Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett & Geopolitics Addressed By Joel Rosenberg
Naftali Bennett is the topic of a question presented to Joel C. Rosenberg at a recent Epicenter Briefing.
Rosenberg addresses Bennett’s geopolitics & the Israeli Prime Minister’s strengths or weaknesses as he sees them. Also addressed is the relationship between Naftali Bennett and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Transcript:
- [Participant] Give us a little insight into the new Prime Minister.
- [Joel] Okay, yes. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, what’s interesting is, see, he’s 49 years old, and in many ways, it is fair to call him a protege of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Now Netanyahu can’t stand him. He’s gone to war against him, but let’s put a couple of facts on the table. So, Netanyahu recruited Naftali Bennett to be his Chief of Staff. You have to understand that Bennett served in the same special forces unit, the most elite in Israel; our son served in an elite unit, but it wasn’t as elite as this one; it’s called Sayeret Matkal, it’s the delta force of Israel. Bennett’s 20 years behind in age, but Bibi Netanyahu saw that that guy who was a commando, he was a business leader, he built up high-tech businesses and then sold them, made $400 million on one of the deals, he comes from the Center-Right, we think the same on Iran, we think the same on trying to win the Arab nations over to make peace with Israeli. These two were peas in the pod, a mentor and protege. We’re all followers of Jesus Christ here, so that’ll be an analogy you’ll understand. Netanyahu’s tremendous strength, I mean, the guy is a world statesman. I mean, we’ve never had an Israeli prime minister that like was here, and anybody that came after him was going to be down here because you’re like Naftali who? Netanyahu could pick up the phone and get Putin on or Trump or whomever. He was moving history from a little tiny country, but Netanyahu is not a disciple-maker. As he recruits people and mentors them, if they start gaining popularity, influence, a following, he’s not happy about that, and he drives them off. And so, I think Bennett so deeply admires him, Netanyahu, that he tried in every possible way that I can see to try to build a government with Netanyahu. Still, it didn’t work after four times, so Bennett chose to go with a team that could put a government together, and they were offering him the prime ministership. He needs a lot of prayers. I’m not taking a position for or against; I think if you’re the prime minister, you need prayer. We need to pray for him. I will say that he’s reached out; he and his team have reached out to me and said, how do we build relationships with evangelicals? That was BBs province; that was his portfolio. None of the rest of us have done it. So I said, sure, I’m happy to help where I can. Again, not as partisan, just as any believers, unconditionally loving the leadership of Israel, just as we love the state of Israel. So, that’s the short version, but he’s got a no-seat margin of error in his coalition. If somebody has a bad falafel one night and doesn’t come into work the next day, the government could fall; it could have fallen while we’re sitting here. So, we need prayer.
