Here’s how to bring down a thriving country
Journalist Amit Segal posted the following short clip on his Facebook page. I am translating it into English below the original post. He put much better what I thought when I originally heard about Papya pulling their funds from Israeli banks on 28 January.
(Some people are saying that the video is unavailable. I don’t know why — it appears fine on Firefox but not on Chrome. I will continue to try to fix it but you may perhaps want to open it on Amit Segal’s own Facebook page, click here.)
You know those tennis players who pick up the ball and run to the net to drop it and, as the referee announces the points, they run to the stands and yell: ‘Yes!! Way to go!’
That is exactly what is happening now regarding taking money out of Israel.
There is a fundamental difference between saying: ‘I am worried that as a result of the judicial reforms the country will no longer be democratic and people will withdraw their money.’ and shouting it out at a demonstration and then running to take your money out and then going to the media and announcing that the draining of monies from Israel has begun.
What they have been doing these past few weeks was not merely describing a situation or warning about something that is liable to happen, it was the attempt to bring down the Israel economy in a way that harms the poor, the weak, all of us!
There are unpatriotic acts one can do. Trying to bring down the Israeli economy, which is what some of the journalists did, and some of the business people, in order to make the Israeli public back down from the reforms, that is an unpatriotic act.
Like someone who yells: ‘a zunami is coming!’ And then, when the waves don’t show up, takes a bucket of water and pours it over himself and says, ‘Here! I told you so.’
In the past day alone, Wiz and Skai are two more companies who joined Papaya and Disruptive AI in the act of sabatoging the Israeli economy.
This is the way to produce a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But one thing that has me puzzled is the fact that these companies announced that they are maintaining operations in Israel even as they move their banking outside the country. After all, Anat Guez, CEO ot Papaya, even went so far as to suggest that Israel is going the way of Venezuela, Brazil and Hungary. Would she keep operations in Israel if that were really the case?
As David Rosenberg’s article in Haaretz states, businessmen are clearly more concerned with their bottom line than with morals. Is that not what keeps them operating in China, for example? Not the epitome of democracy or human rights, for sure.
Rosenberg points to the fact that political stability is a most important factor in economic stability. However, Israel seems to defy this because, even over two years of indeterminate election cycles followed by a highly controversial and short-lived government and another election, Israel’s economy has remained robust. The shekel is still strong (still). What purpose could there be in hi-tech moguls weakening it themselves?
All the ranting and raging against proposed judicial reforms that are still being defined and redefined and redefined again are doing nothing more than confusing the issues when most of us understand neither the intricacies of the legislation nor the impact of the justice system on economic performance. I have yet to see those opposed to judicial reforms because of their potential negative impact on the economy put it out in terms we can all comprehend. That would go farther in protecting the democracy in Israel than all the shouting matches in demonstrations across the country that are just sullying the waters and blinding us all.
Feature Image: Screenshot from Facebook video post by Amit Segal.
