Ministry of Finance director general Shlomi Heisler has tendered his resignation to Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich after the 2025 state budget is passed by the Knesset Finance Committee Heisler has been in the post for two years "I took on this important role with holy awe in one of the most challenging periods that the State of Israel and Israeli society have ever known and after the intensive stage of the war is over residents can return to their homes in the north and the south I have tendered my resignation to the minister finance I have worked hand in hand with the minister and I very much regret the constraint that compels me to leave my post now our paths will cross again in the future." Heisler said in private conversation that the main task in front of him was to pass the new budget and that afterwards he would consider his professional future He said these things when he was recovering from a medical event the government was delaying preparation of the budget Israel’s credit rating had been downgraded and the atmosphere in the Ministry of Finance was particularly murky The delays at that time have led to a situation in which the 2025 budget has still not been approved and once its passage through the Knesset Finance Committee is secured Heisler found himself responsible for the unprecedented output of four state budgets within two years He led the team that formulated the main reform by the Ministry of Finance for next year: the taxation of trapped profits in personal service companies Heisler came to the Ministry of Finance from the real estate sector He previously served as head of the National Planning Staff in the Ministry of the Interior and when he came to the Ministry of Finance he instituted reforms in that area such as the arnona (municipal tax) fund and the National Infrastructure Law Heisler was also involved in wage agreements with the Histadrut (General Federation of Labor in Israel) and the Teachers’ Union It is not clear whom Smotrich will pick to succeed Heisler He has a record of procrastination in appointing people to senior positions in his ministry The natural candidates are vice director general Israel Malachi and deputy director general Yoray Matzlawi but some in the ministry believe that Smotrich will look elsewhere he was not perceived in the ministry as a political figure and he tried to keep his distance from matters such as budgets for coalition parties While Smotrich often clashed with senior officials such as Budgets Commissioner Yogev Gradus and the Ministry of Finance’s outgoing legal counsel Asi Messing Heisler was considered a conciliatory figure who sought compromise The criticism of him voiced within the ministry was that he was sometimes too much of a compromiser and would not bang on the table to protect the professionals at the ministry from political interference "Shlomi Heisler is a first rate professional who managed the Ministry of Finance in one of the most challenging periods that the State of Israel has ever known," Smotrich said I thank Shlomi Heisler for his work and efforts for the sake of the State of Israel He is an asset to the country and the public service and I have no doubt that he will continue to harness his phenomenal capabilities for the benefit of the State of Israel." Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on December 25 © Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. In a moment of overwhelming joy, four Israeli hostages – Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv – returned to Israel on Saturday after being held captive by Hamas in the Gaza since Oct Their release marks a significant milestone in the ongoing hostage crisis her father Yaakov and a fighter who rescued her and other hostages / Credit: IDF "I don't have much time left in this world; this is my last wish." Noa told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "I'm very emotional; I haven't heard Hebrew in so long." To President Isaac Herzog "The first thing we'll do when he returns is be with family and watch a movie together He stayed in Israel to live out his dream and was working as a security guard at Nova festival when abducted The hostages were flown by helicopter to Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer for medical evaluation The Diplomatic-Security Cabinet has approved a wide-scale military operation in the Gaza Strip dubbed "Gideon’s Chariots," aimed at defeating Hamas.. The plan includes conquering the Gaza Strip and holding territory moving the civilian population southward for its protection "It's time to stop fearing the word occupation," Smotrich said outlining Israel's strategy in Gaza and discussing ultra-Orthodox conscription at.. Analysis  Archaeology Blogpost Business & Finance Culture Exclusive Explainer Environment Features Health In Brief Jewish World Judea and Samaria Lifestyle Cyber & Internet Sports Diplomacy  Iran & The Gulf Gaza Strip Politics Shopping Terms of use Privacy Policy Submissions Contact Us The first issue of Israel Hayom appeared on July 30 Israel Hayom was founded on the belief that the Israeli public deserves better more balanced and more accurate journalism [contact-form-7 id=”508379″ html_id=”isrh_form_Newsletter_en” title=”newsletter_subscribe”] "Businesses and households in the north have undoubtedly suffered a hard blow The north will recover and return to prosperity but the recovery process will be long," Bank Leumi EVP and head of banking division Eyal Ben-Haim told the "Return to the North" conference today Ben-Haim said that the north will recover in the coming years "We at Bank Leumi expect that 2025 may be the year of the great rebound in the north in particular and in the Israeli economy in general the shekel is expected to strengthen this year Convergence to the inflation target is expected which will subsequently lead to a cut in interest rates we expect growth at a rate exceeding the economy's potential as part of the post-war reconstruction and recovery process "I believe that the north will once again be an attractive place for business Just like the Galilion Hotel that is hosting us today and is finally returning to activity we at Bank Leumi are here to be by the side of business owners." Ben-Haim illustrated his message with the story of a small importer of interior doors from Kiryat Bialik whose business was severely damaged by a missile strike He said that the bank's Haifa branch helped him and supported him as he reopened his business "Thousands of small businesses were damaged during the war Farmers and businesses whose employees were evacuated or drafted through emergency orders continued to work Industrial plants maintained continuity and business continuity as much as possible Business owners who evacuated themselves reinvented themselves This is extraordinary resilience," said Ben-Haim adding that his bank was the first to reopen its branch in Kiryat Shmona just hours after the ceasefire came into effect We are seeing growing interest in key sectors of the economy both in the north and even during the war," Ben-Haim concluded expressing confidence that the hundreds and thousands of northern businesses will recover from the great crisis of the war and return to prosper Full disclosure: The conference was organized together with Bank Leumi and sponsored by Strauss and Dorel Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on January 22 Former Israeli hostages Shlomi Ziv (L) and Almog Meir Jan (R) | Photo: Efrat Eshel In a powerful testament to human resilience, Shlomi Ziv and Almog Meir Jan, two of the hostages rescued from Gaza during the daring Operation Arnon have spoken out for the first time about their 246-day ordeal in captivity Their harrowing account is part of a national documentation project spearheaded by the Government Press Office aimed at preserving the experiences of returned hostages and their families for future generations Shlomi Ziv faces the cameras for the first time since his dramatic rescue from Gaza during Operation Arnon which also freed fellow survivors Almog Meir Jan Ziv has agreed to recount the terrifying details of his 246-day captivity at the hands of Hamas as part of a national documentation project for returned hostages and their families "If it means the world will learn the truth about what they did to us what we endured in captivity – I'm on board," Meir Jan affirmed and Kozlov employed what they describe as "creative" punishments "Let's just say he had an issue with us moving around," Almog recalled I don't want to see you on your feet.'" Shlomi added: "But we'd wear him down after about four days We'd win him over by playing the role of obedient children." Almog adds: "We were itching to retaliate "This is the Yad Vashem of October 7," explained Nitzan Chen These testimonies will be preserved for posterity which we've been closely following in recent weeks 25 former hostages of various ages have shared their stories since returning along with 21 family members of those still in captivity listeners are momentarily transported into their captivity feeling a fleeting second of blood-curdling terror We've also witnessed the extraordinary resilience displayed by the hostages during and after their ordeal as well as the coping mechanisms and shared experiences among the survivors Many described the terror of nearby IDF strikes and the constant anxiety about their captors' unpredictable reactions to the intensified fighting as a recurring theme in numerous testimonies Several returned hostages have shared the emotional burden they've carried since their release the most crucial mission now is saving lives They carry the weight of responsibility for those they had to leave behind," Susie Ozsinay Aranya one of three documenters heading the project on behalf of GPO explained The full interview will be published in the coming days Israel's Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich Ministry of Finance director general Ilan Rom and chief economist Shmuel Abramzon today held final consultations on the issue of dealing with the Trump administration's tariff plan they will hold a follow-up call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of preparations for negotiations with the US The Ministry of Finance aims to send two delegations to Washington The first delegation will consist of professional teams and will fly as soon as possible for talks with their counterparts in the Trump administration a second delegation will fly out to the US capital The decision on the composition of the first delegation to the US and its timing will be decided by Netanyahu while Minister of Economy and Industry Nir Barkat is also interested in participating in the talks in the US The 17% tariff imposed on goods from Israel is seen by the Ministry of Finance as a high starting point for negotiations will be determined not only according to the dry formula presented by the Americans in recent weeks the US calculates the tariff rate for each country based on its trade deficit with it the more a country sells to the US than it buys the higher the tariff rate that will be imposed on it Netanyahu said at the joint press conference with US President Donald Trump that Israel will work to reduce the trade deficit Assuming that Israel does not want to export less Israel has already announced cancelation of the few tariffs that existed on US goods and the transfer of the import reform from Europe to imports from the US But this is not enough to significantly lower the tariff The Ministry of Finance is not even trying to estimate how many percent points of customs duties Israel will save as a result of each of the announced measures and others on the agenda such as the cancelation of the requirement for reciprocal procurement This is with the understanding that the actual customs duty will be set in talks If the customs duty imposed on Israel is not determined solely by the dry figure of the trade deficit what else could determine the final tariff The answer may lie in dealing with bureaucracy Every business in Israel is familiar with labyrinthine Israeli bureaucracy which also has a notorious reputation with US companies The chapter dedicated to Israel in the Trump administration's tariff plan report pointed to a series of requirements and regulations that make it difficult for US companies to do business in Israel These include a lack of regulatory transparency and draconian requirements in government tenders It all sounds familiar to Israeli ears too the US could now bring about a reduction in bureaucracy which all the protests by public committees and proposed reforms to open up competition in Israel over many years The main points in the raft of measures and benefits that Israel will offer to the Americans during their visit to Washington are based on the comments in the US administration's report Israel is trying to provide a response to each of the issues raised US companies have complained that updates to food legislation are only available to subscribers to a private legal database which creates a lack of clarity for US exporters on future regulatory requirements Another claim is the lack of access to defense procurement in Israel due to requirements for local agents or local bank accounts in contrast to the accessibility given to Israeli companies in the US market hardship lies in Israeli restrictions on the transfer of data across borders which make digital business activity difficult All of these barriers will have to be addressed in Israel in order to gain relief in the tariff program although is possible that the easing of Israeli bureaucracy will only serve the US Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on April 20 '#' : location.hash;window._cf_chl_opt.cOgUQuery = location.search === '' && location.href.slice(0 location.href.length - window._cf_chl_opt.cOgUHash.length).indexOf('?') !== -1 '?' : location.search;if (window.history && window.history.replaceState) {var ogU = location.pathname + window._cf_chl_opt.cOgUQuery + window._cf_chl_opt.cOgUHash;history.replaceState(null "\/liveblog_entry\/former-bat-yam-mayor-injured-in-car-bombing-says-he-didnt-know-of-threat\/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=Bf5urj1jEDUxikb3nZqAaIFZyAXYxBN7fMJvQpEMuFw-1746490567-1.0.1.1-xzhs5EThFV3Lad9Rp1H8TJVEE44GP7jinHDzD3DIFRE" + window._cf_chl_opt.cOgUHash);cpo.onload = function() {history.replaceState(null ogU);}}document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(cpo);}()); On Friday the government's new public transport justice reform comes into effect exemptions and discounts will also be expanded This reform was devised by the Ministry of Transport shortly after Minister of Transport Miri Regev took office without any professional work undertaken to explain the need for it and only a year after a previous fare reform had been implemented The first reform was budgeted for in the 2023 state budget free travel for a year was provided to discharged soldiers and 50% discounts were provided to residents in areas defined as peripheral according to the Central Bureau of Statistics "young people" aged 18-26 received 33% discounts to correspond with the coalition agreements with the Haredi factions which demanded discounts for yeshiva students lowering the qualification age for free transport from 75 to 67 And expanding 50% discounts for residents in neighborhoods in the 1-5 socioeconomic clusters of the Central Bureau of Statistics index These discounts will be of assistance to Israel's Arab and haredi populations as well as other neighborhoods in the periphery and central Israel which is ranked in the seventh socioeconomic cluster people have already shared on social media the difficulty of distinguishing where one neighborhood ends and another begins and the innovative model of discounts by neighborhood is expected to encounter significant difficulties Most citizens who live in metropolitan centers will not receive discounts The latest reform is accompanied by a fare increase The Ministry of Transport claims that about 80% of the country's citizens will benefit from discounts on public transport while the reform is accompanied by a significant fare increase of tens of percent and these are in addition to previous increases light rail fares were hiked from NIS 6 to NIS 8 to help cover government subsidies and increases in inputs (fuel the fare for a single bus trip will also increase by NIS 2 and other travel will rise by similar percentages so that a free monthly ticket for urban travel By how much is the government subsidizing public transport The government insists that it must increase fares to raise overall revenue from passengers top ease the government subsidy the government is already subsidizing public transport by 85% the subsidy budget has quadrupled to NIS 14 billion annually This large budget has been directed at both increasing services and also covering erosion in fare revenue as a result of discounts granted often on a political rather than professional basis The average revenue per passenger in 2023 was NIS 2.7 shekels compared with NIS 7.9 (in 2023 prices) in 2004 the number of passengers increased only marginally and the average increase in passengers is lower than the population increase Studies undertaken by the Ministries of Finance and Transport have found weaknesses in public transport planning So while large sums of money have been spent The studies show that higher frequencies and more routes are needed making more bus lanes would create a more efficient network since with the same number of buses and drivers more reliable and faster journeys could be made it is necessary to change planning and strategy because most money is spent on long and inefficient intercity bus trips while most passengers board crowded buses for short in Israel there is no hierarchical bus system Worldwide it is customary to divide the system into high frequency arterial lines in Israel the system was is a haphazard patchwork in the Tel Aviv metropolitan region there are about three frequent lines per hour on average compared with 10 in Barcelona and 8.5 in London metropolitan management of transport is necessary The system is currently managed nationally by the Ministry of Transport Is it right to raise fares while giving discounts to specific populations Of all the principles already understood in Israel the current reform only addresses some of them Studies and surveys conducted in Israel and worldwide have found that price is not taken into account by the public when deciding whether to use public transport What does persuade people to switch to public transport is reliability The state budget has also allocated NIS 250 million for service additions and the Ministry of Transport is striving to streamline the existing network But base lanes are being added very slowly the reform of metropolitan authorities has stalled instead of the large and unprecedented fare increase being used to improve the network and service it is being used to provide discounts to specific populations in order to help different groups of people - such as senior citizens and residents of the periphery - they should be helped directly and not through discounts on public transport because the money that comes to the system is not spent on improving it although the reform is called "public transport justice," it is far from concepts of justice because it continues to constitute an obstacle rather than an opportunity Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on April 21 Supermarket chain Shufersal (TASE: SAE) recorded a moderate