The economy in Israel is in difficult times after the Hamas attack

2023-11-16 21:38:24

In the first days after the Hamas attacks there were many calls for help. Israel’s start-up scene has been under severe pressure. After the brutal attacks by terrorists from the Gaza Strip that left 1,400 dead and 200 hostages, thousands of young employees were drafted into military service almost overnight. Companies also had to worry about financing their work. Within days, the state had an initial rescue fund of $100 million on the table. The private sector followed suit. She provided a quarter of a billion.

“Now the country is receiving massive amounts of funds,” says Aviv Zeevi Balasiano, Vice President of the Innovation Authority. These are not donations, but rather well-calculated investments. “But they should also show the willingness to help that we are currently receiving from Germany, the United States and other parts of the world.” The US chip manufacturer Nvidia gives every employee in Israel a decent bonus with their next salary, which they can use at their own discretion donate. Intel will pay all 12,000 employees in Israel an additional $5,000. German corporations are also joining in. The software company SAP employs 900 people in Israel. You will receive additional payments of up to the equivalent of almost 1,000 euros per family member. “We receive a lot of help,” says Zeevi.

War in cyberspace

He joined a virtual conference of the Chemnitz Chamber of Commerce and Industry via video from Tel Aviv. The head of the international department, Alexa von Künsberg, invited people to the “Update Israel”. The Saxons have been maintaining close cooperation with various Israeli partners for years: companies and universities, research institutes and authorities. It’s about biotech, agriculture and Industry 4.0. No wonder: Israel has the third-largest tech hub in the world with 9,000 high-tech companies – and German companies are also keeping an eye on it.

As one of Europe’s largest retailers in 2021, the Schwarz Group had the Israeli XM Cyber ​​Ltd. bought. Noam Erez, founder and head of the cybersecurity specialist, founded his company with colleagues after a distinguished career in the Israeli secret service. He sold it to Germany without really giving up the reins. “We actually wanted Schwarz as a customer. Then they bought us. And that was a good thing – for both of them.” Because German companies are at the top of data hackers’ attack lists.

The current IT situation report from the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has already made waves. The office registers, among other things, 250,000 new variants of malware, 21,000 systems infected with malware and 70 new security gaps in the systems every day. Against this background, the president of the Berlin digital association Bitkom explained at the beginning of November: “Every second company in Germany now agrees that a successful cyber attack could threaten its existence. At the same time, almost two thirds expect to be the target of such attacks in the next twelve months. Companies in Germany have suffered 206 billion euros in damage from economic crime in the past twelve months, around 150 billion euros of which came from cyber attacks.”