Oops, Arab Terror Group Removed from US Sanctions List

Photo Credit: Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90

Arabs inspect a motorbike on which Tamer El Kayani, a member of the Lion's Den terrorist group was riding when killed in the Old City of Shechem, October 23, 2022.

On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order (E.O.) titled “Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions.” This directive revoked former-President Biden’s E.O. 14115, which had imposed sanctions on individuals and entities the Biden administration deemed to undermine peace, security, and stability in the “West Bank” (aka Judea and Samaria).

Following Trump’s action, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) delisted all the individuals and organizations previously designated under E.O. 14115 from the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN List). Consequently, all property and assets blocked under E.O. 14115 were unblocked.

However, buried within the sanctions list—a compilation that primarily targeted over 75 Jewish farmers, Jewish construction companies, Jewish political activists, and Jewish agricultural operations—was an unexpected addition: the “Lion’s Den,” a Hamas supported, Shechem-based Arab terrorist group. They were, in fact, the only non-Jews to make the list.

The only actual terror group on Biden’s long list of sanctioned individuals and organizations.

It’s unclear why the defunct Shechem (Nablus) terror group, whose members had largely been eliminated in counter-terror operations, was even included in the sanctions list during former President Biden’s administration.

Notably, no other Arab terrorists or Islamic terrorist groups operating in Judea and Samaria were targeted this way, or at all. While the logic behind their inclusion remains a mystery, it seems reasonable to conclude it wasn’t accidental but rather a deliberate and malicious attempt to draw a false equivalence between Jewish citizens and Arab terrorists.

Some of the farms sanctioned by former President Biden.

Fast forward to January 2025: when President Trump signed the new Executive Order rescinding E.O. 14115, the Department of the Treasury applied a sweeping approach, removing everyone on the sanctions list without distinction. This included the anomalous “Lion’s Den” terror group alongside Jewish farmers and other non-threatening Jewish entities. In Hebrew, this kind of bureaucratic oversight might be humorously referred to as “Rosh Katan” (literally “small head”), a term used to describe minimal effort or an intentional lack of attention to detail.

The inclusion of an Arab terror group on a sanctions list dominated by innocent Jewish individuals and organizations certainly raises eyebrows. The careless delisting process by the Department of the Treasury might be viewed as an odd curiosity or even comical. That no one picked up the phone to even ask, could be interpreted as an attempt to undermine the president’s efforts while brushing over the more serious, deliberate, malicious actions of the previous administration.