If any serious-minded Israeli was still considering voting for Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, his latest remarks about turning Israel into a "crypto state" should settle the matter: Israel's outgoing prime minister has lost his grip on reality. Period. No excuses, no qualifications.
What exactly did Netanyahu say? Speaking on an Israeli financial television channel, he effectively warned that continuing his own policies, with himself as prime minister, would expose Israel to economic sanctions unlike anything ever imposed on a Western country. Sanctions so crippling and destructive that they would undermine the foundations of a functioning economy, rendering conventional money virtually worthless and forcing Israel to replace it with digital cryptocurrency. In other words, make-believe money.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
(Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen)
Only an obscure, cartel-ridden Latin American country has attempted anything remotely resembling such a transition, and it failed. For Israel, such a move would destroy everything its economy has achieved, not just since the state's establishment in 1948, but since the First Aliyah, the wave of Jewish immigration that began in the 1880s. Any economist would agree.
Of course, Netanyahu's absurd remarks serve another purpose: to shift attention, in the three crucial days before the election, away from the issues that actually matter, the very issues on which he has failed so spectacularly as prime minister, and toward outlandish fantasies. There is no better word for them. Outlandish.
A deeply troubling assumption
Why are sanctions being considered against Israeli companies operating in Jewish settlements in the West Bank? So far, these measures are relatively minor, with only two European countries planning to implement them. The reason is the violence committed against Palestinians by extremist youths from the settler community, while government ministers look the other way. Stop the attacks, and the sanctions will stop. Conversely, only a political leader who wants to encourage that violence and see it spread to other Palestinian areas of the West Bank would begin preparing for a "crypto state," an extension of his earlier vision of Israel as a self-reliant "Sparta."
To put it more precisely, he would be preparing for the end of Israel as we live in it, know it and love it.
Netanyahu has lost touch with economic reality. His talk of producing everything Israel's defense establishment needs, giving up American military aid and turning the country into Sparta shows just how far removed he has become from the workings of a modern economy. These are fantasies, not economic policies.
None of this, of course, is actually going to happen. So what conclusions should we draw? There are two.
The first, and deeply alarming, conclusion is that Netanyahu has lost touch with reality when it comes to economics. His declarations that Israel will produce everything its defense establishment needs, give up U.S. military aid or turn itself into Sparta reveal how completely disconnected he has become from economic reality and how deeply he has retreated into fantasy. Simply making such statements on a financial television channel is enough to undermine confidence in the Israeli economy and encourage a massive flight of capital from the country. Not at some distant point when Israel supposedly switches to cryptocurrency. Tomorrow.
The second, equally alarming, conclusion is that Netanyahu has gone off the rails and wants to take the entire country with him. He must not be given that chance.