INDEPENDENT TASK FORCE

INDEPENDENT TASK FORCE TO ANNOUNCE FINDINGS ON ISRAELI COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL LAW AND NATIONAL SECURITY MEMORANDUM-20 (NSM-20)

 

When: Wednesday, April 24th, 10a.m. EST

Where: Zenger Room, National Press Club, Washington, D.C. 

What: The Independent Task Force on the Application of National Security Memorandum-20 to Israel, an independent task force of subject matter experts on U.S. security assistance, human rights, international law, and military best practices, will announce the results of a report they have submitted to the U.S. Government in support of mandated reporting to Congress under NSM-20

Who: The Task Force Chairs are Noura Erakat and Josh Paul; they will be joined by task force members Charles O. (Cob) Blaha and Wes Bryant.

• Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney and an Associate Professor at Rutgers University.

• Josh Paul is a former Director in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.

• Charles O. Blaha is a former Director in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

• Wes J. Bryant is a retired master sergeant and former special operations joint terminal attack controller (JTAC) in the elite special warfare branch of the U.S. Air Force.

Background: NSM-20, promulgated on February 8th 2024, tasked the Departments of State and Defense with a report to Congress within 90 days on the compliance of certain partners who have been provided with U.S.-origin weapons with International Humanitarian Law and military best practices, as well as on whether such partners have restricted humanitarian assistance.  

The Independent Task Force on the Application of National Security Memorandum-20 to Israel brought together world-class experts on these topics to assess Israel’s compliance in order to provide the Executive Branch with as much information as possible on credible allegations that it is required to assess in its report/s to Congress.

The Task Force provided its report to the Executive Branch on April 18th. This briefing will describe its methodology and findings, and discuss how the Task Force anticipates its findings will be addressed by the Executive Branch in its upcoming Congressional reporting.

The report will be publicly available concurrent with the press conference on 24 April.

 

RSVP (required for access): [email protected]