from taxes to employees will now not have money to spend in a lagging economy. this is adding to speculations that israel is heading for economic meltdown. the leader of the right-wing opposition israel betenu party, avictor liberman has said children and adults, soldiers and reservists are suffering from nightmares about what has happened and what might happen. the israeli economy is collapsing and the israeli diplomacy is eroding. time now for the social media posts of of this program: first of since the start of the onslot in gaza, support for the isolation of israel has widened, with the potential to alter israeli careers, hurt businesses, and to weigh its economy. next, the israelite tech investor schlomo dovrat warned that the ongoing onslot in gaza has revealed deep weaknesses and has eroded trust in institutions. he highlighted concerns that this could undermine israel's high-tech industry. key driver of his economy, then the

best solution for israel is to be fully dismantled, zionism to be fully crushed, as supremacist colonial ideology, and new fully democratic institution to be set in palestine for everyone there to live in peace, the state of palestine. then israel is set on escalating even as is literally wrecking their um, what we call the occupied lands, causing their economy to dip by fifth, and sutters are even leaving. not to mention the international backlash, fascism is hell of a drug, it will have you dig your grave full of pride, and then finally the topic for this program came about because of this post, israel in collapse, 46 thousand businesses forced to close since october 7th. all right, those were some of the social media posts. let me introduce our uh guest for this first segment, which uh has the q&a, khalil jahsan is the executive director. at the arab center

washington dc, he's also political analyst and media commentator who joins us. khalil jashan, welcome to economic divide. thank you. my first question, lot of costs that have been put uh into this war in terms of this expenditures, strain is causing on israel's economy, obviously the spending, and uh, there has been uh such variety of ways that the spending has been uh distributed, whether it's displaced uh... or what have you, and that has uh resulted in the reduction of foreign reserves to some degree. um, we're looking at many sectors now affected israel's fiscal deficit is reach 7% of his gdp for the month of may as well. what's going on with the israely economy based on the uh genocidal onslot that it is uh exercising? that's a very good uh question, this war has been unique uh from an israeli perspective. first in terms of the

duration and in terms of the cost, in israel's history, of course, there has been many wars, but they never lasted, you know, some of the the the most dramatic wars like in 67 lasted six days, so israel as society is not used to protracted, if you will wars that last let's say nine months as in the case of gaza today, this war has... exceeded cost-wise more than 100 billion dollars, some people say the amount in reality is is lot more, several hundred percent more, especially when you add you know like economic cost, not just military cost, when you add the the losses to the economy, when you add also the cost to israel's allies, like the united states had to rush 14 billion dollars. aid to the israeli side to sustain

its war uh economy, so the numbers are staggering, they are in the tens of of billions of dollars and that's not going to be easy, in the past uh we have witnessed during wars in the region where the israeli economy took several years to recover and it's going certainly to take more than decade if not more to recover from this one uh essentially not through necessarily healthy economic development, but i would say israel would have to depend more on foreign assistance from the outside, particularly the united states and also on taxing, taxes always increase after war, somebody wars do not come for free, somebody got to pay the price, and usually the citizens of the country who had nothing to do necessarily with the war, or they did not support it,

necessarily, but they have to pay the price, so what you implied in your question is of accurate, the israeli economy is suffering seriously from this war, and it's going to take it, years, if not decades uh to recover from the effect of this war of vengeance, this useless war. well, one of the things that you mentioned there is that taxes need to increase. uh, we're also looking somewhat parallel to that, israeli bonds, which at this point have reached a new high of 5.2%. um, the israel's currency is depreciating at the same time, so we most likely going to see inflation, which is going to put a further strain on israeli consumers, and then the of course is economic cost on palestinian themselves. whether in the occupied territories or gaza? it definitely does, we are beginning to see the signs of such damage to the israeli economy. as you know in the past, we have witnessed deterioration

economic growth in israel during times of war, which forced israeli governments at the time, whether it back in 56, back in 67, back in 73, back in 82 all these wars essentially uh the price had to be paid by the israeli consumers, in addition to the pain that this war has caused to the people under occupation, to the palestinian people, be they in the west bank or in gaza, gaza of course being the subject of total invasion by the the israelis and total destruction in a attempt to commit you know genocide and and to basically push the whole palestinian population. in gaza out of the strip into egypt or other neighboring countries, but the same thing applies also to the second front, which is the west bank, where violence has increased tremendously over the past nine months and definitely the economy also has

