Me and apparently a lot of other people felt that the people who should benefit most from the country are the people who contribute the most, which is the middle class, who are drafted into the army, spend three years there and 25 years in the reserves. That is why I had enough votes to create out of nowhere the second-largest party in the country.

Israel is a long way from facing a threat to its very existence. We are too strong, both economically and militarily, for that. If anything threatens Israel, it is this form of paranoid thought that makes us think: "Oh God, they're going to kill us in two seconds! What should we do?"

I felt that we had become a society ruled by sectors, by interest groups: Whoever's connected to the Israeli government gets more.

When I introduced my economic plan for the first time, people had mixed views because it's the largest cut in the history of Israeli budgets. We have a big deficit caused by the fact that the former government took upon itself too many obligations.

Orthodox Jews often ask you: "Are you an Israeli first, or a Jew?" I see no difference between the two. After all, I'm also simultaneously the son of my parents, the husband of my wife and the father of my children.

I used to have so many opinions before I learned the facts.

Israel is a tremendous success story. When I arrived, there were 600,000 Jews living here. Today there are close to 6 million. We have one of the world's top high-tech industries and a high standard of living. There is only one thing we haven't achieved: Making the country safer for Jews.