US officials demand investigation into Americans killed in West Bank, Gaza

The letter says: “We are writing to address the glaring gap in our application of these principles in relation to potential violations of US law by Israeli government forces, citizens and others acting in concert with them.”

“Despite credible evidence of violations of US law … the Department has taken no public action to hold perpetrators accountable, even when the victims are US citizens.

“The Department’s silence and apparent inaction is a total omission,” it adds.

The letter’s authors say that, unlike the US State Department, the Justice Department has no informal mechanism for serving officials to express dissent. It is unclear how widely the views expressed in the letter are shared among the thousands of lawyers who work at the department.

Their letter cites five US citizens killed in the occupied West Bank – Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, Tawfiq Abdel Jabbar, Mohammad Khdour, Omar Assad and Shireen Abu Akleh. Their families have demanded accountability from Israeli forces or settlers allegedly responsible for their deaths.

It also cites the cases of American worker Jacob Flickinger, killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, and Kamel Ahmad Jawad, an American citizen killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon.

Two of the lawyers who wrote the letter, both career federal prosecutors at the Department of Justice, spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity. They signed the letter to Mr. Garland “your colleagues.”

One told the BBC that the apparent lack of action over the deaths of the Americans suggested the justice department was acting as a “policy machine” for its ally. The second described “different treatment” when it came to US citizens who had “Palestinian ties.”

The lawyer said: “It’s a no-brainer… Within the DoJ, everyone agrees that killing an American citizen is a non-starter. You don’t do that. And so the silence is deafening here.”