An Israeli man was “very surprised” to find he was sanctioned by the Biden administration on Thursday after he was confused for someone else with a similar name.
Aviad Shlomo Sarid, an active Israel Defense Forces reservist serving on Israel’s northern border, was sanctioned in President Joe Biden’s latest batch of sanctions on Israeli civilians who are accused of violence in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank. The sanctions were meant to target a man named Shlomo Sarid, and various other individuals and farms with which Aviad Shlomo Sarid is not affiliated.
“While he is defending Israel, the American administration has imposed sanctions on him by mistake,” Davidi Ben Zion, the deputy head of the Samaria Regional Council who is helping Sarid get free of the sanctions, told The Daily Wire. “It’s very unfortunate and especially disturbing.”
“Every citizen of Israel should be afraid that his name is similar to someone who will enter the ‘black list,'” Ben Zion added.
Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Department spokesman, said the Biden administration is “deeply concerned about extremist violence and instability in the West Bank, which undermines Israel’s own security.”
In addition to Sarid, Isachar Manne and Reut Ben-Haim are accused of being affiliated with Tzav 9, a group that has come under fire for protesting and disrupting the distribution of humanitarian aid to Gaza while Israeli hostages are still held captive. The five entities sanctioned include farms and outposts and Lehava, an anti-assimilation NGO that Miller accused of having members who “have engaged in repeated acts of violence.”
The addresses of the sanctioned individuals were released by the U.S. Treasury Department. Iranians and Russians recently sanctioned have not previously had their addresses released, according to Jewish News Syndicate.
Manne, who runs a farm in the south Hebron Hills, had one of its residents survive an attempted lynching in June 2022 by Palestinian rioters who beat him with rocks and clubs, according to Jewish News Syndicate.
Ben Zion said he fears that the sanctions against settlers living in outposts are only the first step before they target any Israelis living in Judea and Samaria and IDF soldiers serving there.
“The State of Israel is a state of law and order and manages to enforce the law on its own and without external assistance,” Ben Zion said. “Today it is sanctions on social activists, tomorrow it will be a sanction on reservists and the day after that on public figures and politicians.”
Israeli civilians and members of the Israeli Knesset have repeatedly condemned Biden’s sanctions for undermining its ally Israel’s legal system.
“This is not acceptable behavior between friends, the people of Israel expect the U.S. government to act as partners,” Ben Zion said. “We are in a war of existence, a war for our lives, in these moments all we need is assistance, support and a strong hug!”
The Biden Administration has continued to impose sanctions on Israeli civilians since he issued Executive Order 14115, which allows the sanctioning of “persons undermining peace, security and stability in the West Bank.” The sanctions block all property and possession of the designated individuals in the U.S. and prohibit American citizens from contributing funds, goods, or services to the sanctioned individuals.
“We strongly encourage the Government of Israel to take immediate steps to hold these individuals and entities accountable,” Miller states. “In the absence of such steps, we will continue to impose our own accountability measures.”
In the first round of sanctions, individuals lost access to their Israeli banks who feared defying the sanctions until the Treasury Department clarified that they were not intended to cut off access to local assets, reported the Times of Israel.