This week, ProPublica broke the news that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been sitting on recommendations from his own experts since December that some Israeli military units should stop receiving USAID because of the alleged human rights abuses they've committed. Brett Murphy is the reporter who broke the story for ProPublica. Brett, can you tell me what kinds of abuses these Israeli units are accused of committing? So we don't know exactly which units ultimately went up to Secretary Blinken, but we know that the Laki Forum was reviewing allegations of extrajudicial killing. So these are cases in which somebody might have been unarmed or not posing a threat, but they were still killed by security forces. There were allegations of people who had been raped in the custody of security officials. There was one case of a 15-year-old who was accused of throwing rocks in Molotov cocktails. He was arrested, jailed, and he said that he had been beaten, tortured, and raped while in custody. These were mostly cases that were in the West Bank. And the Guardian previously reported that the State Department was reviewing several of the incidents, but had not imposed sanctions because the US treats Israel with unusual reference. Other countries are not afforded. So how does that work in practice? So the most other countries, there is no special forum that meets quarterly to review individual allegations. The case of Israel is very unique because what happens is this forum meets. They discuss the allegations. They send a, what's called a request for information to the Israeli government and they have something like 90 days to provide the forum with more information. Then they have to talk about it and if they agree, the forum agrees that it should be elevated up, goes to another layer. That's when the diplomats and the bureau chiefs give sign off. And then it has to get elevated above that layer, usually to the deputy secretary or the secretary himself for final approval. Those are all steps that most other countries don't have to go through during a liquid vetting process. For more on this breaking story, go twirling and bio.