Benjamin Netanyahu is the current Prime Minster of
Israel. Although Israel has a president the main power lies in the hands of the
PM. Netanyahu is the first PM to be born in Israel and is also a well known due
to a previous term as the PM to Israel, which was from 1996 to 1999. He also
served as the Finance Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In this
speech, Netanyahu talks about dealing
with Palestine and protecting the Jewish State at the Herzliya Conference in 2010.
We share a common
dream - to reach peace with our neighbors. There is good reason for me to hope,
realistically, that in the next several weeks we will renew the peace process
with the Palestinians without any preconditions. For some time, I have said
that the international community has learned to recognize that Israel wants and
is ready to renew the peace process. Since the moment that recognition was
internalized, central players in the international arena have begun to accept
the practical feasibility of such a step.
There is a saying: it
takes two to tango. In the Middle East, sometimes it takes three to tango, or
at least to start to tango. Later, I suppose, we will be able to continue on as
two.
I hope there is a
willingness on the Palestinian side - not only to build up the Palestinian
economy and Palestinian institutions, but to begin to build the peace itself.
The only way to achieve a peace agreement is to begin conducting negotiations
towards a peace agreement. If this willingness really does exist now, we will
see a renewal of the process in the next several weeks.
I know that one of my
predecessors, Ariel Sharon, spoke from this podium about disengagement. Today I
would like to speak not of disengagement, but rather of engagement: engagement
with our heritage, with Zionism, with our past and with our future here in the
land of our forefathers, which is also the land of our children and our
grandchildren.
You are dealing with
our people's fate because it is clear today that the fate of the Jewish people
is the fate of the Jewish state. There is no demographic or practical existence
for the Jewish people without a Jewish state. This doesn't mean that the Jewish
state does not face tremendous challenges, but our existence, our future, is
here. The greatest change that came with the establishment of the Jewish state
was that Jews became more than just a collection of individuals, communities
and fragments of communities. They became a sovereign collective in their own
territory. Our ability as a collective to determine our own destiny is what
grants us the tools to shape our future - no longer as a ruled people, defeated
and persecuted, but as a proud people with a magnificent country and one which
always aspires to serve as "a light unto the nations."
In order to continue
ruling our own destiny, we must establish our collective ability in three main
fields - in security, the economy and education. I do not intend to expand on
the security field today, other than to say that we must continue nurturing and
strengthening our military force. The weak do not survive in the geographically
difficult space we live in, nor is peace made with the weak. The State of
Israel is strong and can guarantee both our existence and peace with our
neighbors. However, I want to be clear: our security needs can and will
increase over the next decade, and even over the next two decades.
We are entering
another world, one in which the aggressor has certain advantages. He can launch
projectiles - not even missiles, just pieces of metal with a primitive engine,
fuel and explosives - and for us to strike down this flying ball of metal, we
have to make a huge investment. Sometimes, under such conditions, the aggressor
has an advantage and we must work hard in order to negate that advantage. It is
in our power to do so, but it will cost a great deal.
Security demands a
strong economy. A strong economy provides strong security. Without a strong
economy, we cannot meet the State of Israel's security needs in the next
decade, or our education needs, or our health needs or our need to fight crime
and drugs and the plague of alcohol. All this demands money. Where will the
money come from? It will only come from economic growth. There is no other
source to fund these needs, and it will take billions.
Increased taxation is
not the solution: it will only shrink our tax revenues. There is no better way
than growing our GNP by 4% or 5% per annum over many years, as we experienced
over the past decade. There is no better way to finance our security needs.
Can an economy that
approaches a per capita income of $30,000 continue to grow year after year at
the rate of 5% per annum? I believe it can. The way to ensure this is to
constantly free up the economy. As long as there are limitations and
competition in the economy, as long as our taxation levels are not the lowest
or among the lowest in the world, we will have engines for growth. By freeing
up the economy and reducing our tax rates, we are constantly growing and will
receive tax revenues that will allow us to finance our existential needs, as
well as our future ones.
In the coming weeks,
we will present the government with a number of initiatives. First: a national
transportation plan that will connect the entire country through a network of
trains and roads and help people be mobile. Second: a revolutionary reform in
planning and construction that will allow entrepreneurs to build in the north,
the south, the center of the country, here in Herzliya - everywhere. It will no
longer take years; it may take months. Plans won't have to go through clerks or
nerve-wracking procedures; a great proportion of the process will be done on
the internet. Then the approvals will arrive, some automatically, and one just
needs to report them.
We have already begun
the planning and construction reform, the national transportation network and
the freeing up of land, and have laid the groundwork to them. All these plans
encourage growth, as will other plans I will detail in the next year.
Strengthening the economy is an integral part of these plans. I want to clarify
that the State of Israel is already considered a regional economic powerhouse,
and in my vision, we will establish and fortify our position as a global
technological powerhouse.
