#ShutDownNation: 12 New Business Reasons to Divest from Israel

With its most far-right, fundamentalist and corrupt government ever, Israel is increasingly looking like a #ShutDownNation. We recently published 17 reasons to think again before investing in apartheid Israel. Below are 12 new reasons (+1 ongoing) to divest:

Ongoing: Investing in Israel funds its brutal, 75-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid against Indigenous Palestinians, including massacres, ethnic cleansing, siege, home demolition and ongoing land and water theft. Plus …

1. Credit rating company Moody’s has warned that Netanyahu’s “reforms” could “pose longer-term risks for Israel's economic prospects, particularly capital inflows into the important high-tech sector,” and lead to lowering its rating. 

2. Business daily The Marker: Since the new Israeli government came to power, investors in Israel’s stock market have lost over $25 billion. Former chair of Israel’s National Economic Council Prof. Eugene Kandel predicted 2 scenarios for its economy, “a heart attack or cancer.”

3. Israeli high-tech company Riskified, worth over $1 billion, is transferring $500 million out of Israeli banks abroad & investing in a new R&D center in Portugal. It fears “a meaningful and prolonged economic downturn in Israel” and its descent into “a more authoritarian state.”

4. Senior Israeli analysts: “Investments in Israel in recent months have almost disappeared… We see a poor appetite for investments on the part of foreign investors, but we also have less appetite as Israelis.” 

5. Israel may lose $74 billion in GDP over five years, Israeli Finance Ministry experts warned minister Smotrich, should Israel’s “democracy” ranking fall, hitting the country’s credit rating.

6. Israel’s Chief Economist Shira Greenberg estimated that Israel’s reduced credit rating would eliminate half of its growth in GDP over the next five years.

7. Over 250 Jewish American business leaders warned of the “destruction” of Israel’s economy, saying they may be compelled “to reevaluate their reliance on Israel as a strategic destination for investment.” 

8. Israeli economic expert: “Almost 100 percent of the new [Israeli] high-tech companies … are registered in the United States. … [their] future tax revenues will go into [U.S.] coffers,” and the damage will “persist for decades,” long after Netanyahu and Smotrich are gone.

9. A recent poll shows that 17% of Israelis, or a million adults, are considering moving funds abroad. With thousands already moving billions of dollars, one of the pollsters tweeted that “if even a fifth of this [17%] will happen, it means total collapse.”

10. US Senator Murphy threatens “conditionality of aid to Israel” saying, “If we're going to continue to be in the business of supporting the Israeli government, they have to be in the continuing business of a future Palestinian state.”

11. Israeli president Herzog warned: “Anyone who thinks that a real civil war … is a line that we will not reach has no idea. The abyss is within touching distance.”

12. Almost 100 former managers and supervisors at Israel’s nuclear reactors warned that the government’s “mad blitz” if not stopped can become an “existential” risk to the country.

Apartheid is always terrible for the oppressed. As in South Africa yesterday and Israel today, now we know that it is also terrible for business in the longer term! #ShutDownNation