Friday, February 23, 2018

Moshe Feiglin on Moreshet Radio: End Corruption by Removing Government Interference

Here at Reshet Moreshet we are going back and forth between talking about the investigations against PM Netanyahu and the security situation. Good morning to Moshe Feiglin. We would like to speak to you about the investigations against the Prime Minister.

Good morning. Actually, I can link between the two topics.

Great, go right ahead.

The link is that if there is a reason why Netanyahu has to go home, it is because of Israel’s security situation. Certainly not because of the cigars and the champagne. Netanyahu has to go for strategic reasons. The Left’s manhunt after him smells like a political putsch.

Do you think that Netanyahu has to go home because of the escalation in Gaza?


Netanyahu was elected in 1996 on the waves of the fallout from the Oslo Accords. The only thing to which he was committed strategically was to nullify the catastrophe called the Oslo Accords. When he did not do that, he threw all of us down the slope of the Two State Solution process, to which Israel is enslaved until today. Let us take the example of the Protective Edge Campaign. The IDF was not able to triumph over a terror organization that was shooting rockets at Tel Aviv for over a month and a half. That fiasco is Netanyahu’s. There are more examples. The release of Gilad Shalit, the metal detectors on the Temple Mount and more. They all stem from the fact that twenty years ago, Netanyahu made a strategic decision to conduct Israeli policy from within the Oslo Accords instead of nullifying them. 

Do you think that the police, headed by a religious Jew, have really adopted the goal of bringing down the rightist government?

No, I do not suspect the Police Chief. I think that the Left has activated all of its heavy guns -its seats of power - which are not elected by the public. With its power in the media and in the Attorney General’s staff, the Left is able to create public opinion and a national agenda. Without that, I do not think these investigations would have ever gotten off the ground.

But Former PM Olmert has already been jailed, as has former Finance Minister (Labor party) Hirschson. So how can you claim that these investigations are political?

That is exactly the point. All the leftist leaders were guilty of graft and corruption much more serious than the borderline cases of which Netanyahu is being accused. There is definitely a feel of political agenda behind the champagne and cigars accusations. If these accusations were really motivated by an anti-corruption agenda, Former PM Ehud Barak would have been behind bars long ago for serious corruption. We would also have seen Former PM Sharon behind bars – despite the fact that he suddenly decided to drive the Jews out of Gush Katif.

Ehud Barak is old news…

Old news? Just a few weeks ago, a former PM testified that he received a kickback from every weapons deal that Israel concluded during his term.

But that happened quite a few years ago. It is no longer relevant to the public.


Look at what is happening here. Millions of dollars in graft that Olmert said went to Ehud Barak’s Swiss bank account – which is much more than just monetary corruption, but likely includes deals that endangered Israel – we do not know what the considerations were for choosing Israel’s arsenal – nobody talks about that. How many headlines have you seen about that? But the whole country is topsy-turvy over cigars and champagne. Clearly there is a political agenda at work here.

Now I want to ask you a question. Have you ever gotten an earlier medical appointment, for example, because you knew the right person in the office? If so, you are guilty of corruption and you can be investigated just like Netanyahu. This is not to say that Netanyahu’s actions were fine. But there is a huge difference between corruption in the millions of dollars, which has never been investigated, and the accusations against Netanyahu. It is all politics.

If you were prime minister, how would you prevent the law enforcement agencies from operating for a particular political agenda?

First of all, I fought against corruption when I was a Knesset Member and paid a price for that. The police are not the problem. The solution is to get the State out of the lives of the private citizens. First of all, significantly downsize the government from 30 ministers to 11. Simplify the process of housing construction, allow parents to send their children to the schools of their choice, eliminate the dependence of the citizen on bureaucracy.

The government also has to be out of the media. Now Netanyahu is being accused of trying to influence one of the major news channels to report on him positively. It is no secret that the public broadcast in Israel leans to the Left. Former broadcaster and current Labor MK Shelly Yehimovitz admitted that. In other words, for tens of years, billions in taxpayer shekels have been channeled to the agenda of one political approach. All that Netanyahu apparently did was to try to steal one of the horses back to his side.

The solution to the one-sided broadcasting is not to enlist the same method for the good of the Right, but rather to stop working that way. Eliminate the public broadcasting system and broadcasting franchises. People should be able to take out a license and broadcast as they please.

Corruption is the result of government interference in the lives of its citizens. If government would be removed from our daily lives, the corruption would not have a breeding ground.

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