PM Netanyahu Addresses Raisina Dialogue
(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara, today (Tuesday, 16
January 2018), along with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, attended the
Raisina Dialogue; Prime Minister Netanyahu was the featured speaker. Other
speakers included former heads of government and senior ministers from
around the world, as well as prominent academics and government officials,
among others.

Prime Minister Netanyahu:

"Namaste.

Prime Minister Modi, my dear friend, Israel's dear friend, thank you on
behalf of the people of Israel for the exceptional welcome that you're
giving us and the opportunity to address this forum with the distinguished
guests that are here from so many nations, from India and from Israel. Thank
you for this unbelievably moving visit and thank you for the opportunity
also to address the challenges that face the future and how together we can
work to achieve prosperity, security and peace.

I want to tell you first how we in Israel overcame our challenge. We're in a
tiny people, live in a small country, somewhat smaller than India, a lot
smaller than India, no natural resources, no great rivers. Well, the Jordan
is a great river, but it's a stream, it trickles. And yet we've become I
think a force to contend with on the world scene, and I would like to
describe to you the process that we went through and then discuss what we
could do together.

I was thinking about the journey that we made yesterday in that magnificent
ceremony in the President's house and I was thinking that 75 years ago our
people were like a wind-tossed leaf. A third of our people were destroyed in
heaps of ashes, and yet there I was standing representing the Jewish people
in the great nation of India, one of the great powers on earth. What led to
this transformation?

It was our understanding of the principal lesson of Jewish history and also
a simple lesson in our turbulent region, and it is this: the weak don’t
survive. The strong survive. You make peace with the strong. You make
alliances with the strong. You're able to maintain peace by being strong,
and therefore the first requirement of Israel from the time of our first
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was to achieve the minimal strength that is
required to assure our existence. Now, what is the source of strength?
Various questions arise about what is the nature of power? There's soft
power. There's hard power. I like soft power. Hard power is often better.
What does it mean? What does it mean to have power? Well, the first
prerequisite s military power. You need F35s, you need submarines, you need
interceptors, you need cyber, you need intelligence. In the case of Israel
you need a lot of intelligence to compensate for our size. There's one thing
that characterizes all the things that I just mentioned. They cost money, a
lot of money, and as time goes by, they cost more and more money. So
defense – the prerequisite of security, and security always comes first –
defense costs a great deal of money, as does education, as does health, as
does infrastructure, all the requirements that our people justly deserve
once we provide security.

Where does the money come from? It comes from the second source of power.
That is, economic power. I view the requirements of providing, of security
our future as dependent on three sources of power – military power; now
economic power. How do you get economic power? Surely you need education.
Prime Minister Modi and I were talking about how we educate our youth. In
the case of Israel, there's one big education machine. It's called the
Israeli Defense Force, and everyone comes in and we give training, we give
technology, we give an assessment, an understanding of the main techniques
of technology that are important for the future, also for civilian future.

And yet, we have seen other societies that have had educated people, highly
educated people, extraordinary mathematicians, physicists, metallurgists,
that didn’t achieve economic power. In fact, they collapsed. I'm talking
about the Former Soviet Union. But if you took, in Soviet times, if you took
one of those mathematicians and speared him away, or her, to California, to
Silicon Valley, the would be producing value within two weeks, because the
requirement, the necessary requirement for the development of technology,
innovation, ingenuity, the necessary requirement are free markets or freer
markets. Technology and value added is produced by firms. Firms produce
technology. They perfect it, they multiply it, the re-invent. Firms are
critical, and therefore the technology, the policy that produces growth and
gives you competitive advantage is the economic policy that makes it
possible for firms to do business. It's called being business-friendly.

I have to say that I was absolutely astounded when I learned yesterday that
Prime Minister Modi has moved India on the scale of the ease of doing
business 42 places in three years. Prime Minister Modi understands exactly
what I'm talking about. In other words, if you want to have economic power,
you must reduce taxes, simplify taxes, and you must cut bureaucracy.
Government can facilitate economic growth. Government can block economic
growth. In our cases, Israel and India, we don’t have any bureaucracy to
contend with. You know that. So a main job of the leaders of both India and
Israel is to reduce this bureaucracy, to cut it, as I call it, with a
machete, with an axe, so that the firms can go on with their business of
doing business. This gives strength. We've done this in Israel. We've
transformed an economy that was very centralized and very bureaucratized
into a free market economy that allows the technological genius of our
people and our young people to flower.

