54 Countries, 110 Sanctions, and Counting: Israel Is Sleepwalking Into a Global Boycott
The map of countries imposing sanctions on Israel is swelling, even if the threat to weapons imports is curbed by Donald Trump’s veto power. But the next president could be less friendly and trim Israel’s arsenal.
About a month ago, Luxembourg said it no longer wished to be the country tasked with approving bond issues by Israel Bonds in the European Union. Israel Bonds, aka the New York-based Development Corporation for Israel, is the organization that handles the sale of Israeli bonds to Jews in the Diaspora.
This was a blow below the belt, as Luxembourg had only taken on the job a year earlier, after Ireland relinquished the role following a multi-year stint.
Thus, within a single year, two European countries ended a financial cooperation deal with Israel. In both cases, the reason is clear: Israel has become a pariah in global public opinion, and some countries are loath to cooperate financially with a country accused of genocide.
No solution has yet been found for the European issuance of Israeli bonds, which are sold mainly to Jews. Their volume is negligible – $2.5 billion annually – so even if Israel doesn’t sell bonds in Europe, the economic damage is minimal. But the reputational damage can’t be underestimated: Israel has become a financially boycotted country, and what starts with Israel Bonds might not stop there.
Shuki Friedman, who heads the Jewish People Policy Institute, monitors the sanctions imposed on Israel, including on a world map that is becoming increasingly crowded. As of Thursday afternoon, his database listed 110 sanctions currently in effect, applied by 54 countries. Another nine sanctions have been proposed. The only continent not currently imposing sanctions on Israel is Antarctica.
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Spain is the leader in sanctions on Israel at 10, followed by the United States (eight academic sanctions), Britain (seven sanctions), and Belgium and Turkey at five each. Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Canada and France are among the countries at three or four, and the list goes on.
“What we do to Iran, the world is on its way to doing to us,” Friedman says, before noting the economic sanctions on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine. “If we continue to ignore this, we’ll find ourselves in Russia’s situation, but in a country that’s 1/800th the size of Russia and with zero natural resources.”
In the past year, countries have been prohibiting the import of Israeli products from the West Bank, and in recent weeks, Israelis have undergone humiliating searches of their bags at Amsterdam’s airport, to ensure they weren’t, God forbid, drinking wine from a West Bank or Golan winery.
‘The moment there’s a ban on importing products from the territories, European importers will prefer not to import from Israel at all. After all, why get entangled with checks on where each product comes from?’
Shuki Friedman, head of the Jewish People Policy Institute
Also, now two government ministers – far-rightists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – are barred from entering most developed countries. This new precedent is turning into a flood that Friedman warns could inundate Israel’s economy.
“People think these are just more sanctions on the territories, but it won’t end there. The moment there’s a ban on importing products from the territories, European importers will prefer not to import from Israel at all,” he says.
“After all, why get entangled with checks on where each product comes from? This also has a chilling effect on investments – why invest in a country with the legal risk of sanctions?”
Friedman particularly warns against sanctions on the sale to Israel of dual-use products, which have both civilian and military applications.
“Israel is an island nation,” he says. “No complex system here is produced solely from Israeli components. So if, for example, sanctions are imposed on the import of chips to Israel, it will be a lot harder to produce weapons systems here.”
All this is happening even before sanctions have been extended to the financial system. About a month ago, Britain, France and Canada announced the immediate imposition of sanctions on companies operating in the West Bank. Nine other countries expressed support. The sanctions order hasn’t yet been published, but there are serious concerns that it will include the financial sector, meaning that Britain would levy sanctions on Israeli banks for financing the large construction project in the E1 area east of Jerusalem in the West Bank.
What would be the significance of such sanctions? Would Britain sever banking ties with Bank Hapoalim and Bank Leumi, Israel’s largest banks? It’s hard to believe that this would happen, but the Bank of Israel and the Association of Banks are very concerned. And they’re not the only ones.
“There is immense uncertainty here, and some of the scenarios are very painful,” a senior government official says. Officials point to extreme scenarios such as the cancellation of the EU’s trade agreement with Israel. And it could happen that after the 2028 U.S. presidential election, Washington won’t block sanction proposals at the UN Security Council.
If Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc wins the October 27 general election and the Republicans lose their majority in the House and Senate in the U.S. midterms, Israel is expected to face a tsunami.
If this happens, Israel would officially become the new South Africa, which was boycotted during the apartheid regime, the pariah state of the world.
So far, the only major country that hasn’t imposed government sanctions is the United States; its sanctions are applied by universities.
But nothing lasts forever. If Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc wins the October 27 general election and the Republicans lose their majority in the House and Senate in the U.S. midterms, Israel is expected to face a tsunami.
Of the nine proposed sanctions, five are in the United States, all initiated by the Democrats and designed to restrict the sale of weapons and ammunition to Israel.
True, U.S. President Donald Trump will use his veto power to block such sanctions. And even as more sanctions are imposed on Israel, some countries have removed them after a regime friendly to Israel came into power – that is, a far-right regime. This has happened in Chile, Colombia and Slovenia, and similar upheavals are possible in Brazil and perhaps Spain this autumn, and in France in eight months.
Also, it can’t be ignored that so far, the sanctions have caused almost no harm to Israel. The shock of severed trade relations with Turkey led to the development of new markets in India, China and the rest of Asia, and if Israeli exports are impaired, this damage is offset by the enormous growth of the segment of chipmaker Nvidia’s operations in Israel that are classified as exports. If we look at the numbers, everything is fine for now.
The problem is that “everything is fine” could be a very temporary situation, especially if in two years a U.S. president less sympathetic to Israel takes over. Weakened support for Israel already crosses the aisle in the United States, and even if the next president is a Republican, that politician, someone like JD Vance, might not be sympathetic to Israel – or might even be hostile.
“There’s a primary strategic threat here that could deteriorate into an existential threat,” Friedman says, noting that among the Democrats, the discussion is no longer about the occupation but about Israel’s legitimacy.
But the Israeli government isn’t doing anything against this threat. The Prime Minister’s Office isn’t functioning, the Foreign Ministry is also asleep at the wheel, and there is no staff work similar to what Friedman is doing voluntarily. No one in the government is monitoring the map of sanctions or preparing for it.
Zamir Ahmed Awan is the founder and Chair of the Global Silk Route Research Alliance, a think tank in Islamabad. He studied engineering at Shanghai University in the 1980s, and years later he went back to China as Pakistan's science counsellor in Beijing, from 2010 until 2016, working on science and higher education cooperation between the two countries.…
