Economy Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) addressed Israel's top industrial executives Thursday at a Manufacturers Association conference in Tel Aviv.
Minister Bennett said that Israel's industry is "the workhorse of Zionism, which pulls all of Israel behind it."
"This 'horse' involves risks, initiatives and creativity," Bennett said. "You are the ones who produce jobs and revenue for the Israeli economy. But instead of giving you medals, the country – inadvertently – weighs you down with bags of sand. After being overloaded, the horse starts dying and then trots off to another country, and we are the ones who lose out," Bennett said.
Bennett called the industrialists the "true pioneers" of 2013, and said that one of his missions as Minister of Economy and Trade is the reduction bureaucracy and bottlenecks, and production of "available labor," in his words.