This is not commentary. It is a warning.

“They fund your opponent if you support Palestine.”

That is how former Australian Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, describes the pro Israel lobby’s operating model in Australia. Not persuasion. Enforcement.

Well funded. Organised in every capital. Donations deployed strategically to discipline politicians who step out of line. Support Palestinian rights and a rival candidate suddenly appears. Money floods in. Careers are ended, sometimes in electorates so small the message is unmistakable. This is punishment, not politics.

The model is imported wholesale from the United States. There, politicians learn early that conscience comes with a price tag. Australia has now absorbed the same lesson. The result is silence dressed up as pragmatism.

This is how democracy is hollowed out. Not by tanks, but by cheques. Not by censorship laws, but by fear.

When elected officials self censor to avoid donor retaliation, foreign policy is no longer shaped by voters. It is curated by money. When Palestinian lives cannot be acknowledged without political risk calculations, the system itself is complicit.

This is not about Israel versus Palestine. It is about who controls Australian democracy.

And if politicians can be bought into silence, the rest of us should stop pretending we are free.