Netanyahu in Milan: Israel's contributions to world far outweigh efforts to isolate it

The prime minister says millions around the world benefit from Israeli advancements.

By HERB KEINON
Updated: AUGUST 28, 2015 02:55
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at the Expo Milan 2015 (photo credit: KOBI GIDON / GPO)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at the Expo Milan 2015
(photo credit: KOBI GIDON / GPO)
Israel’s technological and agricultural developments to better the world are much stronger than all attempts to boycott and isolate the country, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday at Israel’s exhibition at Expo Milan 2015.
The Israeli exhibition showcases the technological advancements Israel has pioneered in agriculture, and Netanyahu said that not only have a million people who have attended the expo seen those advances, but many millions more around the world – in China, India, Latin America and Africa – benefited from them personally.
“This is stronger then any attempt to push us to the margins, because we are center-stage in agriculture, scientific innovations, technology, and creating a better future for everyone,” he said.
Netanyahu said that Israel, with its innovations in agriculture, is contributing “to the defeat of Malthusian projections.”
“Malthus said a few hundred years ago that the world’s population will die out because of irreversible disparity between the numbers of people and the food available, and obviously science has defeated that,” he said, adding that “Israel in this field has been a pioneer of the world for the last 70 and more years, even before the founding of our state.”
Pointing to Israel’s strides in water desalination, Netanyahu said “we have 10 times more population than we had when the state was founded 67 years ago and we have half the rainfall. Yet Israel has no water problems, because we were able to solve this with all these techniques.” He said Israel is sharing that information with people around the world “so they can have water, they can have crops, they can have cows that give a lot more milk.”
Netanyahu, accompanied by his wife Sarah, arrived in Italy on Thursday for a three-day visit, which will also take him to Florence and a meeting Saturday evening with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.