Netanyahu: We must be self-sufficient in weapons

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke today about Israel’s international diplomatic isolation and said the country would be required, “To invest very huge amounts in the campaign against media intimidation and bias on social media.” Netanyahu was speaking at the annual conference of the Ministry of Finance’s Accountant General. He added, “This is a must. I have spoken about it with Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and Accountant General Yali Rothenberg.”

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“Countries like Qatar and China are investing huge sums to influence the Western media with an anti-Israel agenda,” Netanyahu said. “This puts us in a kind of isolation.” According to the Prime Minister, Israel will have to spend a lot of money to improve its image in the face of the well-funded campaigns against it.

Netanyahu explained, “We are in a period when things that were below the surface are rising. There is an extremely negative impact on foreign policy in Europe, as a result of the unrestricted migration of significant and very militant minorities to Europe. This is influencing governments.” According to the Prime Minister, “This is not just about Gaza, their focus is the abolition of Zionism and an extremist Islamic agenda. I talk to the leaders in Europe, it affects them a lot, and some of them even admit it in private conversations.”

This, of course, has economic implications and risks for Israel. “All of this creates sanctions on Israel,” said Netanyahu. “This situation threatens us with the emergence of economic sanctions and problems importing weapons and weapons parts.”

How should Israel deal with economic isolation? Netanyahu’s answer is to base ourselves on a self-sufficient economy, which provides its own needs independently of the world around it: “We will have to increasingly adapt to an economy with autarkic characteristics. It’s a word I hate, I’m an advocate of the free market, I worked to bring Israel to a free market revolution, but we could find ourselves in a situation where our weapons industries will be blocked,” he said.

“We will have to develop arms industries here. We will have to be Athens and Super Sparta. We have no choice. At least in the coming years, we will have to deal with these isolation attempts. What worked until now will not work from now on.”

Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on September 15, 2025.

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