This is what starts the startups. Startups are made by young people,
thousands of them. The minute we created this climate, this climate of
creativity and entrepreneurship, the talents break forth. I believe that
this second power is critical to the first. I believe that the growth of
military power and military influence is dependent ultimately on economic
power, and economic power facilitates also all the elements of life that we
need.

We have achieved that transition to a more liberal economy and we are
absolutely committed to continuing on this path because we know we are in a
never-ending race. The exponential growth that you talked about is achieved
today by the confluence of Big Data, connectivity and artificial
intelligence. The countries that will seize the future are those that will
innovate along these lines. The future belongs to those who innovate. Those
who innovate will innovate in freer market terms. And this is what we all
must do. We're doing it. India is doing it.

Now, having established our military power and our economic power, we are
now developing our third power, and the third power is political power. By
political power I mean the ability to make political alliances and
relationships with many other countries. in the last year alone I visited
six continents – obviously Asia, Africa, Europe, Africa I visited three
times in 18 months, South America and of course North America and Australia,
so all six. And we have a growing number of countries with whom we have
trade relations, cultural relations, technological relations, security
relations. This is very important for us in order to broaden our position in
the world, in order to have the kind of relations that ultimately secure
your future. Military power. Economic power. Political power.

But there is I believe a fourth power, and the fourth power is the power of
our values, of our traditions. I was asked by African leaders, I was asked
in a symposium in the UN about Israeli technologies that are helping change
Africa, I was asked: What is the secret of Israel? You know, we create a lot
of problems in Africa, he said, and you come and you create solutions with
us. What is your secret? You're such a small country. How do you do this?
And I said: Look, we are a special people. We are like a tree that has deep
roots in our ancient soil, our ancient tradition, and yet we throw up leaves
to the heavens. We keep searching, keep inquiring, keep looking for new
ways. The branches go up to the sky and the roots are deep in the earth. I
believe that this is the secret of Israel. I also believe it's the secret of
India. It's exactly the same thing – powerful traditions, ancient cultures
of which we are so deeply proud, and yet these inquiring minds that reach
out to the sky, reach out for new solutions to the problems all the time,
and I think this characterizes our two peoples.

But I believe too that there's one thing else that binds us together and I
think perhaps it is the most important of all. We have a special
relationship. Among the many countries, we have a special relationship to
democracies. India is the world's most populous democracy. It is a place
that shows that humanity can be governed with freedom, that we can secure
the rights of people, those things that make life worthwhile – the ability
to think as we want, speak as we want, believe what we want in a society
that is pluralistic, diverse and free. This is what India is about. This is
what Israel is about.

So the fourth thing that binds us together is our values, and the most
important value is the value of democracy. Well, I believe that this is not
merely a passing thing. We're now moving from a unipolar road to a
multipolar road. We have an exceptional relationship with a democracy called
the United States of America. We have exceptional relationship with a
democracy called Canada and other countries. the reason I mention the
importance of democracies is because even though we have relations with most
countries in the world, if we are to live in a world that protects
international norms – something that you, Prime Minister Modi, talk about
all the time – then we must have of course the ability to protect those
norms, and democracies bind to each other, connect to each other in natural
ways. We are, I think, naturally sympathetic to India. When I walk in the
streets of India, as I just did in Agra, I saw the sympathy and friendship
of people. Somebody said to me: We are so happy that you are friends with
our Prime Minister and that he's friends with you. We are friends with you!
We are friends with Israel. It's a natural friendship and natural
partnership of democratic and free peoples.

Our way of life is being challenged. Most notably, the quest for modernity,
the quest for innovation is being challenged by radical Islam and its
terrorist offshoots from a variety of corners, and this can upset the
international system. I think that one of the ways to overcome such a
challenge is to strengthen the relationship between our two great
democracies. The alliance of democracies I think is important to secure our
common future. I believe that the possibilities are endless. We have
discussed in this visit how we can strengthen our two nations in the
civilian areas, in the security areas, in every area. It is something l look
forward to do.

I want to thank you again for giving me this opportunity to bring India to
Israel and Israel to India. Your historic visit broke ground. You are the
first leader of India to come to Israel in 3,000 years. Let us hope it will
not take long for your next visit. I know that. But I want to tell you how
delighted we are in Israel. I want to tell you that we believe in India, as
you believe in Israel. Good luck to India. Good luck to Israel, and may G-d
bless the Indian-Israel alliance."