“In Israel we had incredible technologists, incredible scientists, but we had to liberate our markets. And as a result of that liberation, Israel became a preeminent center of innovation in the world.” He also explained that great ideas are not enough, they have to be wedded to effective communication. He gave a lovely anecdote about how he explained, in terms Israelis could understand, why a free market would unshackle the economy. That was known as the “thin man, fat man theory.” It was something Israeli taxicab drivers understood and repeated.
Netanyahu went on to talk about the growth of new markets, such as with India and China, and new Israeli innovations. He talked about how dozens of leaders of African nations come to Israel. They “want three things: Israeli technology, Israeli technology, Israeli technology.”
The Israeli Prime Minister talked about the core of the conflict in the Middle East having nothing to do with the Israeli-Arab dispute. Instead, he said, “it is a battle between modernity and early primitive medievalism.” That can be seen because “Iraq is collapsing, Syria is collapsing, Yemen is collapsing, Libya is collapsing and everything is in turmoil.”
“The core of the specific battle between Israel and the Palestinians is the persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish state within any boundary.” Netanyahu undergirded that assertion by ticking off the nearly yearly Arab assaults against the Jews starting at least as far back as 1920, well before the rebirth of the Jewish State, well before there were any disputed territories or “settlements.”
Netanyahu explained that Zionism remains the animating principle behind the Jewish State, because “having not had a state for 2000 years, and now we have secured it again. But we have to assure the Jewish future – that is Zionism.”
Securing the Jewish future can only be achieved if Israel is strong, and has strong alliances, and, Netanyahu made clear, “nobody makes alliances with the weak and nobody makes peace with the weak.”
Netanyahu responded to the question of an ideology to compete with the romanticized notion of what ISIS provides to its adherents with the notion that freedom trumps all.
“In these kinds of battles,” Netanyahu explained, the kinds of battles between freedom and tyranny, “it is important to win physically. Combatting Nazism first involved beating Nazism,” he said.
Netanyahu mentioned he discussed with some European counterparts the necessity to create consortiums with African nations to help those nations with their economies, with their security. “The Islamist movements in Africa are not yet strong, they can be defeated today, it will be a lot harder tomorrow.”
“In addition to the battle for ideas,” Netanyahu emphasized, “there’s the battle. You have to win the battle! The earlier you win it, the cheaper it will be.
“There is no future for a world of darkness. I think that the Islamists will lose out but it may take decades, it may take a half century. Nazism was defeated, but it claimed the lives of tens of millions. Defeating them early is important.
“We’ll defeat them in the battle of ideas, but let’s defeat them on the ground as well,” he asserted.
The entire conversation is less than an hour. Watch the video. You’ll learn some things worth learning.