Hebrew → English transcript

I said that we paid very heavy prices in the war. The fallen and the wounded,

truly heavy prices. And part of that is,

that is what happens in war. But part of it stemmed from the fact that we had to,

because Gaza was booby- trapped,

and we used means, artillery, the air

force, we let the population leave,

but there were still terrorists there with booby- trapped houses.

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

heroes fell. Part

of this ammunition shortage was

also a result of an embargo.

And I made up my mind

that we will not reach that situation again. That we must have

as robust and independent a weapons industry as possible.

By the way, this situation of

the embargo changed beyond recognition

with the entry of President Trump's administration. But I think 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 our per capita GNP was seventeen thousand dollars, I said we...

will create 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, back then it was 1.2 billion

dollars, it was a big sum 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, within a decade, to completely free ourselves from financial aid,

the financial component in American security

assistance. It currently stands at

almost 4 billion dollars. Soon we will have a one- trillion- dollar economy,

it will take ten, twelve years.

And we can afford

to finance these weapons,

but I want not only to finance them, I want to shift our relations with the United

States from aid relations to

partnership.

Aid to partnership.

We want to move from aid to partnership.

Symmetrical investments, even identical ones, ours and the Americans’,

in the most advanced weapons, even the imaginary ones,

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

Joint development and production.

And this is also true for other countries.

It is no secret that next month the president of India will visit here,

my friend Narendra Modi, we are going

to talk about it. And there were also other countries

that were here, including the German chancellor in March.

And this is something that can change everything.

I want a robust weapons industry so that we gain independence,

the greatest possible independence, and so that we do not lack weapons,

that we do not lack weapons

and not ammunition, hopefully we will not need to use them either.

I thank you very much, thank you very much.