Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke at the at the Cyber Week Conference Wednesday and discussed why he believes "the next 50 years are gonna be a remarkable time for the State of Israel, for our people, for our economy, and for what we can give the world."
Bennett began by recounting the massacre committed by the Hamas terrorist organization on October 7. "At 6:29 in the morning, Hamas attacked Israel. Thousands of Hamas terrorists breached the fence, the border, entered at dozens and dozens of points, and attacked dozens of communities, slaughtering 1,400 Israelis, kidnapping 240, and bringing Israel to its worst moment."
According to Bennett, "October 7th tells two stories, and the first story, we have to look at it with clear eyes. It's an epic, colossal failure of the State of Israel. We failed. Our most fundamental mission when founding the State of Israel, that never again would Jews be helplessly under a massacre, under a pogrom, going on for hours and hours. We did know, and we always knew, that there would be terror here and there. And usually, terror attacks go on for anywhere between 10 seconds and five minutes. That's the cost of living here. But on our basic, most fundamental mission, we failed."
"We failed in intelligence, we failed in operations. And subsequently, for about a month after the attacks, institutional Israel, almost all governmental ministries melted down. Education system, welfare, finance, nothing worked," he said.
However, he continued, "But the second half of the story is a remarkable story where the nation arose. On October 7th, the moment the news began percolating around Israel, thousands of Israelis, young men and women from all across Israel, got in their cars, drove down into that inferno, into the Gaza Envelope, as we like to call it, and went to defend their brothers and sisters. But [they were] actually people they've never met. Saving thousands and thousands of lives and preventing a much worse disaster."
"They saved the day," he said of these young heroes, comparing their actions to what happened in New York on 9/11.
"I was in Manhattan on 9/11," Benett recalled. "I remember, I was in midtown, I saw the towers on fire, and I saw a river of people going north, walking very quickly away from the towers, which is a natural thing to do. The only people who were driving south towards the towers were those firefighters, heroic firefighters, but that's their job. But in Israel, thousands of people were driving towards the disaster, citizens, policemen, and reservists."
"I am telling you this because there is sort of a cloud of anxiety and depression that's descended on Israel," he continued. "You can't not feel it when you talk to Israelis, and it's understandable. This is a national trauma. But I draw my strength from meeting hundreds and hundreds of these men and women, remarkable men and women, that showed courage."
He said it was not "institutional Israel," but "the people of Israel," that prevented dozens of sites attacked by Hamas terrorists from turning into fields of slaughter. "The people, the nation, saved the day."
Bennett stated that in the months following October 7, "Start-Up Nation became again Start-Up Nation. Literally thousands of small initiatives filled all the gaps that institutional Israel could not handle. Getting helmets, designing very rapidly arms that are necessary or anything that is necessary, getting food, getting people from one place to another. A meltdown of the system and a rise of Israel."
Bennett asserted that in his estimation, "Israel is going to have a short-term bumpy period, very bumpy. It might get worse before it gets better. But then we're in for 50 years of amazing growth and success."
According to Bennett, computers are advancing to the point that they will begin to be smarter than human beings in the next 3-5 years. "So what are we gonna need from people? What's the added value of people? The added value of people and what we're going to need in the next 50 years, more than anything, is people who can make stuff happen. Because intelligence in itself is not action."
"You need two main things," he explained. "You need the talent, meaning, being innovative, being flexible, dynamic, being resourceful, makeshift, being able to change. And we know that the State of Israel generates this sort of young men and women."
"But here's what we didn't know. And I admit, I didn't know, certainly not to this degree. The second critical ingredient besides all those elements and characteristics that I just defined of intelligence, flexibility, agility, ect ... You need to be tough. You need to be resilient. We're gonna need strong people - not Israel, the whole world. You're gonna need tough people. And what we discovered on October 7th and thereafter is [that] we have a younger generation that is the toughes we;ve ever seen. The men and women that are out here right now, fighting for 180 days."
He compared the youth of Israel that have stepped up at this time to the young Americans who fought in World War Two and have been called "the greatest generation."
"They carried the United States of America for the following 50 years of amazing growth," Bennett said of the veterans of the Second World War. "Right now, our younger generation is Israel's greatest generation, because they have been embedded with work ethics, with courage, with strength, resilience, and idealism. And every one of them has been changed forever and cares more about the State of Israel, more about building a future here."
He further stated that Israel has three untapped reserves of talent, the haredi population, the Israeli Arab population, and the Aliyah of Jews from the Diaspora to Israel. "When you pour those three channels into our engine, you're going to get a steaming engine for the next 50 years."
"If Israel was a company, the fundamentals are the best ever," Bennett declared. "Management is far from amazing, but that's solvable. And when we solve that, we're going to get over this, and we;re looking at 50 years of prosperity."