“When facing our enemies’ disruptive innovation, Israel has been left behind,” Education Minister and Bayit Yehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett said on Tuesday in a speech before the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv. “All our very expensive F35 fighters will not help us against fifty commando fighters who dig their way into Netiv HaAsara (a Jewish village just north of the Gaza Strip border).”
Relying on his own hi tech background, Bennett cited Wikipedia, digital cameras and the iPhone as examples of Disruptive Innovation: there was nothing wrong in the way the Britannica, Kodak and Nokia were operating, they were all dedicated and efficient, but they were swiftly replaced by products that were based on completely new ways of delivering the same service.
“The most modern ceramic vests will not protect us from the delegitimization campaign, which has become the foundation of the attacks against Israel, and is capable of neutralizing a significant portion of our physical strength,” Bennett explained.
“Instead of purchasing more planes, instead of repeating the same action and expecting different results, we must recalculate our direction, examine our core assumptions on all fronts and identify the changes that would lead us to a different path,” he said.
Pointing out that Hezbollah now possesses the world’s largest stock of attack missiles, Bennett said, “We must ask ourselves, how can it be that in every confrontation with Hamas and Hezbollah we bleed, but the head of the octopus enjoys complete immunity?”
He then pointed to the recently passed state budget and said Israelis must ask themselves courageously and without prejudice if it truly represents a correct set of priorities.
“We should adopt the secret of success of Israeli startups,” Bennett said. “The courage to reexamine ourselves each day from a different angle and break the conceptual cobwebs. The courage to dream and to make the dream come true. We must return to our Zionist foundations, the sources of national strength … renewal and daring, initiative, vision, and skepticism.”
Regarding Israeli policy in the Gaza Strip, Bennett advocated accepting the new reality and rescinding Israel’s “responsibility for 2 million Gazans.” He suggested they should be permitted to reopen their lifelines — such as access to the sea — under proper security controls.