been affected, and a similar situation has also been emerging on the northern front, which is basically on the lebanese border, with attempt by the israelis to... push the population of southern lebanon in into basically a safe zone of some sort from their perspective, trying empty at least area more than eight miles wide in southern lebanon for israeli purposes and that has caused lot of difficulties both economic and and security wise and humanitarian issues for the local population, the lebanese population of southern lebanon. all right. thank you for that, let me bring in our next guest, nico house joins us, nico house is foreign policy analyst uh, election integrity analyst, also podcaster at the people podcast and contributor for hotspot media at hotspot uh hotspot on x. all right, nick house, welcome to economic divide. no problem, thanks for

having me. uh, i'd like to ask you about the strain that the israeli consumers on the one hand are feeling based on uh obviously the onslot. there's lots of things that are putting pressure on them uh including the valley. their money uh and how far it can go at this point inflation is obviously a big concern uh we're also looking at the fact that you have uh other um things that are putting a strain on them including um unemployment on the economy overall which uh leads to um the budget to being strained on the israeli camminate not knowing exactly how to generate more revenues what we looking at when it comes to the israely consumers in particular yeah 100% uh party actually seen the result of that because private spending amongst israelis has dropped significantly as well as overall private investments and that's undoubtedly because of the war uh back in the day once upon a time war was profitable for lot of countries that's not

the case right now war means instability war means people can't go to work war in the case of israel means that they're pulling people from these private sectors and sitting them to battle uh, not knowing if they're going to return, and so when you have all those factors, that creates economic instability and economic instability almost always leads to inflation, and it's actually double-ed sword for for israel at the moment, because not only is israel uh, is israel shekel not doing well against the dollar at the moment, uh, the value is reduced significantly, but the dollar itself isn't doing well, so the the dollar... itself because of the us's instability, or at least the the the perceived instability of the united states, uh, the dollar itself is is dropping, and the value of the dollar is dropping, the sho's value against the dollar is also dropping, and so this war has just not done anything

remotely positive for israel's economy, and you do have to wonder if that is also playing huge role in a lot of the protests that we've been seeing on the ground in israel, we know that those people aren't... protesting the war, but lot of them are protesting netanyahu and the way he's running the government uh and his cabinet. time now to take a look at our info news section. first up we're going to take a look at an issue that may be uh one that france should worry about immigration out of the country and this concerns the wealthy where they, it's been reported are emigrating on mass. why? well, the left-wing alliance, uh, since the time that it took the most seats in the recent parliamentary elections, it has promised to raise taxes on the rich. by how much? well, that is the source of concern. it is said to be up to 50% or even higher. one has to see whether that's

going to transpire or not. then moving to a threat that's been issued by saudi arabia against the g7. they have threatened g7 over russian assets. believe it or not, the u.s. and the uk had wanted to confiscate the frozen sovereign funds uh, but the saudi arabia has issued what's been described as veil threat privately hinting that it might sell some of its eu debts holdings if the g7 went ahead with the confiscation plans. next up, uh, working week, six days, well, that's what greece may be thinking. um, the question was asked in this post as to why it uh was thinking of doing this, a six-day working week, in essence. well, uh, it's adopting a controversial new policy that bucks the trend worldwide of moving towards fewer working days, and uh, even though the law is voluntary for companies to adopt. uh, the whole uh reason behind it is to kickstart the economy due to the wreckage of europe's worst

financial crisis in decades, something which apparently is still haunting greece. then uh, iran and the breaks is our next topic here. uh, the parliament speaker, uh, gali boff, has said countering us sanctions is the most important issue raised at the bricks meeting that he attended in st. petersburg, he announced that was on the north-south corridor and the energy transmission line. now, overall member countries are creating parallel institutions like the swift financial system where ghalibaf has said that bricks bilateral transactions are going to be done in non-dollar currency, something which actually has been adopted, but it will be um expanded even further. those were the topics we picked for our infinis section. uh, tell us if you have topic in mind, contact information is coming up. it is known

