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Palestine Justice Movement Sydney (PJMS) and Free Palestine Melbourne hosted a national webinar on September 12 to discuss how Israel’s genocide is leading to the destruction of not only Gaza, but also the Zionist state’s economy.

The webinar featured a conversation between Dr Shir Hever and Ahmed Abadla of PJMS. Hever is the coordinator of the military embargo campaign for the Boycott National Committee of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Hever and Abadla discussed how Israel’s genocidal war is impacting its economy and how the BDS movement is using this period of weakness to “exploit [its] vulnerability in a productive way”.

The BDS movement coined the phrase “start-up nation to a shut-down nation” to describe Israel’s economic decline. The slogan was hijacked early last year by Israelis who were protesting against the government.  

Since then, it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Hever outlined Israel’s economic collapse in a recent article for Mondoweiss: “Over 46,000 businesses have gone bankrupt, tourism has stopped, [its] credit rating was lowered [and] Israeli bonds are sold at the prices of almost ‘junk bonds’ levels.”

Israelis are leaving the country in droves, with up to 500,000 estimated to have emigrated since October 7, although the numbers reported vary wildly.

Efforts to obtain data from the Central Bureau of Statistics are hampered by the fact so many of its employees are among those that have left.

Israel's “start-up nation” reputation was based on its high-tech sector, but that is now imploding. Hever explained that one-in-four Israeli technology companies have shifted operations abroad in the past year, as “they don’t have workers [and] they don’t have facilities, [so] they are moving out”.

Intel’s recent decision to cancel the construction of a $25 billion facility in southern Israel is considered the biggest BDS victory ever.

Locals are divesting from the Zionist state as well.

Domestic investments are declining rapidly, as money is being moved abroad. Israelis understand the dire state of the economy “on a much more visceral level” and they don’t want their own money tied to its fate.

Energy sanctions recently imposed are proving to be a strong mechanism of pressure on the state. Israel has largely moved its energy grid to gas, but it is exporting its own gas reserves in exchange for desperately needed foreign currency. This means it now relies on coal imports.

Colombia is its largest coal supplier, however it has suspended exports to Israel while the genocide is ongoing.

Without reliable energy, Israel may soon start to experience blackouts and, once that happens, the high-tech sector is likely to exit the country for good, along with many more of its inhabitants.

Hever provided invaluable insights into a reality that Israel’s propaganda machine tries hard to obfuscate. As he wrote in Mondoweiss: “No state on Earth has been able to inflict so much damage to the Israeli economy as the State of Israel itself.”