#ShutDownNation: Global disinvestment, economic pressure and the accelerating collapse of the Israeli economy
“BDS and boycotts have changed Israel’s global trade landscape,” said Avi Balashnikov, President of the Israel Export Institute. He added: “We fight every day, hour by hour, for Israeli industry abroad. Economic boycotts and BDS organizations represent major challenges, and in some countries we are forced to operate under the radar.”
Warning of Israel’s military “fall” and “collapse” if the “war of attrition” continues, General Yitzhak Brik, an influential and once confidant of Netanyahu, recently said: “The economy, “Israel’s international relations and social cohesion are seriously damaged by this war.” #ShutDownNation
Despite attempts to cover up the propaganda, the Israeli economy is already gradually collapsing, according to Eugene Kandel, former head of Israel’s National Economic Council in the Prime Minister’s Office, and Ron Tzur, who has been a senior government official. As things stand, Israel may not live long enough to “celebrate its centenary,” they said, painting “a picture of a total failure of administration systems, management and operations ( Israeli)… a collapse.”
Israel’s annual GDP growth rate forecast for 2024 is 0%, according to major rating agency S&P, which downgraded Israel earlier this month with a negative outlook. S&P also sharply lowered the projected growth rate for Israel in 2025 to 1.5%, mainly due to the substantial decline in exports over the past three consecutive quarters. #ShutDownNation
S&P further projects that the net flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Israel “would be minus 1.5%” of GDP in 2024, compared to 2.4% in 2022 and 1.3% in 2023.
On September 27, Moody’s downgraded Israel’s credit rating by two notches and maintained a negative outlook, warning of a further downgrade to junk.
USS, Britain’s largest private sector pension fund, sold $100 million worth of Israeli assets, including Israeli bonds, “joining a wave of divestment from global pension funds.” Pressure from the University and College Union (UCU) played a major role in ASU’s decision.
Norwegian financial services company Storebrand excluded IBM and CAF from its database due to their complicity in Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people, including the crime against humanity of apartheid.
Tech giant Oracle earlier this month backed away from investing $250 million in an artificial intelligence data center in Israel. The fact that Oracle’s leaders are Israeli and American Zionist right-wing fanatics who support Netanyahu and the Israeli genocide makes this decision particularly remarkable.
The ideological motivations behind investments in Israeli high technology are finally being recognized and successfully challenged. In December 2023, more than two months after the start of Israel’s #GazaGenocide, Intel’s Christian Zionist CEO announced plans to invest $25 billion in a factory miles from Gaza. Following pressure from shareholders, the plan was abandoned.
Israel’s genocidal war is also killing its technology sector. Israeli financial media reports that “49% of Israeli technology companies have reported investment cancellations due to the war.” High technology represents almost half of Israeli exports by value.
The flight of capital from Israel is accelerating, as is the flight of academics, doctors and technology executives, causing an unprecedented “brain drain”. In May, 130 Israeli economists, including the most eminent, warned that “when the population that bears the (economic and security) burden concludes that the State of Israel has embarked on an irreversible path, collapse national will happen.”
Foreign fossil gas giants are also reducing their activities in Israel. Earlier this year, BP, Socar and other major gas companies withdrew or postponed their business plans. This month, Chevron, a top target of the BDS movement, suspended its $429 million Leviathan gas field expansion project, citing the “security situation” in the region. All of these companies remain deeply complicit and therefore subject to increasing pressure from BDS.
BDS FRANCE