This is a necessary
condition, but it is not enough, because a strong army and a strong economy are
not enough of a guarantee for our existence here if we are not committed to
being here from the outset. This, distinguished guests, can only be created
through one thing - through education.
Education is the
melting pot in which our national strength is forged. It has two parts:
acquiring the tools and knowledge to deepen our children's capabilities; and
excellence - getting the most from each child and giving him the ability to
learn math, to learn English, to learn computers, to learn science, to know how
to compose a sentence, to put words together, express himself. All these
abilities are essential, and they are what the Minister of Education is working
so hard for. This is a central issue, but it is not the main thrust of my
comments here tonight.
Tonight, I refer to
something even more basic. I am talking about educating children about the
values connected to our identity and heritage, teaching children to know our
people's history, educating young people and adults to deepen our ties to one
another and to this place…
In other words, our
existence depends not only on a weapons system, our military strength, the
strength of our economy, our innovation, our exports, or on all these forces
that are indeed essential. It depends, first and foremost, on the knowledge and
national sentiment we as parents bestow on our children, and as a state to its
education system. It depends on our culture; it depends on our cultural heroes;
it depends on our ability to explain the justness of our path and demonstrate
our affinity for our land - first to ourselves and then to others…
We must find the
balance between integrating into the world at large and maintaining our
identity and our uniqueness... We must get a much broader group of young people
interested in our Zionist heritage and continually encourage them to identify
with the people of Israel and the Land of Israel...
At the end of next
month, on Tel Hai Day, I intend to present the government with a work plan that
will reverse the neglect of heritage sites. We initiated a national plan to
rehabilitate and strengthen infrastructure at heritage sites. I call it the
"Heritage Plan." We are going to preserve tourist sites,
archaeological sites, historic buildings and museums. We will also preserve
less physical and tangible infrastructure, such as archives, photographs,
films, books, songs and music. We will make all these available to the general
public. We will utilize new technologies and free up these works so that they
are accessible to every boy and girl in Israel, every house, every family,
every citizen...
The plan of which I
speak will be financed with government funds and will be spread out over five years.
It will encompass a broad range of activities, projects, organizations,
authorities and the education and information system - and it is only the first
stage. Our commitment is to breathing new life into the Israeli experience. I
am talking about rehabilitating those same assets that tell the story of the
people of Israel and the Land of Israel; the story of the Jewish settlement;
our artistic assets; our nostalgic spirit and memory. A significant portion of
those assets are being destroyed or disappearing, and we will take them and
preserve them, and fortify them and we will explain them in a way that is
accessible to an audience, in simple and clear language. And all this will be
integrated into the education system that serves the children of Israel.
We recently learned
in a study that the teenagers who are highly motivated to serve in the military
are those who have travelled the country extensively. The example I like to
give, which is a highly successful one, is the Israel Trail. It has been a tremendous
success. Within a decade, the project's founders have succeeded in transforming
this trail into a desirable destination, one that attracts a huge number of
young people and not-so-young people. By travelling the Trail, they become
familiar with the country and connect to it.
According to the plan
I will present to the government, we will, within five years, inaugurate two
additional trails alongside the Israel Trail. One is the historic Land of
Israel trail, which will connect between dozens of ancient archaeological
sites. Within our tiny piece of land, there are 30,000 ancient sites, 800 of
which have clear national importance. Sadly, only 50 of those sites are open to
the public, and even they are not in great shape. That is going to change on a huge
scale. The second trail will be the "Israel Experience" trail. This
trail will include the treasures of our country, and will serve as a living
Land of Israel museum. It will connect between dozens of stops celebrating the
history of the Jewish Yishuv [the Jewish community before the establishment of
the State of Israel]. It will include historic buildings, settlement sites,
small museums, memorial sites and personal stories - all of which are part of
our Zionist heritage...
The second project,
also a modest project, was one that fired the imaginations of young Jews. It
was Baron Rothschild's project. He established villages at several sites after
the Palestine Exploration Fund had been here, from Rosh Pina to Petah Tikva.
These new communities revived the ancient land though not on a huge scale;
there were only several thousand people living there. However, this action
ignited a blaze. One of the people who was carried away by this blaze was a
young Jew who came here in 1898 - Benjamin Zeev Herzl. He visited all these
places and understood what was here, and much more. He dared to dream about
what could be. These two blazes are what ignited the greatest empire to rule
the world and the new prophet of the Jewish people and many other young Jews -
these two blazes merged together and became Zionism.
I
won't tell you that we don't have tremendous tasks to undertake in all the
important fields. We do have them, and we will undertake them. But we will do
so only if we are committed to our past in order to ensure our future... Our
purpose today is to reignite the flame, to introduce a new spirit into the
blaze of our lives and reconnect with this land - our land - the unique and
singular Land of Israel.
--Nitika
Reddy
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