Netanyahu admits Israel is economically isolated, will need to become self-reliant

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Netanyahu admits Israel is economically isolated, will need to become self-reliant
Times of Israel, Sep 15, 2025

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted on Monday that Israel is facing increasing isolation on the world stage, and will have to become more self-reliant in the years to come.

His comments, delivered as European countries have called for arms embargoes and sanctions against Israel during the ongoing war in Gaza, were seized on by political opponents and high-tech industry groups who blamed the premier for Israel’s troubled status on the world stage.

“Israel is in a sort of isolation,” Netanyahu acknowledged, at a conference of the Finance Ministry’s accountant general in Jerusalem.

“We will increasingly need to adapt to an economy with autarkic characteristics,” he continued, calling the term for economic self-sufficiency, closed off from global trade, “the word I most hate.”

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Netanyahu first addressed demographic changes in Europe, where “limitless migration” has resulted in Muslims becoming a “significant minority — very vocal, very, very belligerent.” These countries’ Muslim citizens are pressuring European governments to adopt anti-Israel policies, he claimed.

“Their focus isn’t Gaza, it’s opposing Zionism in general, and sometimes an Islamist agenda that challenges those states,” the premier added.

“This is creating limitations, and all sorts of sanctions, on Israel — it’s happening. It’s a process that’s been at work for the last 30 years, and especially in the last decade, and that changes Israel’s international situation. Clear as day,” he said.

The situation could bring arms embargoes and — though these are only threats for now — “the beginnings of economic sanctions,” the prime minister warned.

The second challenge, according to Netanyahu, is the investment of Israel’s “rivals — both NGOs and states, like Qatar and China” — to “influence Western media with an anti-Israel agenda, using bots, artificial intelligence, and advertisements.” He cited TikTok as an immediate example.

“This puts us in a sort of isolation,” he said, adding that Israel can fight demonization and incitement if it invests “very large sums” into efforts to counter those narratives.

But for now, he said, Israel must quickly establish the capacity to produce everything it needs militarily without depending on foreign trade.

“We are Athens and Sparta. But we’re going to be Athens and super-Sparta,” he said. “There’s no choice; in the coming years, at least, we will have to deal with these attempts to isolate us.”



More:  https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-admits-israel-is-economically-isolated-will-need-to-become-self-reliant/

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FTA

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said in a statement: “Isolation is not fate. It’s a product of a wrongheaded and failed policy by Netanyahu and his government, who have turned Israel into a third-world country, and aren’t even trying to change the situation.”

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This essay from an Israeli writer is an interesting read....

Israel’s New Occupation
Benjamin Netanyahu says that Israel must become Sparta, hardened against the world. What does that mean for the country’s future?
New Yorker, Sep 18, 2025, Ruth Margalit

On Monday afternoon, a few hours before the first ferocious attacks of Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza City made buildings tremble as far away as Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Jerusalem for an economics conference. With his far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sitting in the front row, Netanyahu took the stage, looking a little peeved, and berated the event’s organizers for muddling his slide show. Then he turned to the audience: a group of officials from the treasury, whom he needed to persuade to expand the national deficit in order to finance the next phase of the war.

Israel is “facing a new world,” he said—and the reason isn’t the war in Gaza. Rather, he cited two other factors that imposed “limitations” on the country’s prospects. The first, he said, is “limitless migration” of Muslims to Western Europe, where they have become a “significant minority—very vocal, very, very belligerent.” The second is a digital revolution that has led Qatar, China, and other countries to invest in social-media platforms that promote an “anti-Israel agenda.” The result was “a sort of isolation,” he said, sounding more like a pundit than like the leader of a country that a United Nations commission has just concluded is committing genocide.

Since the war in Gaza began, sparked by the Hamas-led attacks of October 7th, 2023, Israeli officials have experienced growing international isolation. In a sharp blow to Israel’s diplomatic efforts, many countries—including its longtime allies, such as Britain, France, and Canada—have declared that they will recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly next week. Some of these countries have restricted the sale of arms to Israel; a number of others have banned selling weapons to the country entirely. But this ostracism has also been felt more widely across Israeli society, including among the large numbers of Israelis who oppose the war. Cultural events, festivals, research grants, and academic conferences have increasingly excluded Israelis simply because of their nationality. Israeli tourists have been singled out for abuse overseas, and violent attacks on non-Israeli Jews are on the rise.


More:  https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/israels-new-occupation