The confrontation between the Finance Ministry and the defense establishment is escalating, with senior Finance Ministry officials rejecting claims that they are withholding funds and launching an unusually harsh attack on the IDF’s financial management, Walla reported.

The criticism comes after IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir claimed last week that “the IDF’s coffers are empty,” in remarks aimed at deflecting public criticism over the millions of shekels he ordered transferred to disgraced former Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi.

Senior Finance Ministry officials fired back with an unprecedentedly scathing response, calling the defense establishment’s accusations against the ministry “baseless and completely contrary to reality.”

They said the Finance Ministry has transferred enormous sums to the IDF—well beyond the amount allocated in the state budget—and has fully honored its budgetary commitments. “The defense budget has nearly tripled in two years,” the officials said, “while the defense establishment engages in wasteful management and routinely refuses to implement efficiency measures.”

They further charged that the IDF has “closed its ears to the many proposals” suggested by the Finance Ministry to increase the defense budget through additional funding sources.

Their sharpest criticism was directed at the defense establishment’s handling of its budget itself. “The defense establishment routinely manages its budget in a manner contrary to the law,” the officials said. “It disregards the budget approved for it by law, does as it pleases, and then the Finance Ministry has to come running to cover the shortfall.”

They added that defense officials instead choose “the easy way out—demanding money from taxpayers,” describing the defense budget as “the only budget in the country that operates without oversight and without transparency.”

Finance Ministry officials also blasted what they called the defense establishment’s “ingratitude,” stressing that the ministry has financed the IDF’s operations on all fronts to the tune of hundreds of billions of shekels.

The officials concluded by warning that the refusal of senior defense officials to seriously grapple with the enormous scale of their budget is “extremely concerning,” saying that their conduct “harms the country’s economy while failing to provide security commensurate with the state’s investment.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)