December 18, 2003

CBN.com – During his visit to Israel, Pat Robertson had the opportunity to meet with the country's finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is also the former prime minister, and is considered to be the leading candidate to succeed current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Robertson and Netanyahu discussed the fight against terrorism and Israel's stance on the city of Jerusalem.

PAT ROBERTSON: What about the Intifada and the initiative to give away the West Bank, East Jerusalem? When we talked some years ago, you said the status of Jerusalem is non-negotiable.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: It is still non-negotiable in my books.

ROBERTSON: You still feel the same thing?

NETANYAHU: It’s my capitol. It’s the eternal capitol of the Jewish people. You don't take Washington or Paris or London and just slice it open.

ROBERTSON: But that's on the table. It’s almost a fait accompli ["a done deal"].

NETANYAHU: I don't think so. I think the Arabs think so. And you have a portion of the Israeli public who thinks so. But overwhelmingly the majority does not want that. And faced with that prospect, they would turn it back as they did when Barak offered it. And that was actually put to the ballot. But I think that the interesting thing is this, if you look at what is happening here, why do we have this conflict? Why is there this incessant terror campaign that is launched against us. It is not because of something we can do or not do, it’s not something we can give to the Palestinians; give them a piece of Jerusalem, give them, you know, West Bank, Judea, Samaria. Because what they want is not that. What they want is all of Israel, period. You know, and any border is unacceptable for them, and therefore, the real cause of this conflict with the Palestinians is this persistent Palestinian desire to eliminate the state of Israel. And that’s why it doesn't make any difference what some delegation says in Geneva. It makes a difference what they say in [unintelligible], what they say in Ramallah, what they say in Gaza. Because there they say oh, we’ll live side by side next to Israel. They say no. All of it. And we continue with a campaign to flood Israel with millions of Palestinians, bringing an effective end to the Jewish state. We continue with the terror. They don't lift a finger against the terror.

ROBERTSON: Does the media understand it? Does the Israeli population understand it? And do a number of the leaders in the government, do they understand what you just said?

NETANYAHU: I think the population by and large understands it. They don't suggest that we’ll have a partner. Everybody understands as long as Arafat is there, and his coterie, we don't have a partner. You just had an illustration of the strength of this in Iraq; you won the war, you won the war-- you defeated the Iraqi army, you threw out Saddam’s henchmen. But they continue as long as the man and the symbol of what he represents is virulent anti-Americanism. This reign of terror. It’s still there as long as he’s around. You know, it may still have repercussions, but it is clearly the process of ending it required making sure that this man is no longer a palpable presence and a credible threat to anyone. So Arafat is there.

ROBERTSON: What would you do with him? Put him in prison? Exile him? Kill him?

NETANYAHU: I always thought we should have exiled him, right from the start, with this violent terror assault.

ROBERTSON: Is Washington holding him back?

NETANYAHU: I think these are tactical questions. The obvious conclusion is, as long as he is here, then we don't have a partner. Because you don't have somebody who will stand up before the Palestinian people and say, hey, it’s over, like Sadat did. He said no more war. It’s over. So King Hussein, the late King Hussein of Jordan, stood before his people and said it’s over. He doesn’t say it’s over, he says we’ll continue, Jihad. It doesn't make any difference what he says to Barbara Walters, to CNN, whatever. It doesn’t make any difference. It’s what he says to his people that counts. And to them he says extricate Israel. And secondly, he allows, and encourages, the terror attacks against us. So he’s got both the illegitimate goal of policide-- the destruction of a state -- using the illegitimate means of suicide, terror suicide.

ROBERTSON: Is the Geneva Initiative merely a ploy to divide the Israeli population, or is it anything serious about it?

NETANYAHU: That’s what it is, vis-a-vis [in relation to] Israel. But it doesn't have any traction in the Palestinians.

ROBERTSON: Not at all?

