define the “credible information” standard to ensure that the State Department cannot apply different burdens of proof to different countries.
Finally, Congress should call for an end to sanctions against the International Criminal Court and reject the Administration’s condemnation of the October 2025 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice.