Two American-Israeli dual citizens filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration on Thursday after they faced sanctions meant to apply to “foreign persons” who engaged in extremism in the West Bank.

Issachar Manne and his business, Manne Farms, were sanctioned in July “for being a foreign person who is responsible for … directing, or participating in an act of violence or threat of violence targeting civilians, affecting the West Bank; and … for being responsible for or … directing, or participating in seizure or dispossession of property by private actors, affecting the West Bank.”

The State Department imposed sanctions on Yitzhak Levi Pilant — called “Filant” in the announcement — in August, claiming that he “engaged in malign activities outside the scope of his authority,” specifically that he allegedly “led a group of armed settlers to set up roadblocks and conduct patrols to pursue and attack Palestinians in their lands and forcefully expel them from their lands.”

Both were sanctioned under Executive Order 14115, signed in February, against “persons undermining peace, security and stability in the West Bank,” which states explicitly that it applies to a “foreign person” engaged in such activities. 

Their credit cards were canceled and their bank accounts were frozen, making them unable to make essential payments, such as school fees for their children. This has damaged Manne’s business and prevented Pilant from receiving payments from the IDF for the reserve duty he has done continuously since October 2023, the suit alleges.

Attorneys with the National Jewish Advocacy Center, as well as with the Jerusalem-based law firm Zell, Aron & Co. and Marcus & Marcus in Pennsylvania filed suit in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia asking that the designations be canceled, claiming that they violate the constitutional rights to due process and equal protection under the law. They also argue that the charges against their clients are false.

The filing notes that the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Treasury Department agency that enforces sanctions, defines a “foreign person” as “any person that is not a U.S. person,” and a “U.S. person” is a “U.S. citizen,” among other categories. While in other cases, sanctions against foreigners specifically included U.S. citizens, EO 14115 made no such specification.

Eugene Kontorovich, a legal consultant with NJAC, argued to Jewish Insider that Pilant and Manne are “being sanctioned in violation of the due process clause. The government is punishing U.S. citizens without notice, hearing or actual substantive investigation into the facts before punishing them.”

Kontorovich called the State Department’s actions “recklessness in imposing life-shattering penalties on a U.S. citizen.”

“The fact that two of the 17 people who the State Department sanctioned are not even sanctionable under the executive order,” he added, “suggests that they do so little inquiry into the facts or allegations that they cannot even ascertain a basic fact to which they should have good access … If they can’t verify whether someone is a U.S. citizen, can we really believe that they verified the accusations they made against these people? No.” 

The lawyers also argue that the executive order’s vagueness as to whom it may apply to is also a Fifth Amendment violation, quoting a 1972 Supreme Court ruling stating that “vague laws may trap the innocent by not providing fair warning.” 

“To the extent that a U.S. citizen may ever be considered a ‘foreign person,’ that term alone provides no such indication – in fact suggesting the opposite – and no other text in the executive order adds additional clarity on this point,” the filing states.

The lawyers also say the application of the executive order violates the right to equal protection of the law, in that it has only been used against Jewish Israeli individuals even though the text is neutral about race, religion and nationality, other than that it applies to “foreign persons.” 

Though “in 2024 alone, there were 1,040 major Palestinian attempts on Jewish life,” the lawsuit notes, no Palestinian individuals and only one organization, which has been dormant since mid-2023, has been sanctioned under EO 14115, and no freezes of the group’s assets have been announced. 

The filing notes that the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network sent an alert to financial institutions about the executive order stating that it addresses “Israeli violent extremist groups in the West Bank,” an apparent admission that, despite the order’s ostensible neutrality, it is only targeting one group. 

Pilant, whose family moved to Israel from Pittsburgh before he was born, is an IDF officer, trained firefighter and the security coordinator for the settlement of Yizhar, a job that entails coordinating civilian security with the IDF. 

However, since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, has been on IDF reserve duty in the West Bank, covering a zone that includes his hometown. He commands 60 soldiers and has never been charged with a crime.

Pilant was sanctioned days after DAWN MENA, an anti-Israel organization, provided the State Department with a dossier on him, claiming that he “plays a central role in orchestrating violence against civilians in nearby Palestinian villages” and “[a]s a security leader of the settlement, Filant [sic] also has failed to prevent, discourage, condemn, or stop other settlers from carrying out violence and threats of violence against Palestinians and their property.”

DAWN also claims that “on February 17, 2024, Filant [sic] and other settlers set up a makeshift roadblock outside the village of Asira al-Qibliya and forcibly removed three Palestinian civilians from a car, assaulted them, and threatened to burn the vehicle if they returned.”

Pilant’s attorneys, however, argue that “in carrying out his official duties to combat Palestinian terrorism and as instructed by his superior officers, on February 17, 2024, Pilant set up roadblocks in order to prevent the smuggling of ammunition and terrorists. These roadblocks were authorized by the IDF, the maintenance of which were a formal part of Pilant’s duties. Pilant has never engaged in violence against Palestinians at any time. At times, he or his soldiers request Palestinians to get out of their vehicle for inspection, a standard IDF practice, as the State Department is aware, and which the U.S. has never claimed constitutes ‘violence.'”

As for the claim that Pilant failed to prevent violence against Palestinians, the filing states that he is “also tasked with preventing violence by Jews against Palestinians. Pilant has and continues to carry out this duty. For example, after a Palestinian terror attack, some Israelis from Yitzhar or other neighboring communities may want to ‘take the law into their own hands.’ Pilant is the one tasked with preventing that  from happening and as such he often finds himself in the midst of confrontations between Israeli and Palestinian groups, attempting to separate the two and to restore law and order.”

Manne runs a sheep farm, a small vineyard and a bed and breakfast on land that is within the municipal boundaries of Maon, a settlement in the South Hebron Hills in the West Bank. He leases the farmland from the World Zionist Organization, and his roughly 130 sheep graze on either land that is licensed to him, or “survey land,” whose status remains undetermined, according to the filing. 

The State Department claimed that “Manne founded and established Manne Farm Outpost in the South Hebron Hills in 2020 after seizing 150 hectares of land … on pastureland belonging to the Palestinian community, and settlers from this outpost regularly attack community shepherds and prevent their access to pastureland through acts of violence.” 

Manne’s attorneys point out that while there have been criminal complaints of trespass against Manne by Palestinians and anti-settlement NGOs, leading Israeli Police to investigate him, he has never been charged.

“Manne has never engaged in violence against Palestinians, even against those who have trespassed onto land he is authorized to use. When a trespass does occur or when Manne feels threatened, Manne defers to the Israeli authorities to deal with the matter, either to the police or to the IDF depending on the situation,” the filing states.

Noting that the State Department has not provided any proof that the land on which Manne’s sheep graze belongs to any individual Palestinian or the “Palestinian community” as it stated, Kontorovich said that there is no concept of land belonging to a community in Israeli, British Mandate or even Ottoman law, which can apply in cases where no relevant Israeli laws were passed. In addition, he said that grazing rights under the law are not exclusive as long as the land is not private.

Kontorovich said that “the sanctions against the plaintiff are based on a shocking idea that certain land is inherently ‘Palestinian,’ in some essentialist sense, and Jews cannot live there even with property rights. American Jews are having their bank accounts frozen and their lives turned upside down for no better reason than that people who think they have no right to live in the West Bank have pointed fingers at them.”

“This is dangerously close to the State Department saying that an ethnic group can have essentialist ownership of land and can exclude non-members by virtue of their ethnicity,” he said. 

NJAC CEO Mark Goldfeder said in a statement, “when you apply a double standard to sanction only Jewish people, and when you punish Jews for the simple act of being Jewish in a place where you do not want them to be, there is a word for that, and it is not pretty.”