Sanctions Aren’t Slogans, But Australia Could Effectively Apply Them to Israel

When a reporter questioned Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese as to why he’s declared that Israel is breaking international law in Gaza, but he hasn’t “imposed sanctions upon the broader Israeli government”, the prime minister attempted to dismiss the query by positing that the suggestion to sanction Israel at present is akin to the shallowness of repeating a popular slogan, despite all the trouble he recently went to in sanctioning Russia over Ukraine.

Albanese threw the question back. “Which sanction would you like?” he asked, as if the reporter wasn’t aware of what she was talking about. But she deflected his rebuff and countered that it wasn’t her desire, as it is the want of the Australian people. The PM then grumpily explained on 30 July 2025 that what he was trying to say was that the people just call for sanctions, which is as empty as a slogan without any “meaningful action”.

So, while the attempt to belittle the journalist floundered, everybody heard the PM dismiss the idea of sanctioning Israel, the nation responsible for the now ubiquitous images of starving Palestinians coming out of the site of a mass atrocity crime, which is Gaza, and it’s our leader’s inability to act independently to sanction Israel, as is the want of the people, that’s causing him to make swipes at the press.

But in the wake of this bizarre exchange, Greens Senator David Shoebridge has raised that despite the prime minister’s simple dismissal of sanctions as if they were meaningless is completely ridiculous when considering the truckload of targeted sanctions that federal Labor has imposed upon the Putin regime in Russia, following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Indeed, the local population that is calling on the PM to impose sanctions on Israel is feeling powerless in the face of the mass slaughter in Gaza that continues after 22 months, and Albanese’s dismissal of sanctions that would have an immediate effect on constraining the way in which the Netanyahu government is conducting a massacre as slogans, is further attempting to render the option of applying sanctions as redundant.

Rendering concrete powers useless

“Here’s a leader whose government has offered nothing but empty statements and shallow diplomacy for two years, now calling concrete policy proposals ‘slogans’,” Shoebridge wrote in an article on Michael West Media on 2 August. “We know what would work. It’s to apply the existing model from Russian sanctions for its illegal war to Israel for its illegal actions in Gaza. That would have an immediate, substantial impact.”

“It would halt the export of F-35 fighter jet parts that enable Israeli bombing campaigns and prevent the import of $2 billion worth of Israeli weapons,” the federal Greens spokesperson for foreign affairs added. “These aren’t abstract gestures: they’re concrete measures that would materially constrain Israel’s capacity to continue its devastating assault on Gaza.”

The PM heralded the fact that Australia has placed so many sanctions on Russia on the third anniversary of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in February, as on that day, he placed additional targeted financial sanctions and travel bans on 70 Russian individuals and targeted financial sanctions on 79 entities just for good measure, which were piled on top of the more than 1,200 sanctions imposed on that nation since February 2022.

In his article, Shoebridge explains that he’s borne witness to the thousands upon thousands of calls for Albanese to take a similar path to the one he took in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and he has watched as federal Labor has simply dismissed these demands of the public that voted it into office as if there was no possibility to sanction Israel, when instead, federal Labor appears too scared to do it.

“Our international reputation suffers with every day of inaction,” the Greens senator underscored. “While South Africa courageously leads genocide proceedings at the International Court of Justice and European nations implement arms embargoes, Australia clings to tepid diplomacy. We’re becoming known not as a nation that stands against injustice, but as one that enables it through deliberate inaction.”

When sanctions aren’t slogans

Following its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Albanese government imposed two large rounds of sanctions against Russia in 2022 and 2023.

The sanctions Australia imposes on Russia do the following: place restrictions on the export or supply of certain goods, restricts imports, purchase or transportation of certain goods, restrictions on certain commercial activities and certain services, along with sanctions targeting specific designated persons or entities, in terms of restricting or freezing their assets and placing travel bans upon the individuals.

The limits on exports and imports mean that there is a prohibition on supplying, transferring or selling specific goods directly or indirectly for use in Russia, which includes arms or related material – meaning “weapons, ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, and spare parts and accessories for any of those things” – along with aluminium ore, certain luxury goods, machinery and items used in oil exploration or production.

There are trade restrictions on goods produced in Ukraine, fossil fuels and gold. Financial dealings with Russian institutions are forbidden.

In terms of the targeted sanctions, our foreign minister Penny Wong, has designated certain individuals and entities for such sanctions that prohibit dealings in their assets. The sanctions on individuals have included Magnitsky-style sanctions, which Australia established in law in December 2021.

The foreign minister announced that she had imposed Magnitsky-style sanctions on Russian individuals in December 2023. Magnitsky-style sanctions are effective as they can target specific individuals involved in human rights abuses, so that their lives become more difficult due to the restrictions that have been placed upon them.

All of these measures have been available to the Albanese government to impose upon Israel and to target specific Israeli officials and individuals over the entire course of the mass slaughter and starvation program it has been operating in the Gaza Strip since October 2023.

But instead of rolling out everything in its power to stop the senseless killing of Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, the foreign minister has merely placed Magnitsky-style sanctions on seven Israeli settlers over violence toward Palestinians in July 2024, along with two more sets of targeted sanctions against two senior Israeli ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, in June this year.

Sanctioning Israel inevitable

“By sanctioning Israel, we would be literally cutting off support and funding for the genocide in Gaza,” Shoebridge outlined in a social media post last week. “So, if Australia had applied these in 2023, at the start of the Gaza genocide, it would have already impacted upon tens of millions of dollars of goods, that includes $1.6 million in arms and ammunition directly traded and $1.5 million of aircraft and drone parts.”

Shoebridge added that instead of imposing such sanctions immediately upon Israel, as it did Russia, the Albanese government has literally been letting Tel Aviv get away with mass murder, as well as the breaking of many more international criminal offences, and it didn’t have to be this way.

If the Australian PM had acted independently of Washington’s foreign policy concerns and erred on the side of humanity, then this country could have imposed sanctions on the Israeli state, officials and entities that did make a difference to the capacity for the killing to continue, and it could have served as a bridge for other nations to cross and start imposing restrictions on the unbridled slaughter that is occurring right now.

“We know what action looks like, we have seen it done before. We need to see it again. There is mass starvation in Gaza, and thousands of children are hours away from death. Inaction was never an option, it is not now,” Shoebridge further set out in a press release last week. “It is good that after two years of denial, the Albanese government is now acknowledging the horror occurring in front of our eyes.”

“The Albanese government’s position that there is nothing it can do to put pressure on the Israeli government is a weak attempt to distract the public from its complicity,” the Greens senator made certain, and he added that the cabinet “will claim they are waiting for other countries to act so they can follow, but the Albanese government has failed to impose sanctions on Israel to the level of other countries.”