NETANYAHU: No, of course not. It is not a free society. And that raises the question, how do you get any transformation? The answer is completely opposite from what the Geneva or Oslo crowd believe. They believe you begin with some grand eloquent declaration. Oslow, Geneva, next it will be Luxemburg; I don’t know, they’ll choose another European capitol. And, they make these grandiose declarations of peace, and this is supposed to produce economic investment, and that’s supposed to produce security. I maintain it’s exactly the opposite. First you start with security, so you are not held hostage to any single suicide bomber who blows everything to smithereens. Which is essentially what has happened to all previous attempts. You establish security, you establish prosperity, through free market means that we are doing, and other means. Many ideas that we have, not only help us but help also the Jordanians and Palestinians. Why not? I am a free marketeer. I want them to enjoy it, too. And third, after you stabilize the situation, you vest people with a material future. You know, they can live, they can eat and work, and then you create a base for a Palestinian leadership if it emerged, and it wanted to actually make peace with us, it could sway opinion in this otherwise poison society. You have to de-poison Palestinian society.

ROBERTSON: I was thinking that is what we did after the fall of Hitler. We had to de-Nazify Germany. Can you de-Nazify the Palestinians, the hate that’s been sown?

NETANYAHU: De-Arafat-ize them (laughter). It’s hard, you’re right. It’s very hard. But I think it’s the only reasonable way to do it, Pat. The notion that you have peace, prosperity, security. I turn it on its head. It’s security, prosperity, then you might have a chance at peace. Because that’s the way it really happens.

ROBERTSON: Does Israel have to go in and essentially assert martial law to make that happen?

NETANYAHU: We have done that. But if you create a fence, paradoxically it allows you to withdraw a lot of your forces, because you are there in order to stop people from coming in. But the fence does it, not completely. But it actually reduces your need to be there and so it normalizes the situation. And of course, this is presented as a Berlin Wall. It is not a Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall was meant to keep people in. This is meant to keep terrorists out.

GORDON ROBERTSON: We want you to have an understanding of the current situation in Israel, which is why we bring you these reports and interviews. We are going to have on Thursday's 700 Club, Part Two of the interview with Mr. Netanyahu. My father and he will talk about his plans to revitalize Israel's economy. We have to keep in mind, what is the avowed purpose, what is the goal of the plo? In their organizational documents, they state – this goes back over 50 years -- we want the ultimate destruction of the state of Israel. We want to drive Israel to the sea. They’ve never renounced that goal. In all of the various peace talks, they never renounced that goal. What they are currently being offered, they were offered years ago. They said then, we don't want that. And Arafat admitted if he accepted the Palestinian state drawn on the boundaries of the West Bank, with even parts of Jerusalem, he admitted he was facing assassination if he agreed to that, and if he gave up the goal of the destruction of the state of Israel. People say peace, peace. There is no peace here until the Prince of Peace comes back. I want to read what I read earlier. This is in Psalm 102 [verses 13 and 14]. This is the Messianic, the ultimate salvation of Israel. This is what David is talking about here. That's one of the conditions of it. The servants of God really need to take pleasure in every stone in Jerusalem and even showing favor to her dust. Jesus prophesied He will not come back until Jerusalem is no longer trodden under the foot of the Gentiles. Jerusalem is key in God's timetable. That's where Isaac was offered up by Abraham and Jesus was offered up by God. And that is where Jesus is going to come back, all centered on the city of Jerusalem. We need to pray for her peace and love and cherish even her stones.

Pat Robertson in Israel: The Fight Against Terrorism, Part II

December 19, 2003

 

CBN.com – While he was in Israel, Pat Robertson interviewed former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Today, in Part Two of that interview, they talk about the future of Israel's economy, and how both Israel and America are involved in fighting the war on terror.

PAT ROBERTSON: You have done a marvelous job of trying to take Israel out of the socialism of East Block countries, to bring it into the free market. Are you succeeding?

Benjamin Netanyahu: Yes, by and large, we are. You know, we have a very cohesive government. I mean the cabinet, and the coalition and the Knesset, and our Parliament is very solidly for free market, so we’ve been able to do a lot of things. We’ve cut welfare, cut government expenditure, had wage cuts in the public sector. The unions actually took wage cuts, smaller work increase but wage cuts, lowered taxes, took the pension funds away from the unions, balanced the books, appointed new management.

