If you are located on a hill and are attacked on you from all wings, the last thing you need by you is a philosopher.
Unless he is also a symbol in Golani.
This is what Dr. Yuval Steinitz has been in the Likud governments led by Netanyahu since 2009. Let's not be shy, there are very few ministers at all, as far as memory goes back, who were influential and made changes and their influence was not bad.
Steinitz stood out with achievements that upgraded the state of the country, and he did so from the positions he least expected to be in.
After the 2009 elections, he has been a member of the Knesset for about ten years, and this is a chapter in itself.
However, when Netanyahu returned to power, Steinitz thought it was his turn.
He thought he would compete with Silvan Shalom for the post of foreign minister.
He thought that the role of education minister could also suit him and over the years many factors, especially in academia, had hoped that Steinitz would get the education portfolio.
"The only case I do not want because I do not fit into it, is the Minister of Finance," he told me in a conversation at a remote cafe in Tel Aviv.
But this is exactly what Bibi dropped on him, and what the Netanyahu trio, Stanley Fischer and Yuval Steinitz did at the time, jumped Israel into an economic-political path that already seems natural today.
As today, the world economy went down the drain due to the financial crisis of September 2008, but with Steinitz as finance minister, Israel was back to growth within a few months.
And the road has been over the years of almost zero inflation.
Steinitz opposed the economic concessions Netanyahu made following the mass Rothschild protest, after which the Trachtenberg Commission was set up.
Then, when the activity began to create the gas layout "to get the gas out of the water," as Netanyahu defined it, the philosopher himself stood under incendiary fire along with his traveling companion, Prof. Eitan Sheshinsky.
Both have faced more serious threats than we are familiar with in the public arena of recent years.
Steinitz was a game-changer in economic-political contacts because of intellectual superiority and acceptable academic ability at the ministerial level.
This is how he contacted Angel Guria and managed to bring Israel into the OECD.
Thus, even when the gas outline met with opposition from the Obama administration, Steinitz met with U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
The description of the meeting can be found in Steinitz's book on the gas layout.
Summers was unprepared for Steinitz's pulls and was forced to succumb to Israeli logic.
All the strategic energy ties that bear fruit are his work.
Steinitz, as chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the first decade of the century, raised the issues of the IDF and intelligence.
He repeatedly confronted Chief of Staff Boogie Ya'alon and Chief of the Security Service Zeevi Farkash;
He promoted the concept of sea arm development, including reinforcing submarine power.
The interesting thing is, in recent years he has had a good relationship with Naftali Bennett.
He did not like Netanyahu's attitude toward Bennett during the time he served as a senior minister in his government.
From his position as a senior minister in the past, Steinitz could continue in the future as foreign minister or defense minister.
For less than that there is no point in staying.
The political map as it eliminates the possibilities of promotion.
When his wife serves as a Supreme Court justice, the reasoning of a conflict of interest facilitates the decision to retire.
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
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