Yedioth Ahronoth: Root of Evil is ‘Occupation’

Experts Warn of ‘Real Disintegration’ of Israel

Date: 16 August 2023 - 21:19

News ID: ۱۱۸۳۶۷

TEL AVIV (Dispatches) -- A number of Israeli experts have warned of a “real disintegration of Israeli society” and a state of chaos prevailing in the occupied territories due to the performance of the regime headed by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A senior Middle East and Arab World commentator at Israel Hayom newspaper, Oded Granot, warned: “When the religious partner in the regime publicly declares that he will not bear the burden, not even in national service, and at the same time also supports unilateral and far-reaching legislative processes that disintegrate Israeli society – cohesion crumbles, the principle of peaceful coexistence dissolves.”
He stressed that Israel is marching towards chaos.
In turn, the Hebrew Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper confirmed in its editorial written by Amnon Levi, that the root causes of the crisis in Israel’s society is the “social-sectarian gap,” while the root of the evil prevailing in Israel is the “occupation”.
“The long occupation of other people has spoiled us and caused a crisis, and there is no doubt that the occupation caused great damage,” he said.
“This time [the driver of the current crisis in Israel] is much more ancient and deeper. What drives the simple crowd of reform supporters [led by the right-wing regime] is hatred, anger, envy and the intense desire for revenge from those who had harmed, insulted, and excluded their families and never took responsibility for that,” he added.
A growing number of Israel’s tech startups are incorporating in the United States, attracted by deep pocketed U.S. funds and pro-business policies, and with an extra push from a planned judicial overhaul that has rattled investors, Reuters reported Wednesday.
That marks a reversal, as the occupying regime of Israel had managed in the past decade to persuade more of its startups to set up their legal identity domestically.
Though the overhaul does not directly affect the tech sector, Ian Amit, a former military officer, frets about its impact and is taking his startup across the Atlantic.
“It’s just a very high level of uncertainty,” said Amit, who is registering his artificial intelligence-based cloud security firm Gomboc in Delaware.
“It mainly really revolves around corruption and uncertainty of what system is there to protect me as a business, from a tax perspective, from a legal perspective or an intellectual property perspective,” he said.
The economic risk for the Zionist regime is that its plans, which
have sparked unprecedented protests, scare a tech industry that accounts for almost a fifth of Israel’s gross domestic product and about 30% of tax income. Some entrepreneurs already appear to be voting with their feet.
As many as 80% of new Israeli tech startups in 2023 have so far chosen to incorporate in Delaware, up from 20% in 2022, according to an Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) survey that also showed companies intend to register future IP overseas.
“The fact that you are shaking up the judicial system puts Israel in a very high level of uncertainty and investors don’t like uncertainty,” said IIA Chairman Ami Applebaum, who is also chief scientist at the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology.
Yair Geva, a partner who runs the tech group at law firm Herzog, Fox and Neeman, said that not only were new Israeli companies incorporating in Delaware, but some existing ones were expanding research and other operations outside of the occupied Palestinian territories.
“So, it’s somewhat of a bigger issue than just the incorporation aspect of it,” he said.
A survey of 615 firms by Startup Nation Central showed that 8% of Israeli startup/tech companies had started moving their headquarters abroad, and 29% intended to do so soon.
Adam Fisher, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and long-time investor in Israeli startups, has been invested in Israeli-based tech firms over the past decade. But now he recommends entrepreneurs incorporate in Delaware and open an Israeli unit.
Pilots Warn Galant
Separately, pilots in the Israeli air force reserves reportedly warned Tuesday that they may not be willing to carry out attacks on behalf of Israel should it slide into authoritarianism, expressing sympathy for colleagues who have suspended volunteer duty to protest the regime’s designs on the judiciary.
The pilots made the comments during a meeting with war minister Yoav Gallant as he sought to bridge a growing divide between the regime and military, the Ynet news website reported.
Airmen who met with Gallant at the Ramon air base in southern Occupied Palestine told him they understood their fellow reserves pilots who had already stopped volunteering for training or operational duty to protest the judicial overhaul. They told Gallant that pilots did not want to carry out attacks on behalf of the Zionist regime, and they were considering joining the revolt, the news site reported.
While some in the regime have rejected the protest as politically tainted, some servicemembers have explained that changes to Israel’s judiciary could leave them liable to international tribunals, which can be activated in cases where the local judicial system is seen as insufficiently independent.
According to the unsourced Ynet report, Gallant’s visit to Ramon was touched off by concerns over a series of attacks by coalition members on the air force after its top general Tomer Bar publicly warned Friday that the protest was increasingly degrading military fitness.
Coalition members, including reportedly Netanyahu, have fumed at Bar and military chief of staff Herzi Halevi for reporting on the worsening state of military readiness in light of the reserves protest, which they have complained is tantamount to the army exerting political pressure. Netanyahu reportedly shouted at Bar and Halevi during a Friday phone call for disclosing worries about damage to the illegal entity’s defenses wrought by the reservists suspending volunteer duty to protest his regime and its judicial overhaul agenda.