Larry Kudlow: Former Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reveals 'crucial lessons' in our interview

Dec 6 marks the 5th anniversary of former President Donald Trump announcing the move of the American embassy to Jerusalem

In a few moments, we are going to run our just-completed interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is out with a brand new book: "Bibi: My Story." It’s a great read. 

Today, as you may know, is the fifth anniversary of the decision by former President Donald Trump to move the American embassy to Jerusalem. Prime Minister Netanyahu called that a crucial decision — indeed, he called it a biblical decision, going back 3,000 years — and we discussed how that decision was a major contributor to the peace agreement that came to be known as the Abraham Accords, which was completed a few years later. That was between the U.S., Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and Kosovo.  

Now, the prime minister and I also talked about how his courageous speech before Congress, back in 2015, where he laid out his disagreements with the Obama administration regarding a nuclear deal with Iran and some other things — how that speech (which is a prominent part of Mr. Netanyahu's new book) may itself have laid the intellectual groundwork for the embassy move to Jerusalem and the Abraham Accords and a complete shift away from the central role of Palestine and toward a new peace in the Middle East based on diplomacy, trade and investment between Israel and its Arab neighbors.  

Also, the prime minister and I spent some time talking about, you guessed it, free-market economics and how he was able to change Israel's socialist state into a capitalist one.  

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Now, this began years ago when he was finance minister, and, yes, he held several meetings in New York with the late supply-side guru Jack Kemp and one Larry Kudlow. By the way, the prime minister acknowledged all that and then he relayed a story that Jack Kemp told him to do three things: cut taxes, cut taxes and cut taxes. But the Prime Minister, while taking that advice, added to it the need to cut the heavy hand of government in order to lighten the burden on free enterprise and entrepreneurship.  

So, you’ve got limited government, spending cuts, tax cuts, deregulation — all that work to turn Israel into a dynamic, entrepreneurial, technology-led economy, whose per-capita GDP now exceeds France, the United Kingdom, Germany and a couple of others. 

On top of all that, Israel finally privatized its energy agency and guess what? It discovered vast natural gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean, all of which shows the value of the free flow of trade and investment, alongside free markets, as the very foundation of peace through strength.   

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Israel flag with a view of old city Jerusalem and the KOTEL- Western wall (iStock / iStock)

These are crucial lessons. They go back to Ronald Reagan winning the Cold War and Prime Minister Netanyahu establishing Israel as a world power. By the way, we are fighting the same battles here, aren’t we? Limited government, spending restraint, tax cuts, deregulation, natural gas development and an end to big government socialism right here at home in the U.S. right now.  

We will speak with Prime Minister Netanyahu in just a few moments, but that’s kind of my warmup riff to make a couple of points. 

This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow's opening commentary on the December 6, 2022, edition of "Kudlow."