Netanyahu Depicts Grim Economic Future for Israel, Need to Become an Autarky, “Super Sparta” Due to Isolation; Are There More Meanings?
Posted on September 17, 2025 by Yves Smith
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an extremely wily politician. So what is one to make of what looked like a major admission against interest in a speech Monday at the Finance Ministry’s accountant general, that Israel is being cornered economically and has no ready way out? As we’ll discuss, Netanyahu attempted to walk his remarks back the next day after the Israel stock market had a wee sad and business leaders and politicians pushed back.
But what Netanyahu said cannot be unsaid, particularly in light of evidence that the Israeli economy has taken serious damage below the water line. And anyone with an operating brain cell knows Israel cannot become an autarky, or even an autarky as in terms of its own weapons supply. Larry Wilkerson, who both regularly reads Israel press and has many contact, has repeatedly said Israel has taken such serious economic and societal damage that he predicts it will no longer exist in ten years.
So what might have led him Netanyahu to admit serious weakness while packaging it in prototypical “Israel is the David who will prevail against odds”? Is Wilkerson’s that trajectory now starting to become painfully evident even at top level is Israel? Or might Netanyahu be trying to create the justification for even more radical action?
Perhaps Netanyahyu can no longer deny that Israel’s extermination of Palestinians and belligerence in the region, which is overextending its military, is putting Israel in a long-term untenable position. The fact that the next day, a UN commission of inquiry released a report finding that Israel has engaged in four of five genocidal activities as defined by relevant law puts even more pressure on the ethnosupremacist state. The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide places strong obligations on member states to act to stop genocide.1 Nevertheless, this finding makes it harder for governments facing calls from citizens to Do Something about the genocide to shy from taking action against Israel. Expect a lot more like this
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