PM Netanyahu's Speech at the Herzliya Conference
Translation
03/02/2010
www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/PMSpeaks/speechherzliya030210.htm

Thank you Professor Reichman, for that introduction. You are a visionary
and practical man. You established an amazing organization. When Ron
Lauder told me about your plans, he told me to wait and see how you would
mobilize to create a national and international forum every year that would
shape patterns of thinking and refresh them. My friend Uzi Arad joined you
and worked alongside you to help do this, and our friend Professor
Rubenstein is doing so now. I think you have proven over the years that one
can think better and dream realistically. That is actually what Herzl was
saying in that quote you just mentioned.

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. I spoke about this with Dov
Lautman many times, as well as with many others. 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.

I believe that this education starts, first and foremost, in the Book of
Books - in the Bible - a subject that is close to my heart these days. It
starts there. It moves through the history of our people: the Second
Temple, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, leaving the ghettos, the rise of
Zionism, the modern era, the wars fought for Israel's existence - the
history of Zionism and of Israel. A people must know its past in order to
ensure its future.

There is a well-known story about Napoleon. One day, he passed by a
synagogue on Tisha B'Av and he heard the weeping of the worshippers. He
asked what they were crying about, and the Jews told him: "We are weeping
because our Temple was destroyed." He asked: "How can it be that I heard
nothing about this?" He liked knowing what was going on. He wasn't really
interested, but he would have received a report. So the worshippers told
him: "Sir, it happened more than 1,700 years ago." And he told them: "A
people capable of remembering its past so clearly has a guaranteed future."
But the opposite is also true. Yigal Alon said so. He said that a people
that doesn't remember its past, its present is uncertain and its future is
unclear.

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 remind ourselves that if our feeling of serving a higher purpose
dissipates, if our sources of spiritual strength grow weak, then - as Yigal
Alon said - our future will also be unclear. It will happen if our young
generation is not committed to our people and our country; if they do not
love the pioneering spirit, if they do not travel our country, if they do
not want to mobilize and sacrifice - then our future is truly unclear.

Every year at this Conference, we exchange thoughts and ideas about our
vision, and we are accustomed to aspiring to obtain all the "luxuries". We
want economic abundance and social justice and cultural richness and a
groundbreaking spirit of excellence in the sciences, in medicine, in
technology, in the business sector. But this culture, the culture of
opulence - we have in great measure achieved it. But alongside this is a
great challenge of which I would like to speak today.

That challenge is to not get carried away by the illusion that we - each and
every one of us - is allowed to become preoccupied solely with
self-development. There are a great many talented young people here, and
they are being taught to think, quite justifiably, that they are
cosmopolitans. But they cannot be just cosmopolitans. A great many of them
are taught in surroundings of cultural shallowness, of diluted knowledge and
spirituality - and this dilutes and weakens the national strength we have
spoken of here today. We have guests here from overseas. I know you know
that this problem is not unique to Israel. It affects many other peoples and
nations. But nowhere is it more critical than in the State of Israel,
because no other country faces the challenges and the threats that we face.
Therefore, we must find the balance between integrating into the world at
large and maintaining our identity and our uniqueness.

I travel the country and I meet students who have chosen to leave their
comfortable urban lives. Like the pioneers of our past, they establish
communities in the Negev and the Galilee. They are part of all sorts of
very exciting projects and initiatives. I meet teenagers who, right before
they begin their military service, decide to contribute an extra year of
their lives to assist underprivileged communities or to strengthen youth
movements. We are going to expand this program so that it will include all
sectors of Israeli society and allow everyone - from the ultra-orthodox
public to the Arab public - to contribute to their communities. I see
wonderful, even exciting, young people in the pre-army preparation
academies. They are caring and sensitive, wrestling with the question, "how
can we be Zionists in 2010?" But I honestly must tell you that this is a
very small group of young people, and we must - we simply 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. I want to tell you that the simplest and most original way
of doing so is to connect these young people to our homeland through their
feet - through becoming familiar with the country, travelling the country.
But it is not certain that if one travels the country, one becomes attached
to our heritage.

Several months ago, I visited the Lachish Region. I saw a large mound. In
this case, the mound was one of the few I had not already seen during my
army service. I told the motorcade to turn around. We made a u-turn, and
they said to me: "Mr. Prime Minister, you cannot climb that hill. We didn't
make security arrangements there." I answered: "But there's no problem.
You know why? Because there's no one here!" It was Tel Lachish, one of the
most dramatic places in the history of the Jewish people. Carvings of it
were found in Iraq and this mound was subject to the siege of Lachish that
is described in the Bible - and there was no one there. After some time, a
group of Russian tour guides arrived. I was there for almost an hour, and
not one veteran Israeli came.

Several years before that I was a chaperone on a trip for one of my
children, on the way to the Atlit detention camp at night. At night, they
do field exercises on the path to the detention camp. We were on a gravel
path along the shoreline, and suddenly I saw a house, a structure, near the
water. I left the group and walked over there, and I saw a house - a single
structure, a single room near the water - about to crumble. I asked what it
was. I was told: "That is the house where Aaron Aaronson and the NILI
underground signaled the British." I always thought they signaled them from
the Carmel, but clearly they couldn't because the Turks would have seen the
signals from the shore. However, from the water line they could signal to
them and they did. This is a part of our magnificent history, without which
we would never have freed our country. It helped the British take control
and free the Land of Israel. It opened up the way to Zionism.

Here are examples from both our ancient and our recent past, two sites that
one would simply pass by, not see, not know about. No one visits them. We
are going to change that. 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.

I want you to think about a family outing with your children or
grandchildren at one of these sites. I am not telling you not to go to the
movies or to a bar. That's alright; you can do those things, but add in
this layer and understand the deeper meaning behind it. I speak from
experience. Think about a father and son visiting a Jewish historic site,
about the profound significance of transmitting the legacy exactly as
commanded in the Bible: "And tell your son." 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 population 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.

I know people will ask: "This is the topic you chose to speak of here, at a
discussion about our national strength?" My answer is yes. Sometimes small
steps lead to great things. I want to give you an example of two steps
similar to what I have just described that changed our people's history. I
was recently in London. I visited the basement of the Palestine Exploration
Fund. It was established in 1860 by Queen Victoria in order to map and
scientifically explore the Land of Israel. Queen Victoria sent two men
here. One was named Claude R. Conder, who was the head of the expedition.
The second was a 21-year-old second lieutenant named Kitchener, who would in
time become the 1st Earl Kitchener. Together, they began to map the
country, including this place. They made wonderful, accurate topographical
maps, and found all the ancient places and reinstated their names. They
came armed with all the most advanced measuring tools of the 19th century
and with the Bible. The PEF is responsible for some of what we now know.
For example, they brought Warren here, and he found Warren's Shaft and many
other ancient sites in Jerusalem and across the Land of Israel.

This fired up the imaginations of the both the aristocracy and common people
in Britain. You have no idea what an effect it had. It made them think
that perhaps the Land of Israel wasn't an abstract place. This land is
concrete, and maybe it could be revived, be brought back to life, if the
original people who lived there could return to it. That started people
talking. It took several decades to happen.

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 PEF 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, using - by the way - the PEF maps. 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.
Therefore, in light of the plans I laid out today, I hope you will invite me
back here in five more years; invite Tzvi Hauser - he is in charge of
implementing all this. 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.

Thank you.