ROBERTSON: They let you do that?

Netanyahu: They didn’t let us, we legislated it.

ROBERTSON: Are they fighting? Are they going on strike?

Netanyahu: They tried, but it’s over with. It’s behind us. We already have new people running these things. And thank God.

ROBERTSON: I understand your welfare was going up, at what, 600 percent, as opposed to the growth of the population?

Netanyahu: The number of welfare recipients, from 1990 to the year 2002, 12 years, grew by 600 percent. Population grew by 30 percent. That’s with the influx of the Russian immigrants. So, this is 20 times more than the population. And you know a lot of people are cheating. And of course this creates this part of this Bermuda Triangle, it just rips up the economy. [unintelligible] People could be working right now, and are staying home and collecting fake money, real money for fake reasons. Then you’ve got these monopolies that take a huge drain off the economy. And then you’ve got high taxes to pay for it. And then what you get for it, you get high taxes drive more businesses out of business thereby creating more people who go into welfare. This just seals the trap. So what we’re doing is just the opposite of every one of these things. We’re cutting welfare, busting open the monopolies, bringing down taxes. And the result is, the economy has turned, and the financial markets understand it. So, capitalism in the Holy Land.

ROBERTSON: And my next question, what’s next for Bibi [Netanyahu]?

Netanyahu: When the time comes, I will run again. But at the moment I’ve got my hands full -- this major transformation of the Israeli economy. But I think the larger issue is not what will happen to me or even what will happen to Israel. We are doing all right. The larger question is what will happen to America, what will happen to the West? Because the forces that are aimed at us are merely an appendage of this large unrelenting fanaticism, this Islamist militancy that wants to reverse history, wipe away the last thousand years, especially the last 500 years of Western ascendancy and destroy the main engine of the West, which is the United States. Now they don't have the weapons to do it, but you have no doubt that say, bin Laden or the Taliban regime had a nuclear bomb, New York wouldn’t exist, and Washington wouldn’t exist. So these people are a palpable threat to our common civilization and to our future. They hate everything we cherish. They hate our freedoms, our conceptions of liberty. They hate the fact that women and men are equally enfranchised. And individual choice and individual freedom is something they absolutely abhor. They will use any weapon they have to destroy us. And the question is, what are we going to do over time to deal with that? Now we here are dealing with one extension of that diseased phenomenon and we have done a pretty good job, and the Israeli people have stood very strong. They haven’t cut, they haven’t run. And have been able to do, I think, a remarkable job in rolling back this cascade of terror. I think the American people have done a remarkable job under President Bush, and I was very pleased to see that, as they call him, the head of the snake has been found in Iraq. Saddam Hussein's capture is very symbolic and very important psychological pivot in the Middle East because these tyrants see that their day comes. And I think the root question is can the free world, and it just doesn't include Israel, and the United States, or being led by the United States. Not even Britain, where the government is with the United States but the people are divided. In Israel the people and the government are with the United States. And it is a question of whether the free countries, Western Europe which lags behind…Eastern Europe, which seems to get it a lot better -- will [they] summon the forces to bring down the regimes that threaten our future? Democratizing. I use the word democratizing instead of the word democracy, because that is a much longer process than it is in Japan, or in Germany. And stand their ground? And so far we have reasons to be optimistic not only on the Israel scene, but on the world scene.

ROBERTSON: This is a message that America needs to hear. Thank you so much. It’s always good to see you. God bless you.

Netanyahu: Good to see you.

GORDON ROBERTSON: It is a reason to be optimistic, but it’s also a reason to stand strong for Israel. I’ll give you one big reason right now. It’s out of Psalm 102. The servants of God are commanded, we are supposed to love the very stones of Jerusalem and to show favor to her dust. We are living in fulfillment of Bible prophecy right now. What Jesus said, the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. Jews and Jerusalem will be trodden under the foot of the Gentiles. Once that stops -- and it stopped in 1969 -- so we are in the set time. And then your servants – that includes you and me – are to cherish her very dust and favor her stones. We need to stand with Israel in these tough times.