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Food grown in illegal West Bank settlements being sold in Australia as ‘produce of Israel’ (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 3 days ago by to c/news@aussie.zone
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Millions of dollars of food grown in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank has been shipped to Australia labelled as “produce of Israel”, a new analysis of trade data has shown.

The human rights legal organisation Global Echo has analysed commercial documents and official trade data from the Israeli government and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, showing at least US$5m (A$7.2m) of organic dates grown in illegal settlements across the West Bank have been shipped to Australia over the past eight years.

Global Echo analysed 132 agricultural shipments from Israel to Australia between August 2018 and August 2026. Of those, 85 – or 64% – contained settlement products.

The proportion of settlement goods is higher in more recent years. Between January 2025 and August 2026, 20 of 24 shipments of dates to Australia analysed by Global Echo were sourced from settlements.

Israel’s settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.

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[–] 11 points 2 days ago* (4 children)

But she said Australia was not pursuing a blanket import ban on settlement goods, as other countries such as the UK, Spain, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands have either announced or imposed.

“We have concerns about the implementation of a blanket ban and unintended consequences for Australian businesses,” Wong said.

Cowardice, as we've come to expect from our government.

APAN/BDS Australia have a guide on boycotting Israeli dates in particular: https://apan.org.au/boycott-israeli-dates/

Of course, people should be boycotting all Israeli products, and other targeted businesses that enable and profit from Israeli crimes: https://apan.org.au/boycott/

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  • [–] 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    ugh, sodastream was a shock to me.

    thankfully there's an aussie-owned variant.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago

    So Scarlett Johansson was in their ads for a while back in 2014, made a bit of a stir since she was also an Oxfam ambassador, and Oxfam are against the settlements.

    When she had to choose between them, she chose Sodastream, and cut ties with the charity she had been involved with for more than 7 years.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-03/scarlett-johansson-quits-oxfam-amid-sodastream-israel-criticism/5235030

    Never really had a good opinion of her since.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago

    Yeah, there's lots of alternatives available.

    If you have a sodastream machine that takes the screw-top canisters, you don't even need to buy a different machine, you can just start buying generic screw-top canisters.

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