'Sayeret Golani' was responsible for killing 15 Palestinian Red Crescent responders in Gaza in March 2025
(WASHINGTON, D.C., September 25, 2025)—The U.S. Department of State should ban the 631st Reconnaissance Battalion ('Sayeret Golani') of the Israeli Defense Forces from receiving U.S. military assistance in light of its role in extrajudicial executions, torture and enforced disappearance, pursuant to the Leahy Law provisions of the Foreign Assistance Act, said DAWN today.
In a submission to the State Department, the organization detailed Sayeret Golani's role in the extrajudicial killing of 15 Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) emergency responders in the Gaza Strip's Tel al-Sultan Refugee Camp and the torture of PRCS worker Munthar Abed on March 24, 2025, and for the enforced disappearance of PRCS worker Asaad al-Nassasra.
"The IDF's Sayeret Golani unit should not receive another dollar of U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance given its shocking massacre of 15 Palestinian medics in Gaza," said Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, Israel-Palestine director at DAWN. "The Trump administration is doing everything in its power to protect Israel from accountability but banning abusive Israeli forces from U.S. military assistance is not a discretionary matter."
On the morning of March 24, 2025 the IDF claimed that Sayeret Golani set an ambush for fleeing Hamas fighters in southern Gaza. As detailed in DAWN's submission, when an ambulance first drove by, the troops opened fire and killed two medics. When a convoy of ambulances and first responders arrived a few hours later, the soldiers killed 13 more first responders, tortured Abed, and forcibly disappeared al-Nassasra. The Israeli army then buried the ambulances with bulldozers and prevented U.N. teams from approaching for an entire week.
Autopsies of the medics revealed that the Sayeret Golani forces shot six of the 15 medics in the chest or back, and shot an additional four in the head at close range. Below is a list of the names of the 15 murdered medics.
The IDF detained al-Nassasra for 37 days without charge before releasing him back into Gaza on April 29, 2025. Israeli authorities did not provide al-Nassasra's family with information on his whereabouts or his cause for detention, in breach of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
The IDF lied about the massacre and attempted to cover up Sayeret Golani's crimes. In its initial public statements after the massacre, the IDF claimed that the first ambulance was a "Hamas police vehicle." The IDF later claimed that the second ambulances carrying what would be the 13 Red Crescent responders were riding without activated emergency lights and in a suspicious manner. When rescue workers and United Nations teams finally gained access to the site of the massacre a week later, they proved the IDF's version of events false: video from a cell phone recovered from one of the victims' bodies showed the ambulances' lights were clearly on and flashing. The IDF's own investigation subsequently found that, before the shooting, another IDF unit had alerted the Sayeret Golani soldiers to increased ambulance traffic in the area, and that the ambulances were on a permitted route.
The IDF subsequently provided several, conflicting versions of events to the effect that Golani soldiers felt threatened by the vehicles, fired from a distance and were unaware that the unarmed victims, which video evidence showed were wearing reflective clothing, were PRCS personnel. Forensic video and audio analysis indicated that the Golani soldiers were shooting from much closer range than the IDF claimed. And according to the IDF, Golani personnel fired at the unarmed PRCS workers for over three minutes, with some reloading their weapons three times, despite PRCS workers' attempts to identify themselves.
Israeli television subsequently broadcast a video of the commander of Sayeret Golani telling his soldiers, prior to their deployment into Gaza several weeks earlier, that "everyone you encounter [in Gaza] is an enemy. Identify a figure – eliminate it."
An investigation by the IDF released on April 20, 2025 resulted in the dismissal of the deputy commander of Sayeret Golani, an IDF major whose name was not published, and a reprimand of Colonel Tal Alkobi. However, to date, Israeli authorities have filed no criminal charges against anyone involved in the murderous attack on the medics or taking any meaningful steps to remediate the abuses of this dangerous Israeli unit. After the killings, one member of Sayeret Golani posted a picture of himself in Rafah, at the massacre site, on Facebook with the caption: "Until next time you son of a b****."
"The fact that the United States has never once found an Israeli unit ineligible for U.S. military assistance, despite the overwhelming evidence of atrocities like this one, demonstrates a consistent disregard for the law when it comes to Israel, which is exactly why we're suing the State Department," said Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at DAWN. "By continuing to arm Sayeret Golani, the U.S. government is making itself an accomplice to Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity."
The Leahy Law, passed in 1997, is an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act that prohibits the State and Defense Departments from providing U.S. assistance to foreign security force units credibly implicated in gross human rights violations where there has been no accountability. Despite extensive documentation of Israeli forces committing gross human rights violations from credible sources, including the State Department's own Annual Human Rights Reports, neither the State Department nor the Defense Department has ever prohibited a single Israeli unit from receiving aid.
A federal lawsuit filed recently with the assistance of DAWN seeks to compel the State Department to obey the Leahy Law with respect to Israel. Were the State Department to faithfully and fully enforce the Leahy Law with respect to Israel, the lawsuit asserts, many, if not most, Israeli security force units in Gaza would be found ineligible for U.S. assistance in light of the vast scale of Israeli security force abuses.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans who have lost family members or face imminent threats to themselves and their relatives due to Israeli military operations by units credibly implicated in gross violations of human rights. Their experiences collectively illustrate the extensive harm caused by Israeli military forces receiving U.S. assistance, in violation of the law. On April 30, Federal District Court Judge Ana Reyes stayed proceedings for 45 days, and suggested that the State Department meet with plaintiffs' representatives in a good-faith attempt to improve implementation of the law with regard to Israel. On June 30, the State Department rebuffed the judge's suggestion for a meeting.
"The Leahy law applies equally to all countries, many of whom, like Israel, are also facing threats," said Charles Blaha, senior advisor at DAWN who spent over 30 years in the State Department. "The law is not discretionary and the State Department has a legal obligation to apply the Leahy Law consistently—including for Israel."
