“The minute Mr. Putin decided to put his military forces in Syria, I went to see him. And I said, “Look, here’s what I’m doing.”

There is an irreplaceable ally. It’s called the United States of America.

So for Europeans we are like Belgiums in the Congo, or the French in Alger, or the British in India. Strange interlopers in somebody else’s land. But in fact, we [Israeli] have been here for 4,000 years. This is our ancestral homeland.

I know that Israel does not stand alone. I know that America stands with Israel.

The rules of engagement have become so rigid that governments often straightjacket themselves in the face of unambiguous aggression.

The Romans used to say that courage is not the only virtue, but it’s the only one that makes the other virtues possible.

I think that a strong Israel is the only Israel that will bring the Arabs to the peace table.

No partial solution, not even the total redressing of the grievance he complains of, will satisfy him — until our social system is destroyed or delivered into his hands.

There’s no one in Israel who appreciates more than me the importance of American support for Israel.

In the frameworks of a peace agreement, a government under my leadership would agree to make real territorial concessions but will not compromise our security borders.

90 percent, 85 to 90 percent of Israeli citizens in Judea-Samaria, in the West Bank, live in clusters, in urban blocks.

The idea of imposing peace from the outside doesn’t work.

I know Donald Trump. I know him very well. And I think his attitude, his support for Israel is clear.

The right combination is between a free economy and social policy that addresses the needs of society and creates equal opportunity.

I think they’re timid, they’re afraid to actually stand up to these killers. And I think that they’re afraid, maybe for their own sake, for their own political hides, sometimes for their own physical safety. And they don’t take that necessary plunge.

I’m not intervening in Syria. But at the same time, if Syria tries to intervene with us, if Iran tries to use Syria to attack us, we’ll stop it.

You can make peace with an enemy, if the enemy abandons the idea of destroying you. That is the critical test. Democracies fail to understand what I just said.

I think that the religious and the military right wings are just two sides of the same coin if somebody uses God and religion and somebody uses country and security.

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.

The easiest and quickest path into the esteem of traditional military authorities is by the appeal to the eye, rather than to the mind. ‘The polish and pipeclay’ school is not yet extinct, and it is easier for the mediocre intelligence to become an authority on buttons, than on tactics.

Under Syrian law, a journalist is not allowed to report on military matters. This may be wrong or right, but that’s just the way it is.

For even the best of peace training is more theoretical than practical experience … indirect practical experience may be the more valuable because infinitely wider.

While the nominal strength of a country is represented by its numbers and resources, this muscular development is dependent on the state of its internal organs and nerve-system – upon its stability of control, morale, and supply.

People are fond of using military terms to describe what they do. We call it bombing when we go out painting, when of course it’s more like entertaining the troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a country without an army.

I find skydiving really hard. I broke my back while skydiving when I was in the military, and for 18 months all my nightmares were about falling.