Former commanders of the Netzah Yehuda battalion, an Israeli military unit that has been accused by the United States of gross human rights violations against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank prior to October 7, have been promoted to senior positions in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and are now active in training Israeli ground troops as well as running operations in Gaza, a CNN investigation has found.

Among CNN’s findings was rare whistleblower testimony from a former soldier of the unit who described a command that encouraged a culture of violence, an issue identified by US State Department investigations.

In April, the State Department said that it had determined five Israeli security units had committed gross violations of human rights prior to the outbreak of the war with Hamas in Gaza. The department said that four of the units had “effectively remediated,” or reformed themselves, in the wake of those violations, but that it was still deciding whether to restrict US military assistance to the remaining unit: The Netzah Yehuda battalion, originally created to accommodate ultra-Orthodox Jews in the military.

In this 2014 photo, Israeli soldiers in the Netzah Yehuda battalion are seen taking part in their annual training in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, near the Syrian border.

The news that the US might withhold assistance from the Israeli military unit triggered a furious response at the time from top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said: “If anyone thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit of the IDF, I will fight with all my strength.”

In a letter obtained by CNN, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told House Speaker Mike Johnson that the US was working with Israel “on identifying a path to effective remediation” for the Netzah Yehuda battalion. The letter did not name the unit, but current and former US officials confirmed to CNN that Blinken was referring to Netzah Yehuda, which has been accused of a string of abuses in the occupied West Bank over the last 10 years, including in the death of a 78-year-old Palestinian-American man in 2022.

Using facial recognition technology and other open-source techniques, CNN has found that three former commanders of the Netzah Yehuda battalion – who were in charge of the unit at the time of alleged abuses in the West Bank – have risen through the ranks of the IDF. CNN tracked these commanders by matching their faces to publicly available imagery over the years, ranging from photographs of military ceremonies to battlefield updates.