rise in revenue last year of 3% from NIS 323 million in 2023 to NIS 665 million in 2024 Brothers Yossi and Shlomi Amir took over Shufersal a year ago after buying a quarter of its shares from financial institutions and subsequently appointing themselves as chairperson and CEO respectively Shufersal’s gross profit margin improved from 26.5% of sales in 2023 to 28.3% in 2024 It said that the improvement was a result of higher sales revenue (partly thanks to higher prices) but also of streamlining undertaken by the new management The operating profit margin improved even more bringing operating profit to NIS 916 million in 2024 streamlining measures by the Amir brothers which involved the voluntary or forced departure of many senior managers were largely responsible for the improvement Shufersal has a market cap of just under NIS 10 billion Its share price has risen by more than 40% in the past year The Amir brothers bought their stake in the company at a valuation of just NIS 6 billion they have made a gain of about NIS 1 billion on their investment Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 26 estimates that growth in Israel is recovering but weaker than forecasts will remain high and far from the target in the coming year the OECD expects inflation of 3.7% in Israel over the coming year Other forecasts see inflation below the 3% high point of the Bank of Israel target range the OECD recommends that the Israeli government take several restraining measures in order to exit the economic storm created by the war increasing carbon tax rates while bringing back taxes on sugary drinks and single-use plastic items OECD's economists support the introduction of the mileage tax to anticipate the end of falling fuel tax revenues and electric vehicles take over "The Israeli economy has been remarkably resilient to the shock of the 7 October terror attacks and subsequent war This strength under exceptionally difficult circumstances stems from its sound fiscal position before the war a stable financial system and strong growth potential owing to high employment rates and a vibrant high-tech sector." "Keeping the economy steady and securing solid growth requires curbing inflation and containing fiscal deficits while funding future spending needs." The OECD stressed that economic policy must maintain economic stability to return to growth including moderating inflation reducing the deficit and supporting measures that will contribute to long-term growth The cost of living is emphasized in the report Israel continues to be ranked as the most expensive country in the OECD while Israel's per capita GDP is lower than average The result is harm to the weaker sections: "Low-income households are particularly affected by the cost of living since they spend almost all of their income on essential goods and services such as food The reasons for this are many and complex: According to the OECD burdensone bureaucracy and planning obstacles harm the supply capacity of apartments and raise prices obstacles to trade and imports lead to an increase in the price of imported products the report notes that there has been some improvement in this aspect some of the solutions that have been implemented such as subsidies and setting a uniform price for some products The OECD recommends removing the fixed price system The survey says "More lenient regulations in the market will facilitate the entry of new companies and strengthen competition." Expect recovery but inflation will remain high slightly lower than the latest forecast by the Bank of Israel which estimates that Israel will grow by 3.8% in the coming year the OECD says risks to both the upside and downside remain high "A renewed calm could ease some of the restrictions on the supply side release pent-up demand and assist international business activity new agreements with countries in the Middle East may contribute to increasing trade and investment." the escalation could further worsen Israel's current account situation and directly harm economic activity which last year recorded a record total combined profit of about NIS 30 billion and drew much criticism the survey stresses that the margins of banks in Israel are at the average of the OECD's countries in order to maintain the security of the banks while maintaining the stability of the system The OECD also addressed the shortage of workers in the construction industry because of the war which it says contributed to damage to the GDP and needs rectifying The survey highlights the challenge facing the haredi sector and its integration into the job market: "Many young people in the ultra-Orthodox sector receive partial or lower-quality education in core professions which reduces their ability to integrate into the job market and their productivity and wages The survey also recommends that budgeting of haredi educational institutions be conditioned on the provisions of the core program and that allowances or incentives that encourage the lack of participation of haredi men in the job market be eliminated "Removing the benefits that discourage ultra-Orthodox men from working will also contribute to increasing the employment rate," the survey states This is not the first time that the organization has raised the need to increase the employment rate among the haredi community and Israeli Arabs The previous survey two years ago also pointed to the potential in encouraging employment among these populations Support for the tech sector is extremely significant In the chapter that addresses the effects of AI on the Israeli economy the OECD writes that Israel should continue to support the tech sector by Removing bottlenecks in terms of advanced education and academic research in the fields that are critical to AI while maintaining a supportive regulatory framework the deployment of AI can bring large productivity benefits under proper skill policies." Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich responded "The OECD report is a testament to the resilience of the Israeli economy and the hard work that has been done in recent years It presents us with significant challenges but also opportunities for growth and progress We will continue to work in cooperation with the organization to ensure economic stability and promote reforms that will benefit Israeli citizens." Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on April 2 The hard work of brothers Yossi and Shlomi Amir since they became the controlling shareholders in retail chain Shufersal (TASE: SAE) is starting to show The largest chain of supermarkets in Israel posted a 153% rise in its net profit for the second quarter the Amir brothers began a round of cutbacks at management level and took the reins of the day to day running of the company Shufersal’s second quarter revenue rose 8% to almost NIS 4 billion from 26.8% in the corresponding quarter of 2023 The increase was partly attributable to gains on revaluation of real estate assets and the sale of non-financial assets amounting to NIS 9 million Operating profit as a percentage of sales rose to 6% One of the most important ones is same store sales in the first half of this year which were 5.5% higher than in the same period last year The growth in sales at the stores led to online sales becoming a lower proportion of total sales declining from 18.2% in the first half of 2023 to 17.5% in the first half of 2024 The proportion of sales of Shufersal’s own brand also declined between the two periods This is apparently a result of the Amir brothers’ decision to weaken the chain’s own brand and improve terms of trade with other suppliers The Amir brothers completed their takeover of Shufersal in February this year They bought part of the financial institutions’ holdings in the chain after a dispute with the Israel Securities Authority decided to take upon themselves all the obligations of controlling shareholders The move has already proved profitable for the brothers They paid NIS 1.5 billion for their shares which were worth NIS 1.76 billion before this morning’s opening on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange Following the release of the second quarter results Shufersal’s share price is up by more than 9.5% in today’s session the Amir brothers also paid Paz NIS 100 million to end their non-compete agreement with it made when they sold the Freshmarket chain that they founded to Paz several years ago Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on August 20 "I hope that at the end of the year we will open the new factory that we have been building for the past three years in Ahihud several hundred million shekels that we have invested in technologies and people we are opening a new factory on the Michael Campus that will produce plant-based products," Strauss Group (TASE: STRS) chairperson and controlling shareholder Ofra Strauss announced today (Wednesday) at the "Returning to the North" conference organized by Globes at the Galilion Hotel in the Upper Galilee Strauss noted that the company is in the final stages of building the new factory to produce fresh plant-based milk and its products (yogurt not far from Strauss Dairies in Ahihud (near Karmiel) "To open a new factory in 2025 after a three-year investment construction under fire and postponements due to the war because people from abroad are not coming is part of the construction of the new north," Strauss said "Anyone who is an industrialist understands what is the significance of opening a new factory in Israel We are telling the other side that we are building and growing Strauss stressed that the north is home for her "It's only natural for me to be in the south and in the north Strauss products are found all over the country It doesn't matter where you are in the country Our anchors at Strauss are our factories in the north and the south and it's a connection with the strongest statement There's something about construction that's an anchor Throughout everything that's happened here the trauma of leaving the houses and returning to abandoned homes the fires and the destruction - I've been here My aunt always says that we can leave Nahariya What she means is that it's part of our character but I'm a Nahariya resident living in Tel Aviv." Strauss opened her remarks with a prayer for the return of the hostages A house is not just the building and the physical side - it is the family On the values that we are so proud of as Israelis It doesn't sound natural to me even when I say it today On Sunday (when the female hostages returned) something new began and on its foundation we need to build the house for those who return the Supervisor of Banks at the Bank of Israel imposed new and dramatic restrictions on special offers by contractors that subsidize the purchase of new apartments The Bank of Israel is very concerned at the rise in the risk on bank loans in the real estate sector in the past year "we have been witness to a substantial rise in the sale of apartments through various promotional bargain offers by developers," the bank said The Supervisor of Banks has published a draft temporary order whereby restrictions will be imposed on the allocation of capital by the banks to residential construction projects in which at least 25% of the apartments are sold through discount offers The Supervisor is also imposing a restriction intended to reduce the scope of balloon or bullet loans given by contractors to customers The contractors obtain these loans from the banks for the purposes of subsidizing apartment purchasers the capital is repaid by the purchaser only at the end of the loan period The Supervisor has determined that such loans should be limited to 10% of home loans granted each month "Although this trend supported the continuation of activity in the housing market at the beginning of the war it has grown in scope in recent months and involves a rise in risk," the Bank of Israel explains and possibly also for the credit provided by the banking system since these offers are liable to encourage the purchase of apartments by buyers about whom there is uncertainty about their ability to complete the deal," the Bank of Israel writes The new directive to the banks will be in force until the end of 2026 "Have as their aim the reduction of risk for all those involved in the market though the strengthening of risk management the strengthening of monitoring capabilities and the strengthening of consumer protection These measures strike a balance between reducing the growing risk from the use of these financing mechanisms and the continued controlled use of this tool in the housing market." Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 23 Last month was set to be one of the driest Decembers on record until the torrential rain of the past few days the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) is filling up fast The lake has risen 10 centimeters over the past five days and is ending 2024 2.485 meters from its maximum level of 208.80 meters below sea level There would still need to be much more heavy rain over the next four months for the Kinneret to reach its maximum level this year This time last year the Kinneret was 2.575 meters from its maximum level and ultimately fell well short and the Israel Water Authority launched the "Reverse Water Carrier" project in the north The project will allow desalinated water from the Mediterranean Sea to flow inland to the Kinneret to maintain the level of the lake in dry and low rainfall years This winter so far Safed has received 281 millimeters of rain according to the Israel Meteorological Service Haifa has received 300 millimeters of rain Tel Aviv has received 144 millimeters of rain Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on January 1 The disruptive decision by US President Donald Trump to impose 25% customs tariffs on Canada and Mexico and to add 10% to the tariff on goods from China holds out a big opportunity for Israel we need to go back to the 1985 free trade agreement between Israel and the US a product must be at least 35% produced in Israel The exporter has to state on the invoice the precise percentage of the product that is Israeli US Customs and Border Protection may check the truth of the declaration the US importer has to pay full customs duties the US runs a constant deficit on visible trade with Israel Israeli exports to the US totaled $40.8 billion and the trade deficit on the US side was $24.6 billion which was more than the value of Israeli imports from the US and if Trump’s tariff policy continues it could lead companies in various countries to transfer production lines to Israel president of the Manufacturers Association of Israel and co-CEO of generic pharmaceuticals company Unipharm says that Spanish drug companies with no production facilities in the US have talked to him about shifting some of their facilities "These are companies with no activity in the US that seek to diversify production Israel is considered a safe bet vis-à-vis the US." One matter that foreign companies will have to take into account if they come to Israel is the need for direct shipping Israeli goods arrive by ship in Europe and go through customs and the free trade agreement does not apply to them If however they are reloaded from one ship to another in a European port without going through customs "Assuming that the tariffs imposed by President Trump on goods from Canada a unique opportunity has been created for Israeli industry to attract foreign investment and to boost exports to the US," explains Elad Barshan an expert on international logistics and customs and founder of digital supply chain platform SlickChain "This opportunity is particularly attractive for advanced companies with high-value products for which the cost of transferring production lines to Israel and shipping to the US is lower than the loss arising from the new tariffs and medical equipment could be ideal candidates for such a move," he says Other agreements that could be relevant are the QIZ (qualifying industrial zone) agreements that Israel and the US have with Jordan which provide an exemption from customs duties when 11.7% of the cumulative value of a product is from Jordan while 15.3% can be from a combination of Jordan and it awards an exemption from customs duties on the entry of products into the US when up to 24.5% of the cumulative value is Egyptian inputs and at least 10.5% is Israeli inputs "These agreements enable foreign investors to take advantage of the cheap labor in Egypt while maintaining free access to the US market This means that companies can reduce production costs and still benefit from the advantages of the free trade agreement with the US," says Barshan Tomer adds that in his view the tariffs that the US president has imposed on China and other countries will endure while those on Canada and Mexico could be short-lived and the situation vis-à-vis European countries will continue into the medium term the problems in international trade could benefit the Israeli economy "A halt in trade from east to west requires alternatives and it would be enough for us in the Israeli economy to receive 3% of what will be subtracted from Chinese exports to the US and through the free trade agreement there’ll be a big boom and flexibility that the Americans don’t have It’s true that for that $10 billion that could be added to Israel’s GDP we will be dependent on the US but we already depend on them in areas such as security." Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 5 SVP networking software and site leader of Nvidia's Israel development center (formerly Mellanox) has found himself traveling a great deal between lower Yokne’am where the company's renovated headquarters are located and the nearby Mevo Carmel Science and Industry Park Nvidia has been covertly building a huge facility there to house the most advanced servers and chips it has to offer Nvidia invested no less than half a billion dollars in building the facility which included bringing its new server cooling technology to Israel Nvidia found itself at the forefront of a battle of ideas with the outgoing American administration when US President Joe Biden decided to limit the export of graphics processors (GPUs) to 170 countries around the world and to grant benefits to giant corporations that set up their server farms in the 18 countries considered to be close allies which is considered the biggest victim of the move who has seen the huge investment Nvidia is pouring into Israel -now the company's third-largest development center and the second largest outside the US- also criticizes the decision "Regulation will harm innovation and growth " startups and universities all over the world as well as in Israel are leveraging artificial intelligence to advance in important areas such as medicine education and industry," he says in an exclusive interview with "Globes." "This drives growth and helps countries realize their potential which seeks to limit access to standard computing applications could harm innovation and economic growth worldwide." Since it published its comments on the issue last Monday and since the publication of the Biden administration guidelines Nvidia's stock on Wall Street has climbed by about 5% the company's energetic founder Jensen Huang have approved the construction of the large server facility had he known about the Biden administration's restrictions but the answer is simple: were it not for the Mellanox acquisition in Yokne’am for $6.9 billion about five years ago Nvidia probably would not have invested billions in Israel It might not even have acquired two Israeli software companies last year which began as Mellanox where Krig was a senior vice president has become a goose that lays golden eggs for Nvidia: in the first nine months of 2024 which pave the way for information running between Nvidia's graphics processors have become one of the best-selling products among Nvidia's major customers the fact that Nvidia controls the entire value chain through communications processors to the software layer now allows it to sell supercomputers or cloud services from start to finish as a product or service for the largest companies underpinning the artificial intelligence revolution Nvidia has more than once suffered from this undergoing investigation by the US Department of Justice on suspicion of being a monopoly including in the matter of the Run:ai acquisition Nvidia is considered the fastest-growing company in Israel among the international giants Krig highlights the importance of Nvidia's Israeli development center by citing the homegrown "Israel-1" supercomputer Israel-1 was inaugurated a month after the October 7 massacre and a year later was ranked the 34th most powerful supercomputer in the world "The computer was built as a template for Nvidia intended to define how its future supercomputers should be built," Krig reveals "Nvidia's largest supercomputers today are based on things we discovered in Israel-1." Supercomputers are much more than graphics processors; they also include software communications processors and switches whose job is to manage the processing of a large number of graphics processors synchronize the transfer of information between them and ensure that the rate and power of calculation remain stable Krig compares the processors and communications switches in Israel-1 to a complex highway network: each car is a piece of data that wishes to move from one graphics processor to another while the processors and communications switches are the traffic lights "Think about a lot of cars leaving home at once and getting stuck at a congested intersection The technology we developed creates a dialogue between endpoints so that instead of an intersection with four lanes in each direction we can instantly create hundreds of lanes at the problem points If we rearrange the priorities -what information needs to go through first through which lane and when- we can greatly reduce these traffic jams." we at Nvidia Israel are expected to be world leaders," says Krig with a reliability level that is well above 99% The new Mevo Carmel facility will have a great deal of computing power which will enable us to develop Nvidia's next technologies in Israel The Mevo Carmel facility will house hundreds of server racks the cost of which is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars Huang may launch more innovative processors at the GTC 2025 conference Nvidia refuses to give any hints about the launches or say which of its future products will come to the new facility The fact that so many other companies depend on Nvidia for AI processors has made you a kind of bottleneck a delay in the launch of Blackwell processors We don't think about everyone being dependent on us Our daily business is all about how to make the next system even better and more energy efficient live and breathe around how we can improve our products." Amazon now offers competing GPUs at a third of Nvidia’s price and Broadcom and Marvell are already developing graphics processors for some of your customers Today's reality wouldn’t exist without it We try to produce the most efficient product Efficiency is one metric we look at constantly but I think that today there’s no single company that does everything and looks at the entire solution as one piece And that's our advantage: the complete solution from the silicon level to the system level including a software package that’s important for diagnostics and fault tolerance." "Waiting with bated breath for Avinatan Or" Nvidia is also one of the many companies in Israel that has an employee kidnapped to Gaza Avinatan Or was kidnapped on October 7 from the Nova festival along with his girlfriend Noa Argamani Or was hired by Nvidia as he was concluding his studies in electrical engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Or was part of the development team working on Nvidia’s communications card (the Spectrum Ethernet switch) Or’s name has been included in the list of hostages who will be released only in the second phase of the current deal with Hamas and on condition that the ceasefire is maintained and we realized quickly this was closely connected to us," says Krig including the famous video in which Noa and Avinatan are seen being kidnapped together and then the official confirmation of his kidnapping came The information about the murder of Danielle Waldman (daughter of Mellanox founder Eyal Waldman - A.G) and her partner We quickly divided the company into sectors the human resources team called each of the employees in Israel to locate everyone and who was being drafted into the reserves." Nvidia has been in constant contact with the Or family employees have come from the central region to stand with the family outside military headquarters as a sign of solidarity." Nvidia is one of two major international companies to have an employee kidnapped in Gaza which adopted a policy of silence about the kidnapping of Sasha Troufanov "We spoke with the family before we came out and publicly identified with them and their son publicly We don't know what’s right or wrong in this context but it’s important to us to support the family What’s in store for Avinatan at Nvidia when he comes back My pulse starts racing when I think about him coming home and to Nvidia." Although the war played havoc with Nvidia Israel "High-tech companies in these sorts of situations try to do risk management and understand what will happen to various aspects understand what will happen if the power goes out at one of our sites we were also built in advance for extreme situations," says Krig Nvidia's largest development center in Israel is in Yokne’am a hot spot for Hezbollah's missile attacks on the northern border in the fall of 2024 The multiplicity of strategic sites near Yokne’am and the western Jezreel Valley led to many missile and drone attacks but these did not have much operational impact "We had maybe four or five air raid sirens How do you inform your management abroad about air raids and drone attacks "The management understands this is a very complex situation It knows Israel has a successful air defense system but that there can also be vulnerabilities and at critical times we’ve asked people to stay home we’ve also had Zoom meetings interrupted by sirens This is a reality that I very much hope we’ll soon put behind us and support from abroad -and there was no panic." Did the Israeli center receive any concessions compared with other development centers in the world because of the war "I and my managers were of one mind: Don't make it easier on us in any way because it’s important to us that the site continues to produce I can't say that we didn't shift priorities and pull teams from one project to another but the bottom line is that we met all of our goals the Israel-1 supercomputer went into operation in November 2023 A complicated childhood and the move from Intel to Mellanox Krig lives in Kiryat Tivon with his wife and three children She was the first female field spotter (tatzpitanit ) in the IDF the first female officer in that discipline and later trained an entire generation of female field spotters Krig has been with Mellanox since its first year of existence He was part of its big exit to Nvidia and holds a position as vice president that allows him to report directly to Huang Underlying his success story is a complex childhood and an unconventional biography his parents divorced when he was three years old and his father moved to South Africa Krig grew up with his mother in the rough Khalisa neighborhood and when he was in second grade he went to live with his father's parents in the Romema neighborhood on the Carmel He arrived at Mellanox after attending a job fair in 1998 when anyone who got a job there wouldn't leave Flagship processors were bestsellers back then and they were offering branded umbrellas at the Mellanox booth The person handing them out was Eitan Rabin He handed me an umbrella and said that if I was looking for a job I should leave a resume and they would get back to me I‘d never heard the name Mellanox before but when I got back to the apartment with a friend from Intel who was Mellanox's human resources manager then." and asked to start working almost immediately "It was the strangest start in the world," says Krig a place where security people walk around all day and everything is organized like an American corporate office and here’s the code for the alarm when the day is over.'" Krig joined Mellanox in the summer of 1998 we’re not sure if there’s enough work for the software people help out the people in the IT department ' Today the center that used to be Mellanox has more software people than hardware people." He started as a software engineer writing libraries and drivers went on to manage the entire verification (solution validation) division and moved on to project management with large customers such as Microsoft Krig and Dror Goldenberg shared the most senior management positions at Mellanox they report directly to Huang: Krig as manager of all software aspects of the communications processors and Goldenberg as manager of the architecture group "The Nvidia connection brought something different" In the years when Mellanox was a public company and was under the watchful and critical eye of hedge fund Starboard Value Krig briefly became CFO and focused on finding ways to become more efficient in addition to being a senior vice president responsible for all network interface software activity is also the director of Nvidia's development center at all its sites in Israel: Yokne’am Be'er Sheva and near the Tel Hai College in Kiryat Shmona Mellanox was sold to Nvidia in 2019 for $6.9 billion and the acquisition is considered its biggest in terms of revenue contribution it was reported that Mellanox accounted for $13 billion in revenue last year and according to Nvidia’s latest quarterly report revenue doubled from $5 billion to $10 billion during the first three quarters of the year had Mellanox continued to be traded on Nasdaq and to operate as an independent company it could have doubled or tripled its value and become the largest publicly traded Israeli company "Mellanox could have been a giant company in Israeli terms," admits Krig "and it could have been very successful as an independent company But the connection with Nvidia brought something different It gave us something that I don't know if we would have seen as an independent company Something about the way the Nvidia is run and the connection to it opened avenues for us that I’m not sure we would have been able to reach on our own." The Nvidia brand probably helps recruit employees that you might have had a hard time recruiting without it but the brand is significant -it plays a part And Nvidia has a far more global and bigger brand name than Mellanox." Nvidia was the company that recruited the most Intel employees during that company’s crisis "We had no specific goal of recruiting employees from Intel and we didn’t go head hunting for them We’ve recruited many hundreds of employees in the past year and it’s possible that anyone who came from Intel with a suitable resume was eventually hired I say this with a great deal of sorrow because Intel is a place that I hold in high esteem We have more than 4,500 employees in Israel and we crossed the 4,000-mark right during the war." Will you end 2025 with 5,000 employees like Jensen Huang said "That's a reasonable assumption; we have 300 open positions." There’s a limited number of workers in processors don’t get a first opportunity the way it was in the past and there’s a lot of unemployment in the sector "We’re not just looking for chip engineers even more than hardware and systems people is that we recruit students and young interns We believe in abilities that come together with a desire to succeed quickly and in fact our best investment is in recruiting interns "Share price isn’t watercooler talk here" There’s a strong economic incentive to work at Nvidia Aren't you afraid people will come to work for Nvidia just for the shares but it’s a sign that there’s a successful company here that people want to be a part of I don't think people come here because they earn a little more They want to be part of a company that’s successful and leading a technological revolution We do our best in our hiring interviews to understand why they’ve come to us It’s fine for a person to say they believe in the company and want shares because they’re sure it will succeed But is the watercooler conversation here about share price Walk around here and you’ll see people talking about technology and the next goal they need to achieve." There is criticism that your bonuses are low relative to the industry "We believe that a stock-based compensation system is excellent." Israel is falling behind in international AI indexes ranking somewhere between Saudi Arabia and the Czech Republic According to a report by the State Comptroller at the end of this past year the government’s AI programs have been underfunded and mismanaged "The first thing that’s needed is support for national infrastructure power infrastructure that will support the establishment of data centers not only for the sake of establishing them but so that expertise is created in establishing them providing support for entrepreneurs so they can establish more companies The implications of data centers go far beyond the high-tech industry many researchers are thirsty for computing power on which they can build and run artificial intelligence models and they are forced to stand in endless queues to use those supercomputers And to meet the short amount of time they’re allocated By the time they get to run the model again and then researchers give up on their research That’s why power infrastructure is important with as much emphasis as possible on green energy These are very large investments and the state must encourage and do this as quickly as possible "The second thing the state can do is to make artificial intelligence accessible to more people This will lead to a significant increase in qualified engineers in this field." Nvidia acquired two Israeli companies for a total of $1.1 billion: Run:ai a developer of technology that makes the use of graphics processors more efficient thereby eliminating the need to purchase a larger quantity of chips a company which has developed an artificial intelligence processing accelerator that allows models to be trained more quickly Nvidia has unofficially established a large artificial intelligence software development center that employs hundreds of employees and deals with aspects not related directly to Nvidia's core activities in Israel that are based on Mellanox: communications chips The acquisition of Run:ai itself was a rocky one as the US regulators feared that Nvidia was trying to eliminate its competition but the purchase was ultimately approved after the company promised that its product would continue to serve competing companies and would operate as an independent product Krig neither confirms nor denies the intention to establish a software development center but he explains the rationale behind the acquisition of the Israeli companies: "Run:ai and Deci were acquired because of their technology What's true is that we have a fairly large site here capable of absorbing these sorts of companies and integrating them properly Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on January 21 Major shareholders in Next Vision Stabilized Systems (TASE: NXSN) which produces stabilized cameras for ground and aerial vehicles realized shares in the company to the tune of NIS 230 million yesterday "Globes" has learned that one of the buyers is the first foreign investor to take a significant stake in the company bought 2.5% of Next Vision for some NIS 192 million while Clal Insurance bought shares to the tune of NIS 40 million a price similar to yesterday’s opening price on the stock exchange an investor in the company since its early days and whose stake will fall to 8.6%; company chairperson Chen Golan who sold shares for NIS 55 million and whose stake will fall to 5.7%; CTO Boris Kipnis who sold shares for NIS 40 million; director Nachman Benchaya who sold shares for NIS 39.3 million; and company CEO Michael Grosman A senior source at the company told "Globes": "This time too We received a ‘phone call informing us that there was a ‘big foreign investor’ who wanted to come into the company We’ve seen a lot of interest by investors like these recently and when an investor approaches us and wants to take a significant stake then we say ‘Yes.’ It grew to such dimensions that we had to look for people who would agree to sell shares in the company That’s what pushed us to carry out the deal "Our policy has been to realize shares all along the way We want those who buy our shares to gain as well When we decide that investors who approach us are relevant not with the aim of getting rid of shares or because we think the share price has reached a maximum A foreign investor who wants to take a stake is good for the company It indicates something good about the market and for the shareholders." Next Vision is without doubt the most successful of the crop of flotations of 2021 The Ra’anana-based company which develops and produces day and night cameras stabilized for installation on ground and aerial vehicles such as drones has seen its share price shoot up by 1,770% since its 2021 IPO and it now has a market cap of NIS 7.7 billion not far off an entry ticket to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange’s flagship Tel Aviv 35 Index The determining date for the next revision of the index falls in April and at the current rate it is not inconceivable the company will make it Next Vision released 2024 results showing revenue up 121% in comparison with 2023 at $115 million Net profit rose to $66 million (57.7% of revenue) The company declared a $33.2 million dividend the company reported a $30 million order for delivery over three years which comes in addition to the orders backlog of $101 million reported in its financial statements Next Visions revenue target for 2025 is $160 million Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 17 Residents displaced by war are returning to Israel's north from communities across the country For the pupils at the secondary school in the small town of Shlomi one burning question remains: Is it really safe here again the cheerfully chatting pupils arriving at the secondary school in Shlomi receive an enormously warm welcome An archway of balloons awaits them in front of the entrance and teachers hand out heart-shaped lollipops a few details seem out of place in this seemingly lighthearted scene There is the handgun on the principal's belt or the bored-looking soldiers with their assault rifles who are standing a little to one side and typing on their cellphones the border wall between Israel and Lebanon can be seen a few hundred meters away in solidarity with Hamas in the Gaza Strip the Israeli government evacuated 60,000 people from northern Israel This included the roughly 9,000 residents of Shlomi Although a ceasefire has been in place since November 2025 the army and the government gave a definitive green light for a return to the evacuated areas only at the end of February The secondary school in Shlomi can now open its doors again for the first time since the start of the war Many people mistrust the fragile calm at the border Ophir Glick, the school principal with the gun on his hip and the kippah on his head, nevertheless expresses confidence. «I'm not afraid. The army is here,» he says. In fact, one of five «strategic points» on Lebanon's territory that Israel's armed forces are continuing to occupy is located just north of Shlomi Glick is not carrying his own weapon in his capacity as school principal Glick proudly notes that all the teachers and around 90% of the students have returned to his school. This puts it well above the northern Israeli average of 64% the period of displacement was «very difficult for the pupils,» he says the students and their families were distributed to 130 different communities across the country where they were accommodated in hotels or vacation homes instructors were forced to teach their lessons online and some pupils ultimately transferred to local schools within their temporary communities Then Glick heard about a vacant school building near the city of Haifa he was able to hold classes there for all those who had found accommodation nearby The plan enabled him to maintain a sense of community among the students This is probably part of the reason why so many of the young people have now returned «Now we have to make sure they get the support they need,» he adds The months of war have also left their mark on Shlomi's school building I found damage in every single room,» says Glick starting a fire.» The school has had to invest millions of shekels in renovation work in recent weeks a total of over 900 Hezbollah rockets fell on the town of Shlomi Even though Hezbollah has been severely weakened and has largely withdrawn from southern Lebanon we see Lebanon,» says 17-year-old Leah Reuben she says she is happy to be back at school Her mother told her to take just one suitcase with her promising that they would definitely be back in two weeks at the most the family is living in a hotel in the coastal city of Haifa their apartment in Shlomi is currently uninhabitable it was exciting to live in a hotel by the sea «But it soon became exhausting.» She says she really wants to live in Shlomi again The war has left deep scars on some young people «Many pupils have developed eating or anxiety disorders and some are expressing suicidal thoughts,» says Danit Haddad «It's our job to give them back their self-confidence and give them a sense of security.» However some pupils and their families will probably never return to Shlomi due to their fears of renewed war When Reuben finishes school in a few months She wants to become a paramedic and later a doctor even children know that war is part of our lives and that we have to go into the army,» she says The 18-year-old says he wants to serve in a combat unit one day and then pursue a «meaningful task for my country,» perhaps in the government But first he will have to spend a few more months at school and take his final exams «It's a good feeling to be back here,» he says and I've changed schools three times.» He says he returned to Shlomi with his family just a few days before school started The north of Israel is slowly coming back to life In recent years Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai has led a public campaign against building park and ride infrastructures on the outskirts of the city where drivers can park their cars and take free shuttle buses on fast lanes into the city which has even managed to break the consensus among the government ministries involved in the project Tomorrow (Tuesday) there will be a discussion on the issue at the National Planning and Building Council What is the controversy about and why is Huldai doing to block the move will be built by the government in cooperation with the private sector shuttle buses and public transport at the entrances to the Tel Aviv metropolitan region This is modelled on the project that already exists on Road 1 which includes the Shappirim parking lot and the "fast lane" on the road with the first phase including Road 2 and Road 20 expected to open this year parking lots with thousands of parking spaces will be built alongside the roads at the Morasha Interchange The project has been controversial for years with supporters believing that it is a way to provide transport to isolated and suburban areas where effective public transport cannot operate while opponents say the project will perpetuate dependence on cars Why is Huldai now intensifying the fight against the Road 5 fast lane Tomorrow (Tuesday) there will be a discussion at the National Planning and Building Council the establishment of three park-and-ride parking lots along Road 5 - at Kesem this is the stage in the project that Huldai opposes and he wrote this in a tweet on social network X "More than a billion shekels from the public purse is about to go down the drain Because the State of Israel wants to establish a huge and unnecessary park-and-ride parking lot at the Morasha interchange This parking lot will not only not help solve the congestion problems in the center of the country "Instead of encouraging Israeli citizens to use public transport these parking lots will require the public to own a car and leave the house with it every day to get to the parking lot Such a move will actually increase the congestion problem all the way to the parking lot and harm existing public transport." Huldai tweeted What is being done in Tel Aviv to stop the plan The mayor's tweet is just part of a broader campaign "About a million people travel on the Ayalon Highway every day And they say this is a contribution to public transport?" Huldai also attacked planners and government officials sitting in the audience He also reiterated his claims in a letter he sent to Transport Minister Miri Regev calling the project an irresponsible expense holding many talks with representatives of the National Planning and Building Council in efforts to influence their position Huldai spoke with accountant general Yali Rothenberg under whose responsibility the tenders for the project's implementation are being published at great length over the past week and has managed to break the consensus in the government ministries This is the biggest professional struggle that Huldai has waged in recent years The Tel Aviv Municipality does not recall many such precedents Many wonder why he is waging such a resolute campaign given that the parking lot will be built outside the city and most likely after the end of his term could release the land for construction if a parking lot is not built Others claim that Huldai wants to leave behind a legacy and the area chosen for this purpose is transport This was reflected in efforts made by the municipality and the fact that the city was a big construction site covered in dust before the most recent local elections to move forward as quickly as possible on urban transport projects It is also possible that this struggle by Huldai is related to another struggle - for control of the metropolitan region due to the government's attempts to promote metropolitan authorities whose management in the metropolitan region will be by a vote of members and not by the mayor of the largest municipality The planners from the Netivei Ayalon company believe that the Morasha park and drive project is necessary because the structure of the neighborhoods in the Sharon region does not allow for the development of quality public transport and forces commuters to use cars the Public Transport Authority and Ministry of Finance Budget Division have tried to formulate a comprehensive examination of the need for parking lots due to the fact that many planners and transport experts agree with the municipality's position There was also no agreement in discussions held at the Ministry of Transport as the Public Transport Authority did not justify the project in contrast to the Infrastructures Administration Ministry of Transport Director General Moshe Ben-Zaken favors the project and wrote to Rabbi Nathan Elnathan chairman of the National Planning and Building Council ahead of this week's discussion that "a licensed parking lot is an integral part of the project and its approval is essential for its success." He also wrote that "the professional opinions conducted and its direct contribution to reducing congestion." Opponents of the project mention the parking lot built in Shappirim along the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway (Road 1) which was initially marketed as a resounding success after construction of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv high speed rail link the project turned out to be less successful than promised The latest State Comptroller's report even showed that shuttle buses have been abandoned and many passengers do not use them the number of passengers has fallen by 34% and the rate of daily users of the fast lane using the buses has dropped from 50% to only 14% The number of journeys on the fast lane is not rising and although the project was built in collaboration with the private sector the public is subsidizing trips on the toll road through state coffers to compensate for the missing journeys to the tune of NIS 170 million over five years The principled struggle has also become an almost personal struggle for professional prestige The planners have also reduced the number of parking spaces from 6,000 to 3,000 and are already supporting the construction of a bus terminal near the parking lot Past experience shows that a compromise will eventually be reached but canceling the parking lots completely actually undermines the economic model of the project and jeopardizes the existence of the construction tender and this may be one reason for the unwillingness to back down over the project Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 10 "Foreign investors are a very important element for the Israeli economy and are one of the biggest bases for our development collaborations create many more opportunities and this should not be underestimated for a moment The greater the confidence foreign investors have in Israel the greater the number of deals there will be," Phoenix Holdings (TASE: PHOE) CEO Eyal Ben Simon told Globes editor-in-chief Naama Sikuler at the Globes Israel Business Conference we’ve seen a decline in Israel's (level of) risk we lived in a bubble and didn’t think there was an enormous risk all around us Ever since the change in trend in the war in Lebanon The most important thing is to ensure that we will be protected from a security point of view will we be able to talk about investments." Ben Simon's remarks followed the handsome returns on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange since the start of 2024 with the TASE performing better than Wall Street and significantly better than the European and Asian markets we maneuvered to bring billions of shekels to Phoenix shares (referring to the sale of Phoenix shares by foreign funds Centerbridge and Gallatin).The Phoenix is one of the best ambassadors of the State of Israel in the world It affords a very large expression of confidence in Israel because the Phoenix is actually an option for investment in Israel When I look at foreign investments in Israel most of the change has taken place since September we’re starting to see a return of foreign investors and an upsurge in the capital market a foreign investor told me that the economic value of Los Angeles is $1.25 trillion The Israeli economic value is $530 billion and there’s no reason in the world that Israel should not be the size of Los Angeles There is an extraordinary level of human capital in Israel the Jews brought to the world a dissatisfaction This culture does not exist anywhere else in the world Israel is democratic and has a rising demographic." but Israel’s potential exists and is positive what worries foreign investors and harms Israel is "The security reality along with the fact that there have been five or six election cycles here in just a few years There’s also the problematic regulation in Israel there are three supervisors: the Capital Market Authority the Securities Authority and the Bank of Israel Add to that the Budgets Department at the Ministry of Finance and the Competition Authority - and each one has the right to veto After everyone confirmed [the acquisition] the Competition Authority said ‘no,’ and the deal fell through A foreign investor does not want to enter this sort of reality Ben Simon believes that Israel has potential and that it is positive the multipliers here are less than half of those in America even though the market here has good financial depth by a large margin the audience was asked which index in Israel has shown the highest return this year "The Israeli economy returned to consumption spending after the first difficult quarter of the war Believes financial stocks will continue to soar Financial stocks have recorded increases in recent months and Ben Simon believes this is just the start The division of value between banking and non-banking entities is 50/50 the combined value of all the financial companies is NIS 260 billion while all entities that are not banks are only worth about NIS 45 billion less than Bank Leumi or Bank Hapoalim alone there is still a long way to go for rises in financial shares Ben Simon is aware of how complex it is to understand insurance companies financial reports no one understood what this animal called an insurance company is We did significant work to clarify this and talk about clear indicators It generates a very large value and the market sees that." On the question of why the public still has not switched from bank deposit savings to savings in investment houses and insurance companies It’s impossible to expect that a process that took 30 years in America will happen here in a matter of weeks Israel will exist for thousands of years more "Another reason for staying with banks is that interest rates have risen our interests align completely with the client there is a conflict: the bank is interested in giving the client as little as possible and the client is interested in getting as much as possible consumers are going to financial institutions." "There are political constraints that are really not easy and I don't envy anyone in the government The fact is that the budget approved is already good We need hope in the state budget and I didn't see hope in it The public needs to see that they are looking 10 years ahead and the people who make these decisions understand what is meant by ‘hope in the budget.’" On fears of political interference in investments by institutional investors Institutional investors are loyal to their savers: pensions and financials We must not cross this threshold," he warned there is no doubt that Phoenix has a clear interest in Israel succeeding That is why investing in Israel's infrastructure improves the situation of both the Phoenix and the savers But it’s clear that if there are better investments in Israel - that is what we will do." The Globes Israel Business Conference is held in collaboration with Bank Hapoalim and The Phoenix Holdings Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on December 8 "Mekorot is the best company of its kind in the world," Mekorot CEO Amit Lang told "Globes" deputy editor Dror Marmor at the Globes Israel Business Conference "The average depreciation in the world in water supply systems is 40% while in OECD countries it is 15% Another example is that nowhere in the world are water sources managed while Mekorot conveys water from wells in the north the company has faced a particularly tough test which is operating the water supply in combat and high risk zones Mekorot employees operated in the field in areas endangered by missile strikes they managed to maintain an uninterrupted water supply and the fact that the water supply has not been disrupted is a result of their professionalism and sense of responsibility," Lang stressed "Preparing mainly for extreme natural events" Marmor asked about concerns expressed before the war that the public might suffer in household water supply Lang responded that he has never thought that we would get to such a situation: "I have kept saying that I do not see a scenario of a disruption in water supply because Mekorot has prepared for extreme events So what extreme events did the company prepare for Lang explained that mainly for extreme natural events storm "Barbara," which was severe and hit Israel about the same time as a big earthquake in Turkey caused the cessation of water drilling in the Jordan Valley region while the storm affected water desalination the water supply in Israel was not affected but we were really close to it," Lang said we hold consultations and summaries and draw lessons to reduce the chance that the water supply will be disrupted and the application of these lessons has also been useful during the war." Mekorot continues to work in various places around the world as well as "regions that want us and have water problems." However we were in contact with our counterpart company and they did not get back to us and we are waiting and hoping that the situation in the region will stabilize." Finally Marmor asked about the conflict that is taking place between Mekorot and the government water authority Lang said that the conflict concerns the proceeds from the sale of the desalination plant in Ashdod "We were surprised to discover that the Water Authority decided to interpret the agreement between us in an unacceptable way and to take away a share that was due to us We sat down several times and were unable to reach an understanding and we cannot allow the Water Authority to do as it pleases," he concluded and the Israel Innovation Authority.   Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on December 17 In a special interview with Dror Marmor at the Globes Business Conference El Al Israel Airlines Ltd. (TASE:ELAL) CEO Dina Ben Tal Ganancia revealed the complex challenges facing the national airline including a shortage of aircraft and spare parts worldwide high demand from the Israeli public and the need for enhanced security and safety during wartime Before we bring the elephant into the room and talk about fares and competition there has been too little supply and too much demand for flights while supply of aircraft continues far beyond the horizon of strategic plans If you now ask to order an aircraft from Airbus or Boeing you will get a slot for 20 or 30 years ahead "The second challenge is not only the planes themselves but also aircraft parts Virgin Atlantic and British Airways have announced that they are canceling routes because they are also unable to operate their existing fleet in full due to problems with engine supply You have to understand that in such large factories getting back to full production takes a very long time "We have a plane that has been standing for over four years because it is waiting for seats If the war had broken out during the Covid pandemic you would have asked me completely different questions It is like doing a 10,000 kilometer service on a car with safety above all else we have managed to make up for some of the shortfalls that were due to Covid We started the year with 15%-20% less than we were (before Covid) the war caught us at a time when we were in the process of improving." And there is no way to get aircraft from Boeing neither the (US) ambassador nor the prime minister can help in this case It doesn't help if the call center says there are no seats and unfortunately there are those needing life-saving flights or to get to funerals." During a period when you lost a lot of money the State of Israel came along and gave El Al very good terms Perhaps the Ministry of Finance forgot to insert a clause that when El Al returns to profitability it will be payback time and if there's one thing I protested against it was when the idea came up to sell Dreamliners to reduce losses we wouldn't be able to operate the company the way it is being run "Regarding the aid: the state gave a loan at double-digit interest invested in a public offering and sold shares at a very significant profit this fixed us but did not allow for growth Assets also came from Covid that helped us The first thing we did when the company began operating again was to repay the high-interest loan The state made a great profit from the shares and El Al stayed around to ensure Israeli aviation "The State of Israel has a clear interest in Israeli airlines being strong Look at what the Americans did during the Covid period: United continued to fly to maintain production capacity and fitness of its aircraft El Al did not fly for three months and faced enormous challenges." "You have to understand that 600 El Al pilots were on unpaid leave and it is not possible to bring them back to full operations in one day They have to undergo simulations and complex procedures to be fit to fly again El Al is a publicly traded company and is not owned by the state The money of the State of Israel's citizens is invested in hedge funds "We managed to find the balance between our commitment to shareholders and our responsibility to the State of Israel and the Israeli public we have also faced challenges in the current situation because it was unclear where things would develop with about 10% of the credit card market through Fly Card and an average fare increase of 16% and if you neutralize the shifting of routes and destinations this is an increase of a little over 10%." It is very convenient that the state helps when it is difficult and that is fine because you are a limited company and need to make a profit Aren't you afraid that the regulator will force solutions on you "We have been working with the regulator for a long time and since the beginning of the war we have been providing them ongoing information This situation in the aviation sector is very complex One of the significant problems is the psychological feeling of passengers A person who bought a ticket on a low-cost airline cheaply finds himself paying hundreds of euros more after last minute cancellations or changes provides full service including a response This is what customers are looking for today Where else will you find a place where the CEO and vice-presidents have received direct inquiries by phone - sometimes even from soldiers - from the moment the war broke out We do this with great love and always try to solve problems and help We have many new customers who are choosing us "I am in favor of foreign airlines returning we have even been advising them to help with this El Al operates an entire security and safety 'army.' There is a war in Ukraine - has anyone flown there I never imagined that I would have to talk so much with the Shin Bet and the Air Force or that I would have to conduct so many situation assessments and worry about our teams abroad The fact that this concern remains with me is good." pilots have to be shared with the Air Force" We saw that fares are a problem that everyone knows about You published reports for the third quarter with revenue of $1 billion and net profit of $187 million - numbers that no one thought an Israeli airline could reach Aren't you afraid that you will be punished the day after "The global situation has been accompanied by fare hikes everywhere Anyone who thinks that we stopped flying at some point and are now returning to the same point is wrong the predictions in the world of aircraft manufacturers are that the number of aircraft needs to be doubled in 20 years and old-generation aircraft replaced The math says that we need to increase by 2,100 aircraft every year when they are capable of supplying under 1,000 new aircraft per year Let's cut to the chase - I cannot enlarge the fleet I can't produce more flights or reserve seats at the last minute We took action to balance out the situation." "Let's start at the beginning of the decade - in the first few years we lost a billion dollars I don't remember you inviting me to talk about it then the State of Israel gave El Al loans on very difficult terms - at double-digit interest rates The state also went public and sold at a very large profit We had set ourselves up with no ability to grow Every shekel the state gave was returned with interest The shares were sold at a great profit to the state Israeli aviation was here to serve the state." You have given a gloomy global forecast here the Israeli forecast depends mainly on war and competition We saw that some foreign airlines have started to return Is there a chance that competition will lower fares and that we will see competition in Israel I think all of Israeli aviation has done an amazing job and kept the State of Israel in touch with the world Anyone who thought that maybe Israeli airlines were not needed on the contrary sees the need to strategically strengthen Israeli aviation even more They have returned with a very clear technique of buying new customers through price I see new routes to nearby European destinations and El Al has also greatly developed Sun D'or which is more similar to the other Israeli companies they want to be spoiled and receive good service and sleep well and this is a different consumer mix that we are here to provide this service." Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on December 3 with 26 consecutive years in office under his belt Tel Aviv-Yafo Mayor Ron Huldai won’t allow himself time to sit back and relax without considering his next step He is Israel’s most significant and passionate reformer in the transport sector having introduced unpopular changes such as eliminating traffic lanes and parking spaces in favor of bus lanes and bike paths He is also identified as a political independent often taking positions opposed to those of the government In a comprehensive interview with "Globes," Huldai discusses his relationships with Ministry of Finance and Transport officials and the cost of living in the city he manages with a strong hand ranked consistently among the most expensive cities in the world "The government is trying to establish an authority that won’t be able to function" attempted to import Western transport reforms to Israel in which a professional transport authority consisting of local authorities within a metropolitan region management is centralized under the Ministry of Transport where allocation of resources is subject to political pressure Huldai succeeded in mobilizing both neighboring authorities and government ministries but the move was blocked by then-Minister of Transport Israel Katz followed by subsequent transport ministers who would not agree to relinquish their authority just as the reform has come up again in the pending Arrangements Law and just when it has a real chance of passing 'We're in favor' but they're in favor of something completely different from the reform we wanted," Huldai says "They're trying to establish a non-functional authority Either make a change or there's no point in doing it - that's the whole story," he concludes "There are exceptional transport systems in the world If a minister doesn’t set a goal for the travel time between Ashdod and Tel Aviv a decade from now there’s nothing to measure their performance against." Huldai says that he himself tries to set measurable goals car use in Tel Aviv fell below 50% for the first time we have 90 kilometers of bus lanes compared with about 30 kilometers in other cities in the metropolis along with 183 kilometers of bicycle paths that will reach 250 kilometers by the end of my term you will see the government has taken over the authorities it is proposing to establish." The government has 20% of the voting power "It’s inconceivable that someone would hold elections and a town near Paris would be chosen to run the metropolitan authority It’s unimaginable that [suburban] Kiryat Ata could be chosen to run the Haifa metropolitan authority The only one giving up something for this authority is Tel Aviv The state says that the authority chairman will be elected by the representatives - that's not serious And it's not a political matter; the Shafdan [Dan Region Wastewater Treatment Plant] has been controlled by the Tel Aviv central authority for 26 years." But maybe that's exactly what's bothering the other authorities At Forum 15 [the Israeli Forum of Self-Government Cities] which you founded a meeting blew up because you opposed holding elections for chairman I don't understand what you're asking me." I’m asking you if the story is Ron Huldai or the transport system they started talking about unifying authorities I said I was ready to unify authorities and even resign to make it happen this metropolis needs to function as a single transport system that serves the whole The fact that there are too many authorities If you want to create a bus lane that passes through a neighboring city that mayor says he won’t let it because it will ruin his main street." Huldai is also angry about using bus lanes as carpool lanes (because people here are so enslaved to cars") "What can you do… there’s no technology that can check how many people are sitting in a car Two motorcycle police officers riding between Netanya to Tel Aviv anyone who enters a bus lane knows they will be caught because there are cameras "I told them it wouldn't work." Giant parking lots stay empty does not trust the government to advance transport plans and he sometimes even seems to despise the moves being made by government ministries He has sharp criticism for the fast lane construction on Highway 5 and Ayalon Highway 20 and for the adjacent giant parking lots at Shefayim and Rishon LeZion According to the State Comptroller's report published last month the state is heavily subsidizing the fast lane contrary to promises that it would be financed and operated by the private sector "The fast lanes project for the rich was so 'successful' that Israel Katz turned it into a flagship project and now they’re building huge parking lots at Shefayim," he says "I haven't seen another project like this anywhere in the world and Lod so that a person can get on public transport and get to Tel Aviv When you build a parking lot along the way "About a million people travel on the Ayalon Highway each day With construction of Tel Aviv’s light rail especially after the Maariv Bridge was taken down the government was concerned about "terrible traffic jams," says Huldai and therefore decided that parking lots on the city’s outskirts with shuttle buses were needed "I told them in advance that it wouldn't work but the Ministry of Transport invested a huge amount of money If you don't understand the system and you're not a professional - and today there are no professionals at all in the Ministry of Transportation - then how will it succeed?" Do you feel as if there is no one to work with at the Ministry of Transport I didn't understand the potential of bicycles There was an organization here called Yisrael B’shvil Ofanayim ('Israel by Bike') and I met with them in [Rabin] square and rode a bicycle we created bicycle paths when we renovated Rothschild Boulevard suddenly there were cyclists because there were paths "This vehicle became very significant in the city 20 years ago so we told them that we needed a definition for what a bicycle is everything with a pair of wheels would be called that we'll be able to enforce [regulations for] two-wheeled vehicles for the first time When we made the Bograshov Street bicycle lane We simply need to get things in order here." We build three light rail lines simultaneously as mayor and also as someone who runs for elected office former CEO of NTA [Metropolitan Mass Transit System] said the municipality delayed work on Allenby and Ibn Gabirol streets before the elections "Who delayed Glick from starting on Allenby a year earlier And you didn't ask why the Purple Line was postponed for a year because of Transport Minister Miri Regev who was unable to make a decision because of 23 Likud voters in Kfar Shalem that same person you mentioned said that without Huldai there would be no Red Line." the Green Line is expected to open in 2030 "I happened to come across a document today that I signed with the state in July 2000." Huldai pulls out the document and reads: "'After lengthy discussions on the topic it has been agreed to initiate the Tel Aviv mass transit system project The first tender will include the Red and the Green lines.' This is from 24 years ago How can you say it was me who delayed it?" "It also states that 'The [light rail] line will be designed to allow for a future upgrade to metro system technology.' That’s what was written They shortened the line [the underground section] to save a few cents so now there’s no possibility of an upgrade That’s the difference between signing with the Israeli government The absurdity is that the people in those positions today are wondering 'Why did they do this nonsense of a light rail instead of a metro,' but I was there in the discussions and I saw them tell Beiga [former Minister of Finance Avraham Shochat] there would never be demand for a metro." The [above-ground] light rail also doesn’t always meet expectations "Do you know why only a few people ride it There are lots of passengers in the underground section transport on the bus lanes is very reasonable Many residents don’t bother to move their cars." Parking is another Tel Aviv policy that differs significantly from the neighboring municipalities The city recently decided to adopt a parking reform that was to have gone into effect nationwide Tel Aviv will implement it now: the city will be divided into zones meaning that holding a parking permit does not guarantee free parking throughout the city the municipality is limiting the number of parking permits for individual households "I made a mistake 26 years ago," says Huldai I said I regretted it and was going to cancel it It's true that I did this free parking thing in Tel Aviv for political reasons And ever since then I've been looking for the opportunity to cancel it." The Ministry of Transport justified postponing the law saying that improving public transport and incentives for its use are not yet sufficiently in place and in the coming year they’re going to make those changes That's what's going to change now," says Huldai Isn't it clear this is a result of incompetence and ineptitude They’re simply helpless in the face of reality." I don't want to get into what I think about 'gems' like these and the others I want to see action from government ministers in all areas Do you think the so-called 'achievements' in education stem from a plan If I appoint a person because he's my friend and not because he is a professional suited to the position How do you explain the gap between the way transport is perceived in Tel Aviv and the way it is perceived by other authorities in the metropolitan area and around the country "Some things are not because of Ron Huldai This is the country's main city and it has many relative advantages this municipality was bankrupt and lived at the mercy of the government or others to those who say that actions have no effect in which 70 parking spaces on Bloch Street were taken away in favor of a bicycle lane "It made waves in local politics and there was a lot of noise about it There are 400 parking spaces in the new city hall building Some might argue that the municipality isn’t sticking to the agenda it promotes called the 'company car.' This didn't start with me and it’s everywhere The problem is that canceling it is a matter with the Histadrut [General Federation of Labor] Does anyone expect the Tel Aviv Municipality to enter a dispute with the city and the municipal employees to not have company cars "We are consistently adding parking spaces in construction projects eliminating street parking in favor of public transport and public space and within 3-4 years this city will be like a European city in the 1980s and 1990s There will be three train lines and 69 stations here which is more or less a station within 500 meters of your home." Clearly the reform is correct from a professional standpoint The question is whether it is right to promote it all at once which also includes limiting individual parking permits and raising prices [on parking] This comes together with a retroactive municipal tax increase and assistance for children with learning disabilities All this during a time of war and an economic downturn Can you understand why this process is being criticized "I haven’t heard the process being criticized and because you can't compare apples and oranges I understand it’s hard for residents and now there's a war and I can't give the same discount 'Lower the level of service,' or 'Close the community centers.'" While many enjoy the city's transformation and its accessibility to public transport and bicycles others claim the volume of infrastructure and housing construction makes it difficult for travel hasn’t had their lifestyle disrupted I can say what I am responsible for: 'Na'im Busofash' [Shabbat buses] in 14 local authorities I assume you walk around Ibn Gabirol Street What are you doing to make it easier for the businesses that are closing on these streets [due to light rail construction] "I don't know how to answer these questions anymore because they will quote everything I say without understanding the context and I admit that we’ve not been able to reach the point where we can help properly because we don't have cooperation from the Finance Ministry and the state." "Ibn Gabirol is not the same street it was when I came to the city Rents were 50% lower than streets nearby; today And the businesses on the street are not the same businesses that were then they have changed and adapted to what's happened in the city I'll put it this way: a business owner on [lower rent] Jerusalem Boulevard will have his property value increase and will also do good business." Without taking away from the courage it takes to make unpopular moves "You have to know how to read the municipality's website you didn't count the new immigrants who entered the city I don’t know of any data about people leaving Tel Aviv -- there is always turnover And I'm not talking about the fact that we don't count the foreign workers who are also residents here and don't appear in the statistics." what about the fact that Tel Aviv is becoming an increasingly expensive and difficult city to live in and the city has been through a lot since then There are towers here where each apartment is worth NIS 12-20 million Because you voted for those who want a free market there are those who can buy and those who can't there are residents here who save thousands of shekels because they can get around the city without a car [city council member] Dov Khenin pointed a finger at me and said 'The cost of living here is