The Jewish Council of Australia has acknowledged the federal government’s expansion of human rights sanctions against extremist Israeli settlers, but warns that targeting isolated individuals and outposts fails to address the state infrastructure driving the violence.
Today’s designations, covering the farming outposts of Moshe’s Farm, Meitarim Farm, Neria’s Farm and Zvi’s Farm, together with Ben Zion Gopstein, founder of the Jewish supremacist organisation Lehava, and extremist settlers Eden Levi and Moshe Sharvit, follow earlier Australian sanctions against ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
The Jewish Council acknowledges this pattern of incremental action and the government’s coordination with New Zealand and other partners as meaningful, but insufficient steps.
While the sanctioned entities serve as operational bases for attacks against Palestinians, the settler movement works hand in glove with the Israeli government.
Settler violence is funded through state budgets, protected by the Israeli military, and enabled by a government that has placed settlement ministers at the heart of its cabinet. Sanctioning individual perpetrators while leaving the institutional architecture intact treats the symptom rather than the system.
Ohad Kozminsky, Community Engagement Director of the Jewish Council of Australia, provided the following statement.
“These sanctions do not go far enough. Settler violence is a structural enterprise funded and actively protected by the Israeli state.
“By focusing only on individual extremists, the Australian government obscures the institutional support behind this brutality. We are calling for country-level sanctions that target the state institutions directly responsible for maintaining the illegal occupation.”
The Jewish Council maintains that real accountability requires addressing the complicity of the Israeli military and political establishment in crimes against Palestinians.
Bart Shteinman, Executive Officer of the Jewish Council of Australia, stated that treating the issue as a matter of individual misconduct undermines the efficacy of Australian foreign policy.
“Targeting specific farms treats the symptom while ignoring the disease.
“The Israeli military regularly protects settlers while they displace Palestinian families, destroy property, and seize land.
“True accountability means recognising that this expansionist violence is effectively government policy.
“Apartheid South Africa only came to an end after concerted pressure from the international community, including country-level sanctions that were led by Australia.
“It is time that Australia escalates its response and undertakes country-level sanctions against the state entities enabling Israel’s violations, and end all forms of bilateral cooperation that sustain Israel’s crimes of apartheid, genocide and illegal occupation.”
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