Australia's sanctions aren't stopping Israel's settler funding

Despite three rounds of sanctions, Israel's financial support for the settler movement Australia targeted has continued to grow, writes Wayne Hawkins.

IN JULY 2024, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong announced sanctions on the Israeli settler network Hilltop Youth and seven of its members, citing beatings, sexual assault and torture of Palestinians.

It wasn't a one-off. Australia has kept going: a second round in June 2025 targeting Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a third round on 2 June 2026 adding three more individuals and four more entities including, for the first time, illegal farming outposts and a joint statement on 9 June 2026 with the UK, Canada, France and Norway promising coordinated action against the networks that finance and enable settler violence.

On paper, that looks like escalation. In practice, Al Jazeera reports the Israeli Government is now funding the same sanctioned movement to the tune of close to $40 million, on top of military protection and other state assistance. Three rounds of Australian sanctions, and the funding for the group they targeted has grown faster than the sanctions have.

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How the money gets through

Part of the answer is structural and it's worth being precise about it rather than assuming bad faith. Hilltop Youth was never a registered organisation with a bank account to freeze — it's a label for a loose, decentralised movement.

When the U.S. Treasury sanctioned it in 2024, even the Times of Israel noted it was unclear the designation could be enforced, since there's no formal entity behind the name. Israel's stipend program follows that same seam: funds are paid to individual youths through regional councils, not to anything called Hilltop Youth. The sanctions were built for a movement; the payments go to people.

But that only explains part of the $40 million. The harder case is Havat Gilad, a settler organisation that is explicitly under Western sanctions. Israel's National Security Ministry, run by Ben-Gvir, gave it $1.3 million anyway.

Times of Israel reported it remains unclear whether that grant exposes the Israeli Government itself to secondary sanctions from the six Western governments involved. Peace Now has separately noted this is the first time Israel's government has funded the outposts this openly, while the responsible minister's office maintains the funding was coordinated with the Defence Ministry and lawful.

So this isn't simply a loophole. In at least one case, it's money going straight to a named, sanctioned entity, with Israeli reporting itself asking whether that should trigger consequences nobody has yet imposed.

What the funding trajectory looks like

In June 2026, Israel's Settlement and National Missions Ministry, run by Orit Strook, confirmed a $1.9 million stipend program – 50 shekels (AU$23.45) a day, food vouchers, mediators – for roughly 650 young settlers in illegal West Bank outposts, framed as violence prevention.

Even then it was reported as a slice of a larger 120-million-shekel (AU$41.3 million) program. That larger figure is now confirmed, and the UN recorded over 1,330 settler attacks in the West Bank in just the first half of this year — a period one of the movement's own leaders has described as a “golden era”.

This isn't a fringe movement the Israeli State is failing to contain. Its founding call came from a foreign minister in 1998. Zvi Sukkot, a former Hilltop Youth figure, now chairs a Knesset committee. Ben-Gvir, the Minister whose ministry funded a sanctioned NGO, was himself convicted in 2007 of supporting a terrorist organisation and inciting violence. The movement Australia sanctioned has been substantially absorbed into the government we continue to treat as a full diplomatic and trading partner.

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Sanctions that don't keep pace aren't working

None of this means Australia has done nothing; it means what Australia has done isn't landing. This is a structural problem, not a failure of any one minister or announcement: three escalating rounds of sanctions and the funding for the sanctioned movement has escalated faster than the sanctions could reach it.

A commentary in Michael West Media in June put it plainly, asking just how coordinated and effective these sanctions efforts have actually been, given settler violence has continued largely unopposed. A government can hold two positions that are formally consistent and practically hollow at the same time: “we sanction this movement” and “we maintain full, unchanged diplomatic and trade relations with the state now funding it at record levels, including at least one payment to a name on our own sanctions list” and call that a coherent Israel policy. It isn't.

I've written before about resource sovereignty and about who actually holds power accountable to its stated commitments, locally in Tasmania and structurally in how governments behave when the mechanics of a policy stop matching its stated intent. This is the same pattern: a policy escalated on paper while the facts on the ground move faster in the opposite direction.

Australians deserve sanctions that mean something. If ours do, our government owes the public an answer on how a movement it has sanctioned three times over is now better funded by Israel than at any point since those sanctions began and whether a payment to an entity already on our sanctions list changes anything. I've written to my local independent MP, Andrew Wilkie, asking that exact question be put on the record. It's a fair one to ask of every member of Parliament.