Jan 18, 2022
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned the “free world” that funding for Iran could lead to “terror on steroids,” speaking in a video address to the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda on Tuesday. “They are the source of terror in the Middle East. The last thing you want to do with this sort of octopus is to pour tens of billions of dollars into this apparatus, because what do you get? You get terror on steroids,” Bennett said in an apparent reference to easing sanctions against Tehran in the nuclear deal negotiations. The PM also discussed his economic policies regarding Israel and Palestine. “My first policy is to improve the quality of lives of everyone here, whether in Gaza or Judean and Samaria or Israel itself. And I believe that through business, through the economy, through jobs, it’s the most sustainable way to bring stability,” he said. The WEF annual summit, which traditionally takes place in January in Davos, is held virtually this year, due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The event serves as a platform for world leaders and CEOs to come together and share their views on the present-day challenges in the world. — SOT, Naftali Bennett, Israeli Prime Minister: “Before I came in, the approach was major lockdowns. My approach is I’m against lockdowns as far as we can. I’ve not even had one day of lockdown or closing down schools during my tenure.” SOT, Naftali Bennett, Israeli Prime Minister: “The decent countries, the free world, [is] to call Iran on what it’s doing. They are the source of terror in the Middle East. The last thing you want to do with this sort of octopus is to pour tens of billions of dollars into this apparatus, because what do you get? You get terror on steroids.” SOT, Naftali Bennett, Israeli Prime Minister: “The world is going remote, this sort of event, having the Davos summit, you know, through the internet was unheard of a few years ago, and now it’s almost natural. That means that the world is going to depend more and more on remote working, this provides a huge opportunity for Israel, which is we’ve sort of exhausted most of our talent to employ foreign employees from Eastern Europe, from India in our companies to a much easier extent. And finally, it means that the world, as the world becomes more dependent on remote methodology, it means that we’re also going to be more vulnerable to cyber-attacks, which means we need good cyber defense. And Israel has massively invested in cyber defense technologies, and I believe roughly half or almost half of the global investments in cyber companies over the past few years have been in Israel.” SOT, Naftali Bennett, Israeli Prime Minister: “My first policy is to improve the quality of lives of everyone here, whether in Gaza or Judean and Samaria or Israel itself. And I believe that through business, through economy, through jobs, it’s the most sustainable way to bring stability. I’m promoting and support industrial zones, joint industrial zones, Palestinian-Israelis, allowing Palestinians to work in the very advanced Israeli high-tech sector, increasing trade between Jordan and the PA. So basically, my approach is all in on economy.” SOT, Naftali Bennett, Israeli Prime Minister: “We’ve developed in Israel what I call the variant radar. So we have a group of people that are on an ongoing basis looking across the world the data and calling up other countries to get the raw data to glean information, is there a new variant and how should we address it? That’s the reason that Israel was so fast to react on Omicron, we reacted even before Omicron got its name. It was called some long number or letters and numbers five or six weeks ago. So I think if we have a good radar that’s getting intelligence, we have a good decision-making process that can make quick decisions and act upon them while sitting or leaning on a robust database and working together. I think we can beat this thing.”