Yashar leader Eisenkot targets Netanyahu's digital finance proposal

Gadi Eisenkot, the chairman of the Yashar party, has entered the political fray with a direct challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's financial strategy. In a campaign video released on X on Saturday, Eisenkot argued that the government's push for alternative funding sources threatens to erode the nation's economic stability. The former Israel Defense Forces chief positioned the debate around the risk to individual savings and the long-term health of the high-tech sector.

The video, which began with the statement that all national money is at risk, relied heavily on footage from a previous Channel 10 interview. In that interview, Netanyahu stated that Israel must prepare for an alternative economy due to a growing list of international sanctions. He confirmed that digital finance would certainly be a component of this new approach, adding that he had already requested a specific plan to be drafted for that purpose.

Eisenkot's team leveraged those remarks to critique the reliance on blockchain technology. They labeled the proposed digital currency system as Bibicoin, a term meant to mock the prime minister's approach. The campaign materials suggested that such a shift would lead to an economic structure similar to those seen in North Korea and Iran. The video claimed this path would mark the end of high-tech growth, healthcare funding, and security capabilities.

A key figure in the opposition's argument is the scale of the potential financial impact. Eisenkot asserted that 150 billion shekels face danger under the prime minister's new finance plan. The video urged citizens not to allow their savings to be consumed by this shift, questioning how global high-tech investors would continue to fund Israeli companies if digital currency became the primary method of transaction.

In a separate post on X, Eisenkot adopted a more personal tone to address the policy shift. He wrote that Netanyahu himself admits his policy will lead to international isolation and sanctions that will shake the economy and the market. The Yashar leader described this trajectory as the collapse of national security, linking economic pressure directly to military strength.

The dispute places the prime minister's contingency planning at the center of the current political campaign. Eisenkot is using Netanyahu's own words from the Channel 10 interview as the primary evidence for his criticism. By framing the digital finance proposal as a response to sanctions rather than a proactive growth strategy, the opposition aims to define the government's economic stance as one of defensive retreat.