that in wars between states, the assassination of the army commander or the head of state signifies an unequivocal victory over the other party, and often leads ending the war in favor of the perpetrator. this does not happen when the other party is an unconventional army. replacing the leader with another does not require a transitional period. in fact, the leader himself, often participates in selecting his deputy before his departure. this is the case of the lebanese resistance hisbullah. the military structure of the resistance was not affected by the assassination of its leaders by zinist israel because it is institutional structure capable of injecting new blood and providing alternatives. hisbullah unhindered by assassinations this week on the media stream. it's time now for the in-depth section of the program. israely business closures may have

reached a high one in which the peak has not been reached yet, yet business closures on this scale were only witnessed during the covid-19 lockdown, but since this genocidal war is continuing without an end inside, well the closures will continue well into the year 2024, the year we're in, and maybe even beyond that. let's take a look at uh what some of the symptoms of this have been in terms of the genocidal war. well business information company has pointed to serious damage to the israeli economy with the announcement of uh what has been 40,00 businesses that have been closed from january up till now uh it went to say that over 60,00 business closures may happen by the end of the year. the closures have happened in the construction, trade and services sector um back in 2020 for comparison sake the year of the corona crisis, 74,00 businesses were closed. in this case you have small businesses up to five employees uh mainly to have been closed. next we move to the uh graph that has israeli business losses in

terms of uh what is said 57% of small businesses what you see over there uh have uh which employ five to 10 workers have reported severe losses compared to only um 14% for large businesses with more than 250 jobs. it also showed that more than 70% of businesses in the construction and the food and beverage sectors reported severe revenue loss. then we moved to the most vulnerable industries uh which have been cited uh to be the construction industry and as a result also the entire ecosystem that operates around it um we're looking at for. example for construction, ceramics and air conditioning, for tourism, things like hotels and flights, um, trade for example, clothes to be one of them, and furniture, and then agriculture, produce and dairy, these are all uh industries within industries uh that have them suffering uh to the degree that it has forced clo closures, so that's obviously not

good news when you see how this is spread over a large variety. sectors. next, the challenges, well, they are multipronged, some them cited here, and these are just few by the way, you're looking at labor shortages, your sales to have decreased, that's obviously the worst, then you have high interest rates, financing costs, lack of raw materials and again, this is just few that are plaguing what is the israeli business environments, moving to how we need to put into perspective, well take a look at this uh, when you take a look at uh the new businesses yearly uh 57,742, that's before the onslot by the way is what israel created, then you have active businesses to be around 683, um and 45. now if you take 50% of israeli businesses that's uh between 40, 40

to 50%, that's around 286,878, that's how many risk uh shut down, and at this point given the fact that you have... what's been reported to be about 60,000, well at the rate you're going in about four years time, if you have israel be involved in wars, which the track record points to that, you're going to have the majority of businesses closed in israel, again if the trend trend continues with the instability with the wars, etc., well, in terms of economic growth, the oecd we went by that organization, it reported 1.9% growth for the year 2024, and then for the year 2025. 4.6%. we have to wait and see whether that's actually going to transpire or not, given the fact that this genocidal war is still ongoing, and you also have the other fronts, which is the hezbulah, possibility of that expanding into a full-fledged war. let's bring in our guests to see what they think about this. khalil jashan who's an executive director at the arab center, washington dc uh joins us. khalil jashan, welcome back, the

value of the reserves of the central bank, above 200 million for the year 20. 24, we're looking at this war in the gaza strip, which requires much more ammunition than domestic manufacturers can currently produce, um, tell us a little bit about how troubling that is, especially for israel's manufacturing sector, all aspects of israel's economy this time are in trouble, in the past in a way israel lucked out with the international support it received from the west, particularly the us and europe, managed to overcome the economic difficulties or implications of prior wars, this one, because like i said earlier, the nature of the war, the surprising nature of the war, how it started, and and the the duration being longer than any war that israel has waged in the past assuming that it

was going to be very limited in scope, limited in geography, limited in time, and "there we are nine months later and there is no light at the end of the tunnel, it doesn't seem to be uh ending uh soon at least. all right, if you can expand a little bit more for us uh khalil, on the manufacturing part in terms of how that is being affected, what are we looking at when it comes to the manufacturing sector and this really economy? the domestic manufacturing capacity definitely has been impacted, it has slowed down, it has been ' damaged and and it will take it many years uh frankly to uh to recover, so this war uh even though it was perceived at the beginning as a retaliatory war by israel, by the israeli government to teach palestinians and in particular hamas a lesson never to be forgotten, i think it ended up teaching israel lot more lessons uh

