Hebrew → English transcript

I said that we

paid prices

that were very heavy in the war.

The fallen and the wounded, prices

that were really heavy.

And part of that is,

that is what happens in war.

But part of it stemmed from the fact that we had to,

since Gaza was booby- trapped,

and we used means, artillery, the air

force, we allowed the population to leave,

but terrorists remained there with booby- trapped houses.

And simply at a certain point we did not have enough ammunition.

And people fell, heroes fell. Part of that loss

of ammunition was also the result of an embargo.

And I made up my mind

that we will

not reach that

situation again.

that we must have a robust and independent arms industry

as much as possible.

By the way, this situation of the embargo

changed beyond recognition with the entry of President Trump’s administration.

But I think that

we have already

reached maturity.

Just as I, when I was elected for the first time,

said that we had reached economic maturity,

and I promised then that when our

GDP per capita was

seventeen thousand

dollars, I said we…

will make a

free economy here and Israel will be one of the leading economies in the world.

And I said that we would free ourselves from American economic,

financial aid within ten years.

It was then 1.2 billion dollars,

it was a large

sum back then.

And everyone

said,“ What

are you doing,

how can you do such a thing?”

Well, we freed

ourselves from it,

and it did not

harm the economy,

it helped the economy.

So now we have also reached security maturity.

And I mean that within a decade…

to free ourselves completely from the financial aid,

the financial component

in American

military aid.

It currently stands

at almost four billion dollars.

Soon we will have a trillion- dollar economy,

it will take ten, twelve years.

And we can afford

to fund this weapon.

But I want not only to fund it,

I want to shift our relations with the

United States…

from aid relations to relations

of partnership.

Aid to partnership.

We want to move from aid to partnership. Symmetrical, even identical investments,

ours and the Americans’ in the most advanced, even imaginary, weapons systems that

we are developing here. In joint production between us and the United States, joint

development and production.

And this is also true regarding other countries.

It is no secret that next month the prime minister of India,

my friend Narendra Modi,

will visit here.

We are going to talk

about this.

And there were also

other countries

that were here,

including the chancellor of Germany in March. This is something that can

change everything.

I want a robust arms

industry so that we gain

independence,

the greatest possible independence.

And so that we will not

lack weapons.

So that we will not lack weapons or ammunition.

Hopefully we will not need to use them either.

I thank you very much,

thank you very much.