Israel Update Week Ending March 25th
Zelensky and Israel, Summit in Sharm last Week, Summit in Israel this Week, COVID, Economy
DOMESTIC NEWS
The week in Israel began with one of the largest funerals in the country’s history; the funeral of Haredi spiritual leader Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky of Bnei Brak. Kanievsky was one of the last rabbis to have been educated in pre-war Europe. He was considered the leader of the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox (non-Hasidic) community. Nearly 500,000 were said to have attended the ceremony. In preparation for the massive gathering, the wide network of road closings managed to paralyze much of the Tel Aviv area. Schools were canceled and numerous people were pushed to work from home.
UKRAINE
A few hours after the Kanievsky funeral concluded in Bnei Brak, Ukrainian President Zelensky addressed members of Israel’s Knesset. I attended a simulcast of the address, which was projected across one of the central buildings in Tel Aviv’s HaBima Square. I thought his speech was good, albeit a bit short, and challenging to understand, in the outdoor conditions where I listened to the address. That being said, before I could even exit the square, I started receiving notifications on my watch that Israeli politicians had begun to criticize Zelensky, both for complaining Israel was not providing sufficient aid to Ukraine, and for his comparison of the horrors his country is currently enduring to the Holocaust.
At first, I was somewhat non-plussed by the criticism. After all, Zelensky has criticized every country with whom he has spoken, lamenting that they were not doing enough. Are Israeli politicians just too sensitive, or perhaps the criticism struck too close to home? Zelensky’s criticism over comparisons to the Holocaust quickly gained momentum. I even heard denunciation of Zelensky’s words from left-leaning friends. I deeply disagree with them and believe that while there was, and hopefully will only ever be one Holocaust; holocausts continue to happen. The article I wrote in Times of Israel more explicitly explains my position.
In the meantime, Israel’s field hospital has opened near Lviv, Ukraine. To date, approximately 10,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in Israel. 32-year old Ukrainian refugee, Valentyna Veretska won the women’s race in this morning’s Jerusalem Marathon.
TERROR
On Tuesday, a horrific terror attack took place in Be’ersheva. A lone terrorist, who was an ISIS supporter, moved around an outdoor shopping mall stabbing people. Four were killed. They were Doris Yahbas, Rabbi Moshe Kravitsky, Laura Yitzhak, and Menachem Yehezkel. The two women were each both mothers of three, leaving six children motherless. This attack was significantly different from almost all the lone wolf assaults in the past few years — nearly all of which were attacks on soldiers, or police. This terror spree ended when two civilians, one of whom was a bus driver, confronted the terrorist. The assailant refused to put down his knife and was in turn, shot dead. The terror attack was widely condemned. Mansour Abbas, Head of the Arab-Israeli Ra’am Party (which is a member of the current coalition), not only condemned the attack in no uncertain terms, but went further to say that it was their responsibility to fight extremism in schools, and throughout their society.
DIPLOMACY
On Monday, Prime Minister Bennett flew to Sharm el-sheik to meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi. That evening Bennett had a five-hour meeting with the Crown Prince of the UAE, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (MBZ). Bennett stayed overnight in Sharm and held a three-way meeting the next day, with Al-Sisi and MBZ. According to the joint announcement, the three discussed regional issues and developments in the world. Bennett and the leaders had intense discussions regarding their economies, with both leaders interested in deepening economic ties between the countries.
Missing from the public statement was the actual reason for the meeting, i.e., Iran. There were supposedly discussions of bolstering Military Alliances between the three countries. Finally, discussions were also conducted about the possibility of Israel placing radar warning system in the UAE, and creating a regional defense system. These meetings took place under the shadow of the talks about restoring the JCOPA agreement with Iran. The three leaders are all opposed to the agreement as it appears to stand. However, no one wants to confront Washington directly. In the meantime, despite all the talk about the imminent announcement of a deal with Iran, another week has gone by, with no agreement in sight.
On Sunday Foreign Minister Lapid is scheduled to host a summit in Israel between US Secretary of State Blinken and the United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani, and Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita. Frankly, this boggles my mind!
DEFENSE
Israel received three more F-35 planes from Lockheed-Martin this past week, which are slated to join the 140th and 116th Squadrons.
COVID—19
As I reported before, the daily number of infections from the Omicron variant never decreased in Israel, as they had in a number of other places. Now, instead of going down, Covid infection numbers have gone sharply up. This week, the daily count has been close to 14,000 each day. The positive Covid test rates have been close to 20% every day this past week. So far, the government is not planning any new restrictions but has only extended the indoor mask mandate for another month.
ECONOMY
The “Start-up Economy” continues to be hot. According to an Our Crowd Survey of the high-tech sector, 72% of companies surveyed increased recruitment in Q4 2021, and 62% plan to hire more employees in 2022. However, companies reported they are finding it harder and harder to find qualified employees.
Elbit announced it was awarded a contract for approximately $27 million, by the Swedish Defense Material Administration, to provide the Swedish Armed Forces with M339 rounds, 120mm ammunition, as well as, Data Setting Units for its Leopard Main Battle Tanks (MBTs). The contract will be realized over a period of ten months.
Swedish Armed Forces selected the M339 to improve its firepower and the ability of their battle tanks to engage different types of targets. This purchase represents the first of an expected long list of orders Israeli defense manufacturers will likely receive in the coming months, as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
NucleAI raised $33 million. Leading the round was Section32, a venture fund started by Bill Harris, previously from Google Ventures. The company has developed an AI platform that can calculate which cancer treatment regimen is optimal for each individual cancer patient.
Light lyrics raised $26 million, in an A-round of funding. The company has developed a platform to control a cloud environment automatically. According to the company, their platform enables DevOps to automatically predict, pre-empt, and prevent failures, downtime, and business disruption caused by infrastructure development or updates, by simulating all possible dependencies and impacts on operations before and after deployment.
Sentrigo raised $70 million, in a Seed-round of funding. The company, founded by two former Palo Alto senior executives, said its plans to develop a platform for digital confirmation of the online signatures.