Data shows Indonesia is still importing from Israel, in the middle of a genocide, until now

Indonesia’s own Ministry of Trade has published data showing the country is still importing goods from Israel today, in 2026, almost three years into a genocide the world has watched unfold in Gaza. This is happening in the country with the largest Muslim population on earth, a country whose own citizens have spent the last three years marching, boycotting, and demanding their government cut ties with Israel.

Government trade data, from Indonesia’s own Ministry of Trade, shows imports from Israel never really stopped. They went up. From about 22 million US dollars in 2023 to over 54 million dollars in 2024 — the same year Gaza’s hospitals were being flattened and its children pulled out of rubble.

In 2025 imports finally dropped, by around 27%. But by mid-2026, the numbers were already climbing back up. That is not a country cutting ties. That is a country waiting for people to stop paying attention so it can go back to business as usual.

Meanwhile, ordinary Indonesians did the opposite. Following the BDS boycott movement, people stopped buying food, electronics, clothes, and apps linked to Israel. Thousands joined protests in Jakarta calling for an end to the killing in Gaza. This wasn’t a small group of activists. This was a massive, nationwide response from a country of over 270 million people.

So there’s a gap here that’s hard to ignore. Citizens boycotting Israeli products, while their own ministries keep buying them. The Indonesian government has said many times that it supports Palestinian independence and has no diplomatic ties with Israel. But trade doesn’t need a handshake or an embassy. It just needs money moving. And the money kept moving, year after year, while Gaza was being destroyed.

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This matters because words are cheap.

A government can say “we stand with Palestine” at every press conference and UN meeting. But if trade keeps flowing to the country doing the killing, that support means very little in practice. Genocide isn’t an abstract word here — it’s the mass killing, starvation, and displacement of a trapped population with nowhere to go.

You can’t oppose that with statements alone while your trade ministry quietly signs off on the paperwork underneath. Indonesia’s trade officials have argued that business-to-business trade is separate from politics. But that line doesn’t really hold up when the business in question helps keep the economy of a genocidal state running.

This isn’t only an Indonesian problem. It’s a pattern seen in many countries that call themselves friends of Palestine in public, while keeping their trade doors open in private. Real solidarity has a cost. If it costs nothing, it isn’t solidarity, it’s just talk. Indonesians didn’t march and boycott for years so their leaders could look sympathetic on camera and sign import papers the next day.

And there’s a bigger point that a lot of diplomats avoid saying out loud. Decades of peace talks, partition plans, and two-state proposals haven’t stopped the settlements, the walls, or the deaths. Every one of those plans assumed Israel would negotiate fairly. It hasn’t. What has actually happened, in plain view, is the slow removal of Palestinian land, homes, and now, in Gaza, lives. When people are being erased like this, the answer isn’t a new map that gives even more ground to the side doing the erasing. The answer is for the erasure to stop, full stop, so that Palestinians can finally live freely and fully on their own land, without having it carved up and handed away piece by piece.

Ordinary Indonesians already get this. That’s why they took to the streets in the first place. Now their government needs to catch up, and so does every other government hiding behind nice statements while their trade numbers keep climbing.

Boycotts by regular people matter, but they can only do so much without government action behind them. If Jakarta really means what it says about Palestine, it should stop the imports completely. Not a temporary 27% dip that bounces back a year later. A full, permanent stop.

Anything less is a government saying the right words while its own trade data tells a different story.

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