The U.S. State Department's newly released and much shorter country reports on human rights practices in 2024 differ from those released last year by the Biden administration covering 2023, including the nearly three months after Oct. 7, in dramatic ways when it comes to Israel, the "West Bank" and the Gaza Strip.
Last year, the State Department noted that "human rights groups reported extensive and in many cases unprecedented conflict-related abuses, and alleged the commission of war crimes, by Israel, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian militant groups."
It added that "some human rights organizations and the government," meaning the Israeli government, "described the Oct. 7 attacks as war crimes and crimes against humanity."
The Trump administration State Department did not refer to alleged Israeli "war crimes" in the reports on Israel and the "West Bank" and Gaza that it released on Tuesday.
"There were reports by nongovernmental organizations and international media of extensive conflict-related abuses by Israel, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian militant groups," the new reports state. They also state that there are allegations of Israeli "human rights abuses" and "violence" directed at Palestinians.
The new reports state that "terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah continue to engage in the indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians in violation of the law of armed conflict."
The Trump administration reports are also dramatically shorter than the prior administration's documents.
The new report on Israel clocks it at 1,482 words — some 15 times shorter than the Biden administration's 22,732-word report on human rights in Israel in 2023 — and the State Department's new "West Bank" and Gaza report runs 3,558 words, more than nine times shorter than the Biden administration's 32,888-word report last year.
Though drastically slimmed down, the Trump administration's report on Israel notes "reports of arbitrary or unlawful killings, enforced disappearance, degrading treatment by government officials, and arbitrary arrest or detention." (The "government" refers to Israel.)
"The government took several credible steps to identify officials who committed human rights abuses, with multiple trials pending at year's end," per the report. Under a section on "war crimes, crimes against humanity and evidence of acts that may constitute genocide or conflict-related abuses," the Trump State Department referred only to Palestinian terror.
This year's report on the "West Bank and Gaza" noted that "Israeli authorities took steps to identify and punish officials or civilians accused of committing human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza," and that "human rights groups frequently criticized authorities for not adequately pursuing investigations and disciplinary actions related to human rights abuses and violence against Palestinians."
Last year, the Biden administration's report included charges that Israel was guilty of "war crimes," which the new reports omit.
"Significant conflict-related abuses were documented throughout the year," the Biden State Department wrote. "Human rights groups reported extensive and in many cases unprecedented conflict-related abuses and alleged the commission of war crimes by Israel, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian militant groups."
"Israeli authorities operating in the West Bank took some steps to identify and punish officials accused of committing human rights abuses, but human rights groups frequently asserted authorities did not adequately pursue investigations and disciplinary actions related to human rights abuses against Palestinians, including actions to stop or punish violence and acts of terror committed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank," according to last year's report.
"Israeli authorities operating in Gaza took no publicly visible steps to identify and punish officials accused of committing human rights abuses," the Biden administration stated last year. "Human rights groups frequently criticized authorities for not pursuing investigations and disciplinary actions related to human rights abuses against Palestinians."
‘The language is always kind of fuzzy'
Robert Wood, a longtime American diplomat who served as deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Biden administration, told JNS the annual human rights report is "the product of different elements of the State Department and the National Security Council getting together to try to come up with language that everyone will agree on and won't necessarily tick off a government we don't want to anger."
"The language is always kind of fuzzy," Wood said. "But when we do go after countries, it's usually pretty clear, and there's usually a consensus."
If the State Department had decided to include accusations of Israeli war crimes again this year, "that would have had to go to the president," Wood told JNS. "I can tell you, he would not have approved that."
"At the end of the day, on something like Israel, that's not only going to go to the secretary of state and the national security advisor, but on something that sensitive, it would be clear to me that certainly the president would have been informed," Wood said.
The new 2024 report states that the Israeli government acknowledged that the Israel Security Agency, known as the Shin Bet, and police "used violent interrogation methods" and that the Palestinian Authority and nonprofit organizations say that 43 Palestinian prisoners died in Israeli custody in 2024.
The 2024 report also states that Jerusalem is the Israeli capital, that "the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem are subject to final-status negotiations between the parties," and that the Palestinian Authority exercises no authority over Jerusalem."
‘We call out certain abuses'
A senior U.S. State Department official told reporters prior to the release of the report that it had "been restructured in a way that removes redundancies, increases report readability, and is more responsive to the legislative mandates that underpin the report."
Amid criticism that the Trump administration downplays human rights abuses, especially among its allies, compared to prior administrations, the senior official said that U.S. policy "on promoting respect for human rights around the globe or in any particular country has not changed."
The report was delayed from its slated release in March since "the American people very clearly spoke that they wanted to move the country in a different direction" in the 2024 election, according to the senior U.S. official.
The Trump administration's State Department inherited a near-complete 2024 report that was a "draft version of a human rights report that prioritized things the prior administration had focused on and that the American people rejected," according to the senior U.S. official.
The official said that the Trump administration prioritizes issues like the right to life, including promoting ceasefires and tamping down on transnational repression and extrajudicial killings. (JNS asked the State Department for a copy of the draft document created by the Biden administration and sought comment from the State Department about examples of items that it changed from the Biden administration draft.)
"That process of revising and ensuring that the report is readable and factually based took several months," the senior official told reporters.
This year's shorter report is not meant to be "a comprehensive set of every single allegation or every single incident of human rights abuses," per the official. Instead, it is intended "to provide an illustrative example of the conditions of each country, and we call out certain abuses that we think deserve highlighting."
"Just because we focus on one instance does not mean that we are not aware of other instances of human rights abuses, and we are tracking those at the State Department," the senior official said. "We are talking with our partners, allies and adversaries about those instances."
JNS asked the official to name a specific human rights issue that the Trump administration sees differently than its predecessor did.
"The prior administration did not focus on freedom of expression with our allies and partners," the official said. "We are not shying away from this in this administration—from having frank discussions with our partners and allies about what we see as censorship or disfavored voices, whether it be political or religious, and making sure that they're protected, whether they are in the mainstream or not."
Republished with permission from Jewish News Syndicate