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‘A Soldier for Israel’s Economy’: New Fund Seeks to Deploy Millions of Dollars to Israeli Startups Amid Gaza War
Israeli national flags flutter near office towers at a business park also housing high tech companies, at Ofer Park in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 27, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
When Hamas terrorists raided southern Israel on Oct. 7, brutally murdering more than 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and kidnapping 240 others, the immediate fear in the tech world was how the country would bounce back.
Ezra Gardner — the CIO and co-founder of Varana Capital, an Israeli-focused venture capital fund — woke up that day “with every emotion from horror to sadness to anger” but ultimately realized he had to do something about it.
“I have been training 25 years to be a soldier for the Israeli economy,” the dual Israeli-American citizen told The Algemeiner.
Gardner — who is based in Denver, Colorado and in normal times travels to Israel every six weeks — got to work and established the Chai 10X Fund, a “no management fee, no performance fee, no research or invest expense” pro-bono fund aimed at propping up ready-to-scale Israeli startups impacted by the war with Hamas launched on Oct. 7.
Under this arrangement, Gardner and his firm will cover the expenses typically billed to investors, while donating his time for Israel.
He explained that Israel’s economy is more dependent on foreign direct investment than any country of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and that according to government statistics, the hi-tech sector in Israel is the largest tax contributor.
Gardner said this was an “existential moment” for the Jewish state, for which his grandparents fought in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.
The 180 million NIS (about $50 million) fund has a “dual mandate as my mission as a soldier for the Israeli economy,” Gardner explained.
First is the raising and allocation of the money to the companies that need it most. The Chai 10X Fund will focus within the same sector that his day-to-day fund, Varana Capital, has operated for the past 13 years — Israeli companies that have already raised money, conducted research and development, and either have revenues or are about to scale them up.
Their focus is on the hardware space, with products in fields such as computers, electric vehicles, and agriculture that are “demonstrably better than what currently exists, can be built, and is heavily patented.”
Gardner said that allocating the capital will “not at all” be a problem, and that there is a huge need for the funding Chai 10X is getting ready to deploy.
The second mandate for the fund, according to Gardner and what is taking up a large portion of his current trip to Israel, is “to be a conduit to the government to help the technology ecosystem get everything it needs.”
Throughout this process, Gardner has been meeting with top members of Israel’s Parliament, known as the Knesset, and the CEOs of Israel’s largest banks to break down and hopefully solve the problems facing the country’s economy during wartime.
“I did a thought experiment and thought: What if the war ended tomorrow, and in the best way? When would the guys in Silicon Valley hop on a plane and come back to Tel Aviv?” he said.
In Gardner’s estimation, even the best situation for fiscal year 2024 won’t have a great economic outlook.
The goal then, Gardner explained, is to work through and find ways to compensate the losses in foreign capital with domestic capital, which he said the Israel Innovation Authority is helping with, as well as funds like his own.
People outside of Israel “should know how resilient these entrepreneurs are,” Gardner said, adding that “Israeli innovation delivers no matter what.”
“We are strong and resilient,” he said. “There is no silver bullet, but together we can make it work.”
The post ‘A Soldier for Israel’s Economy’: New Fund Seeks to Deploy Millions of Dollars to Israeli Startups Amid Gaza War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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