because of you.' I'm also to blame when cottage cheese goes up and when vegetables go up Florentine matures along with its residents Many of the world’s famous major cities have gone through a process of maturation leaving these vibrant cities devoid of diversity When asked if he fears Tel Aviv will also suffer a similar fate and leave its great success in its wake "That's the cycle of life." "Many cities have prospered and become 'so-so' cities and neighborhoods also change all the time Tel Aviv did experience an aging population phenomenon "Today's Florentine is completely different from the neighborhood it was when I became mayor I thought it would be better to keep it that way But it turns out that these young people began staying today's Harlem is not the Harlem of my youth are in no rush to approve thousands of housing units at the same time the municipality actually went along with the Israel Land Authority and a tender was issued to build 7,200 housing units simultaneously The municipality is expecting huge revenues from this neighborhood does that benefit municipal revenue or go against it?" when land is being sold at astronomical prices I have never stopped housing construction in Tel Aviv-Yafo for economic reasons I am constantly concerned about creating employment I opposed the evacuation of Sde Dov airport - it was a colossal mistake we see what's happening during wartime [in the absence of another local airport] I’m considered guilty for approving housing at Sde Dov we issued permits for 5,000 housing units and it may reach 6,000 in another month but because of these I have 5,000 apartments and I have to provide education and culture while property taxes never cover the expenses of an average family I looked at Tel Aviv - where else would I have the possible opportunity to have 7,000 apartments built all at once This is a unique land division that didn't exist before and was created because they unjustifiably shut down Sde Dov [airport] I’ll be very happy if we market all the apartments and I’ll be very happy if there are children running around this city and I have to take care of opening kindergartens "Reinvention instead of learning from others" Some developers claim that even after changes to the Metro Law the metro taxes to the municipality and the state still make planned projects unprofitable I think the Metro Law was passed too fast; it isn’t ready I don't think it is the thing to grant the opportunity as to whether or not to build a metro The Finance Ministry can’t determine urban planning just by looking at stations I repeat that I wish they had built just a metro here from the start because light rail lines are much more disruptive instead of learning from what others have done we invent something new because we are 'smarter.' So there’s always a law that needs to be made fast and that creates a law which is neither meat nor milk and won’t contribute the way it should Why should the residents of our region be burdened today just to benefit people 30 years from now?" Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on December 15 Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP) has seen its share price rise 36% since the start of 2024 On Friday the share price closed up 0.86% at $207.16 giving a market cap of $22.784 billion and consolidating its position as Israel's most valuable company The share price has risen 22% since the appointment of Nadav Zafrir as the new CEO was announced in late July adding $4 billion to the company's market cap Check Point will announce its third quarter results its final full quarter with Gil Shwed as CEO He has served in the position since cofounding the company but will become executive chairman on December 1 when Team8 investment fund founding partner Zafrir takes over at the helm Analysts expect Check Point to report 7% revenue growth and earnings per share 8.7% higher than the corresponding quarter of 2023 a small cloud weighed on Check Point last week when the US Security Exchange Commission (SEC) imposed a $995,000 fine on the company over misleading reports about cybersecurity risks the cybersecurity companies agreed to pay the civil penalties to settle the SEC's charges so this is a fine that is not significant for it "This is about a disagreement we had with the SEC about a report in the 2021 financial statement Then and today we said (and say) that anyone who used this software should think that they were a victim except that our investigations revealed that there was no access to the code information about customers or any other sensitive information and despite the lack of agreement on this with the SEC we agreed to enter into this settlement that includes additional companies with other cases Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 27 "\/liveblog_entry\/idf-intel-chief-tells-katz-he-didnt-criticize-trumps-gaza-plan-but-presented-possible-risks-as-role-requires\/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=nXQLFb9lYSEyAmY.b0KUbq7Ix1syO5z.DNcxcNp7wFs-1746490632-1.0.1.1-fRLYtGl4fYlPI4FNe0Asb4gI.10Md2r6TvxsGn_bGHA" + window._cf_chl_opt.cOgUHash);cpo.onload = function() {history.replaceState(null New Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP) CEO Nadav Zafrir will receive remuneration package of up to a $15.3 million subject to approval at the shareholders meeting at the end of October Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point announced the appointment two months ago of Team8 investment fund founder Zafrir to replace founder and CEO Gil Shwed Zafrir will assume the position at the beginning of December The company will ask to approve a basic annual salary of $384,000 which will be paid to him at NIS 1.44 million as well as a target-based bonus of $400,000 (NIS 1.15 million) Check Point will also allocate to Zafrir capital compensation in three components: blocked shares worth $4.4 million which will mature in four tranches including $1.4 million after one year and $1 million each year thereafter He will also receive a package of $4 million in blocked shares based on targets related to revenue which will mature subject to orders being received He will also receive options worth $6 million In recommending that shareholders accept the package "Zafrir has been a key leader in the global cybersecurity ecosystem for over a decade He is one of the figures most involved in the world CISO community and he has founded and managed a large number of companies in the industry." Check Point's share price has risen 27% since the start of the year and the company currently has a market cap of $21.5 billion Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on September 26 Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history a 22-year-old lone soldier in the Israeli army miraculously survived that attack – and others Shlomi Stock came to Israel for his gap year at the age of 18 and fell in love with the country “Even when I was in high school I would tell my friends that I was going to move to Israel and join the army,” Shlomi told Aish.com every kid sees a video of Israel and says they want to draft But 99.9% of kids don’t end up doing it.’” But Shlomi felt he had to do more than send donations to the Israeli army; he wanted to fight terrorists he realized that he had to stop procrastinating and make the bold decision to move to Israel He booked a one-way ticket and told himself Shlomi volunteered for the army and was drafted about a month after arriving in Israel He was in the Givati unit and did about a year and half of combat service He was supposed to complete his service at the end of June 2024 but the IDF went back into Gaza a few days before being discharged “I didn’t have to go in but I wanted to help.” Little did he know that he would be a recipient of a string of miracles but it is quite another to see it before your eyes I personally experienced miracle after miracle...” The army was planning to simulate a mock war week on October 7th we were awoken in the morning and told that 50 terrorists infiltrated the country Even though we came from the Golan Heights we were the first battalion to arrive down south We arrived late in the morning and went straight into battle.” Shlomi described that there were terrorists everywhere just Kfar Azza alone had over 200 terrorists We were trying to save people while the terrorists were raining down mortar missiles They were so close to us that they could aim and shoot precisely at us The entire day was filled with constant sirens But we could not go into the shelters like everyone else We had to keep fighting and just pray that it would not hit us.” One missile landed on the house next to Shlomi “Shrapnel flew everywhere but it sort of polka dotted in between everyone grabbing kids with one hand and shooting terrorists with the other We all watched as an RPG flew right in the middle of the armored vehicle We went into a building that was booby trapped “On that first mission we managed to save 150 Jewish civilians and thank God our entire unit made it out alive and unscathed.” Shlomi and his unit entered a United Nations school in Gaza All over the walls of the classroom were posters of the school principal armed with guns and dressed in a Hamas uniform The textbooks in the classroom were about the “evil Jews” who needed to be destroyed it was no secret that they openly declared that all Jews must die.” The Israeli Army issued warnings for immediate evacuation prior to their attack This also gave the terrorists time to flee They were at the corner of the building trying to secure the area They got a report that there could be 3-5 terrorists coming towards them and that they should be prepared terrorists start popping up out of every window raining down RPG’s on us We were eight guys in the corner of the building being attacked by 35 terrorists We had to hold this place or the whole building could get overrun by terrorists The terrorists were shooting at us from about fifty feet away If one RPG would hit our room on the second floor We watched the rockets come straight towards our head It was wild to see them shift direction before our eyes.” Shlomi’s officer Ro’i Miller sent two guys to the third floor to try to get a better angle and location against the terrorists Every RPG hit the floor above them; not one hit their floor You have an RPG coming right at you and it just curves in midair It’s not something that you can really explain He was putting on tefillin for his morning prayers when he received intelligence that terrorists were about 100 feet away grabbed his helmet and started the search for the terrorists Shlomi didn’t have time to take off the large metal piece on the helmet that enables night vision That piece is heavy and uncomfortable and soldiers never like to wear it during the daytime His team sent a drone throughout the building and saw that there were four terrorists Shlomi and his platoon managed to kill three of them Shlomi and his officer Ro‘i proceeded to survey each room going room by room to double check that all the terrorists were gone But there were two rooms where the drone feed cut out a terrorist was hiding behind a child’s bed He started spraying bullets into every direction In a split second the soldier next to Shlomi was shot and before he had time to process it The impact caused Shlomi to be propelled ten feet backwards Although he was in full gear weighing 275 pounds with 85 pounds of gear on him he opened his eyes and miraculously stood up Two guys grabbed me and started to help me up I didn’t lose consciousness but my sight was blurred I was badly injured as blood was coming down my face I was able to run out of the zone of fire on my own they would have had to carry me out and we all could have died.” Shlomi ran into the ambulance (armored personnel carrier) which brought him to the border of Gaza He was then taken by helicopter to the Be’er Sheva hospital “From the front lines to the hospital was only 25 minutes This is the fastest medical care you can find anywhere in a battle zone.” it was determined that three bullets hit his head The bullets had struck Shlomi’s helmet precisely where the night light was situated Shalom Jacobs Singer & Cantor on Instagram One bullet got caught in the cushion that makes the helmet more comfortable. “The bullet just stopped. None of it makes any sense. Of course, I had pieces of shrapnel that went into my head. I had 60 fractures in my skull, internal bleeding and a bad concussion. However, I was in hospital for only one week and after that I walked out on my own two feet.” “When I tell people I got shot in the head three times, people cannot believe that I am alive. It is truly incredible.” “Even if you’re living outside of Israel, it is your country, it is your people. You can be part of it by praying, doing mitzvot and not fighting with one another. Even if it feels that you are all the way on the other side of the world, we as soldiers can feel your love and support. Even the cards and notes coming in from the children - it makes a huge difference and we realize that we are not fighting alone in this dark and scary place.” Shlomi is currently recovering and is looking forward to a better future. He is seriously dating someone and excited to embark on their next chapter together. “I met Hila on a bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. I was on my way back home and it was her birthday. She was on her way to the Kotel to pray. I held the door for her as she got on and thought, Wow! What a catch! “We ‘happened’ to sit right next to each other and started talking. The rest is history. “She has been by my side throughout the entire war. Every two months, we get 24 hours off and we get to go home. But since I am a lone soldier, I don’t have a home, so I go to Hila’s parents’ house and she makes me a hot meal and they take care of me.” Shlomi feels that he has met his dream girl and cannot wait to begin their life together. Last week the happy couple got engaged! Mazel tov! May Shlomi merit a complete, full and speedy recovery. shloime is my son ezzys classmate in montreal.shloime should have a refua shelaima gemura. mazel tov and he should merit with his kallah to build a bayit neman byisrael . Godspeed, Mr. Shlomi for a lifetime of happiness – and safety. Everyone in the USA needs to bombard each person in both houses of Congress and the next president to get off her/his ass, and get the hostages back by any means necessary. I’d have more to say but sensitivity training won’t allow it. What I can say is do not announce anything and “never let ‘em (the vermin) see you comin.’ I will only add that if Harris is elected, most everything will further deteriorate. Miracles are the concrete evidence that Hashem is our G-d! Hashem ALONE! Praise Him for the miracles that He has performed for us! Hashem made a covenant with the Jewish people at Sinai. That covenant with God has been broken, and the Jewish people have been in wars and holocausts ever since. But God has kept His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that their progeny would be as many as the sands of the seas for all times. Hashem does not break His covenants. Israel will survive this war and many miracles will be seen. Hashem made a covenant with the Jewish people at Sinai. However, that covenant has been broken, and the Jewish people have faced wars and holocausts ever since. Despite this, God has kept His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, ensuring that their descendants would be as numerous as the sands of the seas for all time. Hashem does not break His covenants. Israel will survive this war. Because if you don’t fight, they will kill you. It’s a sickening thought but it’s true. You fight for your life and sometimes that means giving your life in the fight. How many times in Torah does Hashem say kill the evil among you? Terrorists are the purest evil because killing and destroying is their goal: OCTOBER 7. So what do you suggest we do? Sit with folded hands and let them kill us? The solution is not in our hands but we still must do whatever we can towards it - and just now that includes eliminating as many of our enemies as possible. Wonderful to hear the miracle that G-d saved you in his wisdom. Mazel tov on your engagement! L'chaim. x Wow nice story. Happy for you guys! Almighty is Great 🙂 wow thank you for sharing this story. we are seeing Hashems hand in everything. We Jewish people should really realize and appreciate how miraculous our existence is. Hashem has a mission and a purpose for us, he is not saving us for nothing. May He continue to save us and help us and heal us and protect us and may we be successful in our mission as G-ds chosen people I am crying as I am scared, I am crying because I am so happy that Shlomi survived, and I am crying because he gets a very heartfelt Mazel Tov! Am Yisrael Chai!!! Thank you for signing up for the aish.com free newsletter. With fear and hunger their constant companions the future promised only misery for the three Israeli hostages being held in a secret location in the heart of the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and Almog Meir Jan were dozing on their mattresses on the floor of their darkened room on the Shabbos morning of June 8 their captors had let down their guard somewhat — it was already mid-morning and they were still sleeping in the next room the Israeli hostages heard shouting and gunfire they tried to hide under their mattresses and blankets in a vain attempt to shield themselves from the shrapnel Then they heard a powerful explosion and a team of IDF soldiers burst into the house led by the commander of the Yamam special forces unit Zemora himself was struck by gunfire from the Hamas terrorists guarding the captives and mortally wounded while additional Yamam soldiers burst in through the third-floor window terrified captives cowering in the beams of the rescuers’ powerful flashlights while the soldiers asked them to identify themselves by name viewing the footage of the rescue is both scary and exhilarating The elation of the rescuers and the disbelief of the hostages are both clearly evident with the booming soundtrack of gunfire in the background Like Yosef who was suddenly freed from Egyptian captivity the captives went from chains to freedom within a few minutes dramatic act of a story that played out over eight months It’s a story of fortitude and miraculous survival and of a lifesaving camaraderie forged in a shared horror whose enormity only the three protagonists can really comprehend But dozens of hostages are still captive in Gazan tunnels and squalid hideouts As Israel and Hamas once again debate prisoner releases Shlomi and Almog share their story together “We’re waiting for everyone to be released,” they say the three men were strangers to each other never imagining that something would bind their fates together in an unbreakable bond had been discharged from the army several months before he was kidnapped And Shlomi Ziv from Moshav Elkosh in the north celebrated his forty-first birthday in captivity “I’m not a man of publicity and photographs,” Shlomi tells Mishpacha although his family has spoken to the media he hasn’t yet given a single other interview “I’m doing this now it only because I know how important it is to document all this,” he adds he couldn’t believe that there are those who deny the horrors the terrorist are committing found all three men at the Nova event on Kibbutz Re’im with Shlomi and Andrei both there as security officers Feeling responsible for the welfare of the others heading in the direction of Gaza,” he recalls screaming ‘A terrorist is coming!’ and I heard gunshots.” but there was nothing I could do,” he says another one of the security guards at the event “The terrorist motioned for me to call him,” Shlomi relates “Andrei didn’t even understand what was going on He thought at first that it was one of our soldiers Then the terrorist asked me if I know how to drive Shlomi racked his brain thinking how he could get away But his realistic conclusion was that he had no chance against hundreds of armed terrorists Almog had come to the event with his good friend whose murder Almog learned about only after his rescue As soon as the early-morning missile fire started the two friends got into their car and began to speed away But then they noticed the terrorists on the road and realized their only recourse was to try and flee on foot and Almog hid between the bushes with four other young people who had fled — Elkanah Bohbot and Guy Gilboa Dalal — all of whom have been held in captivity for over a year now “There was a huge influx of terrorists with Kalashnikovs “I decided to come out from the bush with my hands raised It was the most humiliating feeling in the world.” Almog and his four friends were held in a storage room in an apartment “They took me to a different room and wrapped me up in a sheet I was sure they were going to throw me into a grave Who else gets wrapped in a sheet if not for a dead person and then proceeded to push me into the trunk of a car One of them knocked the butt of his gun on my head They treated me like I was a soldier in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit as if I had the state’s most closely guarded secrets and I was their greatest enemy.” and what Almog certainly wasn’t going to tell them was that he’d actually been one of the soldiers operating the Iron Dome throughout the Gaza Envelope area during his IDF service which certainly would have been of great interest to them He was driven to the apartment where Shlomi and Andrei were being held who were blindfolded for the first three days and bound hand and foot “They took off the blindfolds only when we went to the bathroom or while we ate,” they relate the knowledge that they weren’t alone gave them strength it never entered their minds that they would be spending the next eight months together or that they’d be transferred to six other apartments meeting new terrorists and captors each time guarded by terrorists who read them chapters from the Koran and gave them no opportunity to escape but their hands and legs remained tied for about two and a half months Almog remembers the date when they were released from the handcuffs — it was 5 Teves The constant bombardments also caused them terrible fear Shlomi recounts a particularly terrifying day when Israeli intelligence warned all Gaza residents to leave the area Even those in the house with us fled — including all our captors with the terrorist guarding us with a knife in his hand.” They did consider overpowering the terrorist and running away “but we realized there was no point,” Shlomi relates “because even if we’d manage to get outside They would see us outside with the chains and realize exactly who we were.” “We understood there was no chance of escaping,” he says Shlomi says their captors made sure they’d heard about the tragic story of the three hostages who escaped and were mistakenly shot by the IDF disillusioning them of any fantasies of rescue “Our captors were very explicit — they told us that if the IDF would come to rescue us It’s not easy for Shlomi and Almog to look back at the months they spent in captivity They say the hardest part was the uncertainty — they never knew what their fate would be in five minutes’ time and what kind of plans their evil captors had in store for them was after the first hostage release deal on November 22 There was intense missile fire and bombardments and situated as they were so close to the center of it all the whole building was shaking,” Shlomi says and the food distribution that they’d arranged among themselves: One got a bit more pita and the other a bit more cheese If they were given four dates instead of three they would discuss what to do with the fourth date and who should eat it knowing they couldn’t count on their next meal What kept them from falling apart was their feeling of certainty that one day they would leave Gaza “We never stopped believing that we’d go home,” Almog stresses ‘Maybe this time we’ll be surprised,’ but time and again our hopes were dashed Almog says that while Entebbe was obviously on everyone’s mind they hoped for a deal more than for a rescue because they assumed it would give them a better chance of getting out alive “We understood that if there would be a rescue the IDF would come close and there would be gunfire and explosions and our captors would surely hear it and fight back We didn’t want to get into that kind of situation We didn’t want the soldiers to endanger themselves for us and we didn’t want to be in any more danger either.” Almog says they knew about the hostages who were released “We were happy for the hostages who were released but we were also very worried that after they released the women and children we heard that there was talk about a new deal and that got our hopes up and gave us strength “The captors enjoyed telling us over and over again that ‘they don’t want you in Israel it’s not important to them to get you back alive.’ And they always added Almog says he really doesn’t understand how they were able to listen to these harsh and depressing statements without reacting “Sometimes there were moments when I thought to myself how my wife looks… And then I would imagine their faces in my head and it gave me a good feeling,” Shlomi shares “Every time I got up in the morning after dreaming about my family One of the dreams he remembers was one where he saw himself sitting downstairs from his grandparents’ home with a suitcase in his hand Shlomi was also there in the dream and Almog related that at one point I’m going up to them,” as if it were the simplest thing in the world to do and my grandmother opened the door and began to cry Everyone was there and they were all saying we were waiting for you!’ And then I got down on my knees and broke down crying “Suddenly I woke up and discovered that it was all a dream and he was able to calm me down and listen and also to support me when I suffered from nightmares.” Shlomi and Almog didn’t know the names of their captors “They all called themselves Mohammed,” they say “We had five captors in the last apartment where we were Almog gave them names based on their appearances — “Mohammed tall” for the tallest of them and “Mohammed chadudim,” for the one who harassed them the most “He was really unpredictable,” Almog says about their main captor opting not to share more details about the daily abuse that turned their lives into a prolonged trauma Today he knows his real name: Abdallah al Jamal the owner of the house where they were hidden who was eliminated together with his father a doctor and imam at a local mosque that is run by Hamas worked as a journalist and photographer for Al Jazeera highlighting yet again the link between global media outlets and Hamas Their sole contact with the outside world came from the guards — who either brought them food or abused them They could hear the Gazan family that lived downstairs Listening to Almog and Shlomi describe even just a bit of what they suffered is chilling “Al Jamal would have fits of fury,” Shloimi says “He would punch us and kick us in the stomach.” they were locked in the bathroom or were forced to lie down while their captors piled blankets on top of them practically suffocating them in the Gazan heat They were allowed to shower once in two weeks their captors would come by in the morning often telling them they would be killed later that night and threatening to take them down to the tunnels At one point it seemed to Shlomi and Almog that they were going to make good on that threat which they say was the most frightening possibility of all but one of the captors persuaded the others not to do it “There were times when we would just hug and cry on each other,” Almog says “Those were moments when we realized very clearly how important it was for us to be there for each other.” The men tried anything they could to pass the time creating sudoku puzzles for each other to solve and playing cards — sometimes with their captors but that was only because of the space on the board not because I meant anything specific,” he says by the eightieth day we’ll be out of here.’ it looked like the chart would end and we’d still be in Gaza and it was five days to the end of the chart Shlomi and Andrei turned to me: ‘How are we going to get out of here?’ But I insisted it would happen retroactively named Operation Arnon after force commander Arnon Zemora who was fatally wounded while leading the rescue operation and was eventually pulled off in broad daylight The soldiers pushed them into a small bathroom to wait until they could create a safe evacuation route their first time in six months seeing daylight they moved toward the truck that took them away while forces all around battled heavily-armed terrorists which took them some distance away until the heavy wheel chains began to sink into the coastal sand; it was quickly replaced by another vehicle that took them to a helicopter waiting to take them to safety and freedom and Almog were flown to Tel Hashomer medical center in central Israel where they were reunited with their families After a short hospitalization they returned home “It’s a totally different life,” Shlomi says the feeling that everything that you do represents something I’m happy that I can represent something so big Almog faced heartbreaking news upon his return: His father had passed away just one day earlier When the IDF officer called to inform him that Almog had been rescued unable to withstand the pain he was in any longer The fate of the six hostages who were found in a tunnel within days of their murder at the end of August brought home to Shlomi and Almog how easily things could have been different for them One of those six hostages was Alex Lobanov of Ashkelon one of whom was born while he was in captivity The terrorists told him that his name was on a list of hostages slated for release and instructed him to shower and shave he was taken to a tunnel and ultimately murdered by his captors with the captives languishing for over a year in the now-decimated Gaza Strip and a hostage rescue long since swallowed in the welter of Israeli politics Shlomi and Almog have a message to the nation and to those negotiating a partial hostage release: Don’t let anyone be left behind And their message to the other hostages still in captivity: “Have faith and be strong And believe that your rescue can happen any day.” Yisrael YoskowitzNo Regrets  “Anti-Semitism hasn’t disappeared Today it hides under the guise of ‘criticism of Israel,’ but it’s the same old poison” Yitzchok LandaLimited LiabilityShe can’t undo the insurance mess but Shuli Berger makes sure the system works for you Tzivia MethStill in the Story   Rabbi Marcus Lehmann's pen instilled Jewish confidence in his generation and beyond  Mishpacha StaffHalf the Battle For Rav Meir Mazuz every struggle was about the sanctity of the Jewish nation Binyamin RoseReady, Willing, and Able   Israel's US ambassador Yechiel Leiter relives his knock on history's door  Yaacov LipszycDevils’ AdvocatesA guide to the web of evil that spirited away Nazis to sanctuary in South America Shlomi Ziv and Almog Meir Jan spoke to Israel Hayom as part of the documentation efforts of the Oc.t 7 massacre | Photo: Efrat Eshel We can feel the blood freeze in terror for a split second We can also witness the strength of spirit beyond the realm of normal human experience from the time of their abduction to the present – in the lives they are trying to build in this insane reality simple things we take for granted: morning coffee "Going to the bathroom freely without asking permission simply opening the door – and going out." These are the moments Shlomi and Almog now savor and appreciate so much after the fear of death was an inseparable part of the air they breathed deceptive "rewards," after severe violence "What really hit hardwas that even in the shower, even in the bathroom, you had to get permission and also hope they'll agree," says Shlomi Ziv. This is the first time since he was rescued from Hamas captivity along with Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Noa Argamani in Operation Arnon that he's sits in front of cameras and sharing The whole setup and public exposure make him feel a bit shy he's aware of the immense importance of documentation "If it's for the world to know what they did to us what we went through in captivity – I am willing to do it," he says "That's what's important – to pass the story on," notes Almog who's now sitting next to him in front of attorney Susie Ozsinay-Aranya the documenter from the Government Press Office "When I came out (of Gaza) and heard that there are people who deny it – like Holocaust denial Of course I feel a need and also a desire to say 'This happened to me This is one of the main goals of the national documentation project of returnees and families of hostages for the State Archives a project led by the Government Press Office (GPO) under the leadership of Nitzan Chen with the support of the National Public Diplomacy Directorate "This is the 'Yad Vashem' of October 7," says Chen referring to the national Holocaust memorial and museum So that even our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will know what happened to our people in the worst tragedy since the Holocaust." As part of the project – which we've been following closely in recent weeks – 25 released hostages of all ages and 21 family members of hostages many of whom are still in the midst of the horror share their story of captivity and return to normalcy from the most terrible and horrifying place where they are denied the most basic human rights – to freedom and everyone documented before them – for those are still in the Hamas hell on earth – to illustrate how time is running out and how immediate the danger is Shlomi arrives wearing a Nova shirt with the inscription "WE WILL DANCE AGAIN," a silver necklace with the symbol of the struggle to bring back the hostages from the Nova rave on Oct and another necklace with a dog tag from the Nova community and they both attach the microphone to their shirts Almog's new tattoo – designed like a newspaper page documenting their heroic rescue – peeks out from under his pants On Shlomi's hand is a tattoo documenting his first encounter with terror revealing another part of the inner strength that helped him cope with the trauma of captivity Handsome?" Almog asks jokingly and winks at his good friend even now Almog manages to lighten the atmosphere and give those around him a moment to breathe "I need a moment of quiet," requests the sound technician and Susie  briefs them: "We usually start the testimonials with each person introducing themselves." I was in Hamas captivity for 246 days and was rescued with Shlomi and Andrey." I'm happy that I can represent something so big but it's not as if I am back and everything is the same," and Shlomi adds Shlomi arrived at that fateful party as a security guard on Thursday already he stayed even when everyone started to pack up and flee because "part of security is that you have to go last." Only when shots were fired in his direction and "someone shouted 'They're coming They're coming!' – we started running," he recalls and someone came running and shouted 'The terrorist is coming.' I thought to myself – either I run I thought about what I could do now to get out of the situation but I realized that there's nothing I could do." who also worked as a security guard at the party "The terrorist told me 'Call him.' I call Andrey Andrey even thought the terrorists was an IDF soldier I looked at him and said 'It's not what you think Understand the situation.' I got behind the wheel Andrey sat next to me and the terrorist directed us to Gaza." The special bond formed between them is stronger than words The understanding that only those who were there and survived countless encounters with death together can have Andrey Kozlov said in a testimony he gave a few weeks before them that "every decision we made was the right decision – but we couldn't have known it at the time." There was a very difficult event – the house where the three of them were staying was under IDF bombardment The terrorist guarding them was reciting chapters from the Quran and wouldn't allow them to escape "Andrey said the terrorist really wanted to be a shahid (martyr)," Susie tells them "It was a very difficult day for all of us," Shlomi agrees "The homeowner came in and said in Arabic to the guards 'Captain so-and-so called' I hear 'Captain' and I understand it's Israeli intelligence saying to leave the house – because they're going to bomb now there wasn't a single person in the neighborhood You hear the women and children taking themselves and fleeing except for one who stayed with us – all the captors evacuated and we were left there chained and the one guarding us standing with a knife in his hand Almog looks at Shlomi and continues his thought: "We thought about what to do It's not like we're completely free now." In these terrifying moments the friends communicated with each other "through looks in whispers." They understood they had no way to escape the situation "We understood there was no option to escape that the most important thing was to stay together," says Shlomi "At every stage we chose what to do – we checked all the chances and came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth it You can't risk your life on something you plan in a minute and a half." "We were literally with mattresses on top of us so shrapnel wouldn't fall on us," Almog says "We tried to protect ourselves as much as we could," adds Shlomi and Almog seems to continue his words: "Mostly we prayed and started to say goodbye "It was one of the scariest days," he says Even after the first hostage return deal ended the three experienced a difficult period "of missiles and bombardments," Almog recalls We heard gunshots all night." And Shlomi adds: "Close explosions that shook the entire building." with mattresses barely shielding their bodies they were etched into the collective memory in the stunning footage from the IDF soldiers' GoPro cameras when they found them "We understood there was a better chance of coming out alive in a deal," says Almog "We thought a lot about freedom," describes Shlomi "we heard about the three who tried to escape and were accidentally shot by the IDF All this makes you think and fear taking the next step." Almog: "When you think about trying to get out you take into account that the IDF is close and there will be gunshots and explosions Our captors also knew that the IDF was approaching and then it goes through your mind – Will they shoot us or will they tell us 'go hide' while they fight because we don't want our soldiers to risk themselves for us – and we didn't want to risk ourselves either." Shlomi: "The biggest fear was that they would kill us then tak-tak-tak' [implying being executed] They also told us to our faces that if they come to rescue us they'll managed to bring back only bodies." the three hostages never stopped imagining scenarios