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US State Department softens criticism of Israel in overhauled human rights report [1]
['Jacob Magid', 'Nava Freiberg', 'Stav Levaton', 'Toi Staff', 'Ariela Karmel', 'Sharon Wrobel', 'Emanuel Fabian', 'Shira Silkoff', 'Zev Stub', 'Sue Surkes']
Date: 2025-08
US President Donald Trump’s administration has significantly changed the State Department’s annual report on human rights worldwide, dramatically reducing any claims of abuses in allied countries such as Israel.
Instead, the US State Department in its widely anticipated 2024 Human Rights Report sounded an alarm about the erosion of freedom of speech in Europe and ramped up criticism of Brazil and South Africa, both of which Washington has clashed with over a host of issues.
Any criticism of governments over their treatment of LGBTQI rights, which appeared in Biden administration editions of the report, appeared to have been largely omitted. Washington referred to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine mainly as the “Russia-Ukraine war.”
The report’s section on Israel is much shorter than last year’s edition compiled under the Biden administration and contained no mention of the severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The report was delayed for months as Trump appointees altered an earlier State Department draft dramatically to bring it in line with “America First” values, according to government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Explaining the restructuring, US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce says during a briefing that the country reports focusing on the year 2024 “removes redundancy, increases readability, and is responsive to the legislative mandates that underpin the report, rather than an expansive list of politically biased demands and assertions.”
In the case of the report on Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, whereas in previous versions — including ones compiled during Trump’s first term — claims and figures from UN organizations and rights groups regarding alleged abuses were incorporated, they were almost completely removed in the 2024 report.
Any concerns of rights abuses by Israel were kept general, and there was no mention at all of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, which has gone largely unchecked and even taken the lives of several US citizens. Palestinian attacks against Israelis — beyond those related to Hamas’s October 7 onslaught — also went unmentioned.
On the brief section about press freedom, the report states, “NGOs and journalists reported authorities restricted press coverage and limited certain forms of expression, especially in the context of criticism against the war or sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza.”
“Israel occasionally ordered the closing of Palestinian radio stations in the West Bank for ‘inciting behavior that could harm public safety or public order,’ including support for terrorism,” it adds.
In the section on torture, the report highlights the abuse that Israeli hostages testified to having endured during their captivity in Gaza.
As for the alleged torture of Palestinian prisoners by Israel, the report says that Jerusalem “acknowledged [that the] Shin Bet and police used violent interrogation methods that it referred to as ‘exceptional measures,’ but the Ministry of Justice did not provide information regarding the frequency of interrogations or the specific interrogation methods used.”
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[1] Url:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/us-state-department-softens-criticism-of-israel-in-overhauled-human-rights-report/
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