Last week Minister of Justice Yariv Levin traveled to the home of Viola venture capital fund founder Shlomo Dovrat to meet with some of the senior figures in Israel's tech sector. These senior figures included Facebook Israel GM Adi Soffer Teeni, Wix president Nir Zohar, Fiverr cofounder and CEO Micha Kaufman, and Disruptive venture capital fund founding partner Tal Barnoach, who is one of the leading voices in the protest against the judicial reform.
For the five tech leaders, together with ironSource CEO Tomer Bar-Zeev, who was not present at this meeting because of a trip to the US, this was another in a series of frustrating meetings. The group had previously met with Minister of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy Ron Dermer, a close confidante of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee chairman MK Simcha Rothman, and Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich.
Polite language but dialogue of the deaf
Levin, Rothman, Smotrich and Dermer listened to the tech leaders about their choice to set up companies abroad and about the beginning of a wave of foreign investors leaving Israel and about the expected emigration of engineers and about the state budget that encourages large populations not to learn English and math and about the general direction, which in their opinion will lead to destruction.
In all the meetings polite language prevailed, and reasoned positions were presented. But it was a dialogue of the deaf. The tech executives talked about economics, and received legal answers. They spoke about foreign investors, and the politicians responded with examples from other governance methods or claims about the will of the people. A person who knows those present noted that for them it was "a meeting with zero achievements. They left more worried than they entered."
Except for the President, the only one who listened was Ron Dermer
The only one who listened to the tech leaders, except for President Isaac Herzog, was Dermer, who bridges relations between Netanyahu and the Republican party in the US, and expressed sympathy towards the tech leaders and readiness to help.
A spokesperson for the tech leaders declined to comment.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 5, 2023.
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