Sanctions Prep: Yashar Chair Attacks Netanyahu's Digital Finance Blueprint
Gadi Eisenkot's campaign video argues that alternative digital financing mechanisms would cut off investment in Israeli technology firms.
By Pablo Montgomery ·
Israel would need 150 billion shekels to fund the country if international sanctions blocked its access to regular financial channels, the figure at the center of a dispute over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's contingency planning.
Netanyahu said in a Channel 10 interview that Israel must "prepare for an alternative economy" given the sanctions the country faces. Asked about the role of blockchain technology, he said digital finance would "certainly" be part of such a plan and that he had "already asked for a plan to be prepared for that."
Gadi Eisenkot, chairman of the Yashar party and a former IDF chief, released a campaign video on X/Twitter on Saturday responding to those remarks. The video opened with the line "All of our money is at risk," then replayed Netanyahu's Channel 10 comments. Eisenkot's campaign labeled the proposed digital mechanism "Bibicoin" and said such a system would "destroy Israel."
The video stated that an alternative system would produce "an economy like North Korea and Iran" and listed the consequences as "the end of high-tech, the end of healthcare, the end of security." It also questioned how global technology investors could fund Israeli companies if digital currency were the only route available. "We must not let him burn through our savings," the video said.
In a separate post on X, Eisenkot wrote that Netanyahu's own policy direction would bring "international isolation and economic sanctions that will shake the economy and the market," adding: "This will be the collapse of our national security."
The exchange turns on a Channel 10 interview in which Netanyahu discussed preparing alternative financial mechanisms, material Eisenkot's campaign reused in its own video. The Yashar chairman has cast that preparation as evidence that the prime minister has "destroyed the country" economically.
The dispute concerns the financing of 150 billion shekels and whether digital currency could replace the international channels Israel now uses.
Source: The Jerusalem Post