that they need to learn, i don't think they have learned these lessons yet and and ' "the fact that they are going to continue to pay a price for uh these mistakes might in the future uh make them think twice uh before they engage uh in in a genocidal ward war uh of this caliber. all right, thank you very much for that. i'd like to thank uh our guest jashan to have joined economic divide. uh, let's bring in - let's swing back to nicho house foreign policy analyst and see what he thinks. nico house, when you take a look at the impact of the..." onslot on israel's economy, it's obviously very severe, but one the um sectors aside from the things like tourism or the construction industry uh that's been affected severely is the manufacturing sector and uh they are not a to um aside from making their products available within to have it imported out um or export it out and uh have sales that way uh can you

tell us a little bit more about how the manufacturing sector has been affected? yeah, bds is causing a problem for their manufacturing sector, but it's just the simple fact that they don't have enough people. uh, israel is not a large, it doesn't have a large population, and although there may be lot of people that claim israely citizenship, via the dual citizenship method, that doesn't mean that israel has lot of people that are actually in israel living there a full-time basis and i think that's hurting the manufacturing industry. now they can make is much, they can make it, they can make as many moves as they'd like monetarily, um, they can receive as much aid as they'd like from different nations, they even they're even withholding money that's supposed to go to the west bank uh and that was meant for the west bank and allocated. the west bank specifically, they're withholding their money, millions of dollars in attempt to fund some of their efforts and curtail some of the financial was that they've been suffering, but the reality is

you have to have people to do the job, and right now israel is either calling up its people to go fighting these wars, not only once again against gaza, but against uh hezballah and lebanon, but they also are leaving, people are just choosing to leave israel, you've seen the videos of the airports flooded uh because they no longer feel safe so you don't have people to do the job and you you're running out of money to pay the people to do the job and not to mention the overall spending to cover for the businesses that have taken a loss and the cover for those who have had to leave businesses to go fight in the war so israel is paying and helping to support those those households those that that spending is at over 80% and it's the highest it's ever been so of course the manufacture. industry is going to continue to suffer as long as this war proceeds,

the bank of israel chief has issued a warning about the cost of this onslot, it warned that this genocidal onslot will cost $67 billion, others have put the cost at around $100 billion so far. a breakdown of the latest war cost estimate showed that almost half of the onslaut expenditure, or 32 billion dollars will be needed to meet military needs. $10 billion will be needed for what the regime has described as civilian spending until 2025. this includes the cost of evacuating civilians, providing housing for them, and more. the central bank anticipated another $9

billion dollars in lost tax revenues and $6 billion to compensate for direct onslot damages. this has left the regime with no choice but to raise taxes and that will come a price. israel's middle class, the leader of the opposition yar lapid warned recently that high prices are collapsing the middle class. 40,00 business closures from october 7th up to now, the figure that may creep up to 70,000, andogenocidal onslot that continues with another war a possibility, well this really... dreams goals even if they were to be met like killing hamas leaders, well it's going to come out of cost of being delegitimized something which may have happened already and also boycotted the world

over. the question is is the cost worth continuing this genocidal war, which at the end is going to leave israel bankrupt? i'm sure that's something that the israeli regime officials have mold over, but yet they do decide to continue with it. that does it for this edition of the program, hope you liked it, if you have any questions or comments. teaks do send them to us, contact information is on this monitor here, from and the team is goodbye until the next economic divide.

pretty sure the finance below. wasn't proposed by ruto, it was proposed by the imf. i don't want him as my president, i even regret why i voted him. i want to tell this government, we gave you the entry, we are going to show you the exit. mr. president, mr. president, watch us, they buy cars, they're just enriching themselves, meanwhile, many percentage of kenyans are languishing in poverty still. we have people who do who do not have access to education, who do not have access to healthcare? tell the ambassador, kenya is not united states, kenya is not a call of united states, keep your your mouth shut.

dozens of palestinians are killed in fresh israel strikes on gaza as the regime steps up attacks on areas designated as safe zones. palestinian groups including hamas and fatah signed an agreement in the chinese capital to form an interest. national reconciliation governments and iran joins a growing international calls to ban is ready athletes from the paris olympic games over the regime's atrocities in gaza.