and planning how they would act in every situation How long will it take until the next phase You hear from them that there are talks about a deal on the table," says Almog "It gives you strength and hope," adds Shlomi "and then a week later they announce - no deal and all the time they tell you 'Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't want that's also what's written in Al-Jazeera'." Almog: "They tell us – 'They don't want you they don't care about bringing you back alive'." What kept them hopeful was also the strong internal knowledge that they would return home "I thought I was going to be there for at least two years," says Shlomi Almog: "I was very optimistic that we'd return home but it was hard to maintain the optimism." Shlomi: "Every time there was something on the table I thought maybe they'd surprise us and then you're disappointed again," and Almog completes his words: "But the faith was very strong in us I put myself in the mode that I'm coming back." which have disappeared for Almog since returning what my wife looks like...' and then when you dream – it fills you up "Beyond the historical documentation – the big picture is important The puzzle is coming together as we hear more testimonies," says Nitzan Chen is leading the project of documenting the returnees and families of hostages for the Israel State Archives with the support of the National Public Diplomacy Directorate we want there to be a current and international impact," he stresses.The GPO created a difficult-to-watch video containing the essence of the evil and horror experienced by the hostages who returned; a video that was screened on Holocaust Remembrance Day for representatives of international media and diplomacy and stirred many echoes "We approached the project with a mission," says Susie "but you can't be mission-oriented in such an event It's hard to hear all the horrors and not cry with them during the filming This is essentially the state – the establishment crying with them because when you come to a family whose world has been destroyed and they blame the government – and for many we are state employees – we remind them 'We are here for you we were exposed to the unique details of the many and varied modes of captivity experienced by the hostages but also to coping methods and experiences common to the survivors the constant fear of the unpredictable reaction of the terrorists as a result of the intense fighting – which is repeated in many of the testimonies of those who returned from captivity "From many hostages we heard that their biggest fear was to be left alone," says Michal Bardugo Many of the returnees shared their immense difficulty when they were released and left hostages behind "For the returnees – the most important project is the project of life and death They took with them the responsibility for the soul of those they left behind," says Susie and cases of sexual abuse also came up in many of the testimonies "There was a family that shared how they feared for one of the daughters," Susie recounts "Every little glance from the kidnappers would drive them crazy One of the kidnappers said he wanted to marry the girl The girl herself pretended to be asleep most of the time and minimized speech and communication with the kidnappers There were female hostages who reported being touched in intimate areas while being dragged to the bathroom or for checks There were female hostages who met other female hostages who had been sexually abused under threats "Many of the hostages talked about the 'chip check' underwent a physical examination when a Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist would arrive – to verify that they didn't have a chip that the IDF had implanted in them in case they were kidnapped They demanded they remove clothes and patted them down on their body." Many hostages spoke to the documenters about the violent and frightening entry into Gaza They shared how they saw the Gazan mob with toys and children's ride-on toys stolen from the kibbutzim how they feared a lynching and how the terrorists tried to keep them away from the Gazans "The abductors' leader was always 'Mohammed' One of the female hostages told how she made up names for each of them The one who cooked was called 'The Chef' or 'The Cook' The one who was scary or tended to threaten with a weapon was called 'The Devil' In the midst of all the horrors – there were also moments when the kidnappers revealed "positive" sides recounts how the family members who guarded her and her three children – shielded them with their bodies every time there were explosions or tremors Alongside few moments of compassion were many unbearable cases of abuse "It's meeting human evil in the eyes of the captors," says Susie and Andrey describe in their testimony horrific tortures kicks in the stomach out of anger," Shlomi describes "He (the terrorist) didn't know how to control his feelings that we're bloodthirsty." Shlomi recalls "that we are nothing and worthless That in another situation we wouldn't be here anymore Almog: "This is the process we went through there to swallow your pride hard and understand that it's not important to answer him Shlomi: "There were times we confronted them," and Almog nods You go through days of severe humiliations I'll take you down to the tunnels.'" Shlomi: "There was a lot of psychological warfare sometimes prevent us from going to the bathroom He would really humiliate you and you're helpless." When Shlomi describes these matters Almog immediately finds an example: "They allow you to shower once every two weeks You're in an uncomfortable situation with yourself and they come in the morning with a spray of perfume the homeowner who was later revealed to be an Al-Jazeera reporter also had sadistic punishments he invented and inflicted on them without context He would tie our hands tightly behind our back or put a pencil or piece of wood inside our mouth between our teeth so that our lips would go back like this "I would bang my face at him 'Have mercy on me,'" says Almog and demonstrates with a smile If he saw one of us standing – suddenly 'Okay Shlomi: "But we would have break after four days Winning him over by being good children." Almog: "Dying to give him a punch Disconnecting the emotion." Shlomi: "Putting the ego aside." As part of the deception meant to create total control alongside the punishments the captor invented "rewards" also came randomly and unpredictably "You can't expect from the person what he'll do on that day In the morning he would wake up in a mood 'Don't talk I don't want to hear you.' Suddenly in the afternoon he was nicer: 'Okay Let's watch a movie ('Speed').' And after five minutes: 'What puts two fingers to his temple and demonstrates: "There were situations where he just came to you with a gun and deliberated out loud: 'Kill you They constantly shouted at the children "Uskut" (be quiet) Everyone who was held captive underground talked about the sand that got everywhere "One of the older female hostages described how she remained mostly alone locked in an apartment," Susie recounts "That she managed to develop a relationship with the animals around her The severe hunger was one of the prominent issues in captivity to "hear Hebrew," as the project leaders explain "The thing that was most significant for many of them was when they were transferred from the Red Cross to IDF representatives in Egypt – and suddenly heard Hebrew." when there's always terror about the next moment "Hours upon hours with nothing to do," many returned hostages described "The adults who were together in captivity decided Take a topic and start analyzing it by countries Or they would play charades to pass the time they brought cards or papers and pencils so they could draw but didn't allow them to take the drawings with them." Many of the returnees talked about the psychological warfare "All the time someone is sitting and watching you Wanting to know what you're thinking about Most of them said that at some point they would place their weapon next to them – cocked," says Susie All the hostages who returned in the deal shared that they weren't afraid in the tunnels as much as during their emergence from the tunnels for the handover to the Red Cross when they shook their car and again many Gazans swarmed them," Susie recounts "At this stage they started bumpting onto the car and I'm realizing an arena with stands packed with people and men," one of the women documented in the chilling advocacy video produced by the GPO describes – "to show the horrors that will be etched in international consciousness," says Chen Another hostage describes: "The civilians were hitting they made a demonstration as if I'm in the middle All the men spitting and shooting and the women in the windows rejoicing." There are hostages who returned in a very difficult mental state and currently have no ability to give testimony With an inability to come into contact with the outside world There are those who can't get out of bed," says Susie and the kidnappers showed him difficult videos of terrorists killing people Another female hostage describes how one of the terrorists shouted at her that she was a murderer and intentionally hurt her one with a Kalashnikov and two more – one with a shovel.. The entrance (to the tunnel) is terrifying as hell And then they transferred me to a sort of prison with a few more hostages Another female hostage describes: "There were hostages who suffered from nightmares at night Predatory animals." Another hostage recounted: "I'm lying on a stretcher on the floor Making this movement with their finger," he demonstrates a slitting motion across the throat "is that those giving testimony know that they are for future generations so they allow themselves to tell things they won't say on commercial and public television how they had to ask permission to enter the bathroom and also to exit That the terrorists could enter the bathroom even during shower time whenever they wanted Another female hostage describes multiple intrusive touches to intimate areas accompanied by curses Another female hostage described: "The kidnapper approached her (one of the hostages) It's so despicable when it's with a weapon pressed to the temple and he's touching her in all parts of her body." Another hostage describes how she was dehydrated and didn't have the strength to stand or go to the bathroom Even if I wanted to resist in this situation You're nothing and worthless and he really believes you're nothing and worthless At every moment they wanted to break you spiritually There are many things I've been in my life knowing that every word she says has deep meaning That her pain and the disaster that struck her family have a part in the history being written now We are accompanying the documentation – which is part of a collection of testimonies from family members of hostages and those who were held captive Liora Argamani was also documented while her daughter Noa "Avinatan was kidnapped when he was 30 and turned 31 in captivity He is the second of seven children," the mother says about her Avinatan: "He is dominant but quiet Quiet with a powerful presence." She then shares the difficulty of talking about the day of the kidnapping itself "The last time I met Avinatan was on the first day of Sukkot His role was to build the sukkah and dismantle it at the end of the holiday many neighbors offered to dismantle it for me it's time to dismantle.' It was very difficult Ditza had managed to meet – for the first time – with Noa She doesn't share details she heard from her about the captivity "that's hers." She does mention that "Avinatan had an opportunity to escape If there was a reality where he escaped and they caught Noa he couldn't have continued." Operation Arnon "I had the chance to meet with Liora Argamani a few times 'You raised an amazing girl...,' I told her "From that moment on we (Ditza and Noa) have a very meaningful connection and we both love him endlessly." At the end of the first meeting between the mother and Noa Ditza recounts with a smile and shining eyes: "I said in my heart 'Avinatan – I approve.'" "Each testimony has three parts," says Susie "We explain to those being documented that we're not looking for headlines We want to hear from the beginning to the end – who the person is what life looked like until the moment of kidnapping and how they're recovering since they returned Every small detail about how they were kidnapped and their stay in captivity The information gets reviewed by the censors and are exposed to the complete and detailed story it's hard not to shiver from the abundance of sensations Mother to a 5-year-old girl and a 3-year-old girl We were released in the first phase," Doron says at the beginning of the recording She describes the anxiety that grew as the terrorists roamed Kibbutz Nir Oz and wreaked havoc recounts how the terrorists who entered the safe room asked her and her mother to remove their jewelry Her mother had a ring that had been passed down from her great-grandmother's grandmother "It was a ring from Germany from generations back with black diamonds I was injured and found myself on the tractor alone with my mother I brought her closer to me and realized she had been murdered I was afraid they would separate me from the girls started to realize I was going to lose consciousness." The unbearable moments when Doron realizes she has lost her mother and she must find her children – are just chilling Doron describes how Sharon Cunio came to take her to the girls until more terrorists arrived and forced them to get up and board another tractor and meanwhile I see the terrorist with Raz." Doron shouted "The child!" and the terrorist passed Raz to the tractor They pushed us on top of each other while I'm bleeding on everyone Doron grew stronger and functioned despite the severe pain throughout her body She asked the captors to bring papers and colors for the girls The captors brought them baby toys from the house but mostly Doron kept her daughters occupied with imagination games There were stressful booms and you have nothing to do The IDF called that they're going to bomb the house – we must leave!'" every survivor who sits in front of the cameras and in front of the documenters looks straight ahead bravely and describes the indescribable who was kidnapped from her home in Kfar Aza with three of her children were murdered before her eyes – is also breathtaking "In the early morning hours we heard an explosion in the house.. You have to understand the low point we reached Mortal fear that we experienced for the first time We were using the bathroom in reusable bags You have to understand the magnitude of the distress.. Al-Yahud!' We realize they're in the house I understood that they were shooting very quickly I thought they were riddling us with bullets The terrorists also killed Yam during the preparations to leave "I see that she's shot in the face," Doron describes in the frightening and difficult hours of darkness The terrible understanding was already there." During one of the transfers between apartments Chen describes how the kidnappers "brought us traditional clothes They were fascinated that we wore the hijab describes the immense difficulty involved in the loss of privacy When at every moment there's someone looking at you and trying to invade your thoughts "You experience the crazy fighting and try to maintain hope There were difficult days of crazy attacks that tore apart my body You can't explain what goes through your body in this destruction There were days when I felt I was going to lose my humanity." Chen also talks about the emotional damage and the time that doesn't pass One of the captors came with a lighter and burned the children's creations There they met other young female hostages who managed despite severe physical injuries to take care of each other "In the tunnel you always have sand in your mouth One is injured in the hand and must ensure that no one touches her there Occasionally they were allowed to listen to the radio Every newscast where they didn't say a word about the hostages – it was devastating to us." Susie asks Almog and Shlomi what they would say to the hostages who are still there "To always keep believing – because it can happen To be strong like they are until now and to take care of themselves," says Shlomi "And it's very important for me to say thank you to Arnon Zemora "May his memory be blessed," Shlomi and Almog say together and Almog adds: "Just as we returned – I hope they will be stronger than us That they keep the hope alive – it's easy to lose it but you also need to know where to draw it from If I could come to them in a dream and tell them something – I would tell them 'It will happen soon.'" While the private and collective trauma is still bubbling They bravely give testimony for the grandchildren of all our great-grandchildren They share and report – for documentation in the Israel State Archives for the world's condemnation and eyes – about war crimes of vicious and cruel terror that continues to maintain the October 7 tragedy to this very day Jewish Agency Chairman Major General (Res.) Doron Almog met with new Olim soldiers.. "I know there's a lot of responsibility on me the scale and nature of the tragedy in the Lapu Lapu festival that killed 11 feel alien... The first issue of Israel Hayom appeared on July 30, 2007. Israel Hayom was founded on the belief that the Israeli public deserves better, more balanced and more accurate journalism. Journalism that speaks, not shouts. Journalism of a different kind. And free of charge. joins XM after spending the past four years as a senior marketing executive at Exness He began his tenure at Exness as Head of PR & External Communications and was named Head of Creative Content in 2023 Shlomi had also previously worked at eToro for five years XM also recently hired former StubHub tech head Nasos Topakas as CTO XM.com is part of the family of online brokerage brands operated by Cyprus based Trading Point Of Financial Instruments Ltd The group operates licensed subsidiaries in Cyprus Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" With FNG's Newsletter you'll get all the latest breaking FX Industry news stories - in a concise daily email Get FNG's daily newsletter to receive notice of all articles like this one "\/they-settled-the-northern-border-now-these-elderly-israelis-worry-they-wont-return\/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=16caHNv3fMxjNAxPCxd86Bv3d7937OW9vk1YlNTQEs4-1746490674-1.0.1.1-AKfvM6buEmzeboVmfrkEK4Gy972gpSzc..IdRtTOGUo" + window._cf_chl_opt.cOgUHash);cpo.onload = function() {history.replaceState(null Israeli singer Shlomi Shabat this week kept a promise he made months ago to two survivors of the October 7 massacre at the Nova music festival in Re'im The couple, Ben Binyamin and Gali Segal were at the October 7 festival to celebrate their engagement and Ben's birthday and were injured after Hamas terrorists hurled a grenade into the shelter where they were treated following the massacre the couple discovered that though they had survived they had both suffered the same very serious injury: Both had lost their right leg It was at Sheba that Shabat learned that Gali had asked that he be the one to sing "Bereishit Olam," at their wedding ceremony. He immediately acceded to her request, and dedicated the song to them while he sang it on stage at Sheba. Shabat kept his promise: Ben and Gali celebrated their wedding "Bereishit Olam," as he had promised he would months before.