The "binary options" scam industry, which is mostly run from a suburb of Tel Aviv, has been targeting the Arab world recently. Mostly by default. The industry isn't allowed to scam Israelis, but the rest of the world's suckers are fair game under Israel law. They've been kicked out of the US, and recently, most of the EU. So they're telemarketing into the Arab countries now.<p>This requires hiring Arabic speakers, who are available in Israel. Greed apparently overrides Arab-Israeli differences in this area.<p>(Big 15-part expose in the Times of Israel: "The Wolves of Tel Aviv".[1] Summary: binary options are bets against the house, not against other speculators. Binary options "brokers" are not really brokers, they're shills for the house. Worse, the house cheats, tweaking the prices to make customers lose. Even if customers win, the house won't pay up. 80% of investors lose all their money. This brings in over 0.7% of Israel's GDP, and that's just the part that pays taxes.)<p>[1] <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-wolves-of-tel-aviv-israels-vast-amoral-binary-options-scam-exposed/" rel="nofollow">http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-wolves-of-tel-aviv-israels-...</a>
I'm a Muslim Arab American and I am against Israel's more aggressive policies and actions.<p>But I definitely respect Israel as a state, and especially the Israeli tech sector. Israel has consistently produced world-class companies in almost every field you can think of. It's quite impressive once you consider all of the factors.<p>The author of "Startup Nation" argued that one key reason behind this success is how the military ties back into civilian companies, especially with the mandatory service. I'm not sure how important that is, given how many other countries have a similar model yet they've achieved nothing close to what Israel has. There are a few that have, such as Singapore and South Korea.<p>I'm hoping that my home country Tunisia can replicate (at least somewhat) the Israeli success story. We have a lot of talented people both inside the country and overseas. The biggest thing we're lacking right now is a functioning economy (yep, tough times)... but I hope we can get there in the near future!
As someone with direct experience with this, it's nice (and important) to see this reality get more recognition. Something unmentioned in the article is that the military/intelligence relations are far stronger and better integrated than the tech relationships.<p>The article correctly points out that the Arab states involved (this doesn't seem to apply to the non-arab muslim states) will not normalize formal relationships, without movement on the Palestinian front. However, despite this, these dynamics have made Arab countries much more susceptible to pressuring the Palestinians, and not putting diplomatic pressure on Israel on the things they care about (ie Operation Protective Edge).<p>An important point to note is that as all of the Arab countries becoming friendly to Israel are non-democratic, and their citizens don't view Israel along the same lines as their governments.
This makes me think of an interesting experience I had in my first job, almost 20 years ago! I was working for a small company that was at the time pioneering on-demand video systems. We were a software company but did sell our stuff as an appliances as we did need some control on the hardware.<p>I was once flown to Ryad to deliver our best system to our client, a wealthy hotel resort with a cost-no-object kind of attitude in terms of what perks they supplied to their clients. Our marketing strategy was basically not putting too much emphasis on the hardware and we'd typically be very open in terms of what we had assembled and how much the components retailed for. We'd typically give them a 'dossier' (trendy these days uh?) with hardware details and the manuals of all the components we had assembled.<p>Things went well, the engineers I was working with were super cool, first demos went without a hiss, we were just rolling the whole week! The night before I was flying back home, my boss called me from Europe in panic mode: someone had read those damn manuals and found out that our mpeg2 decoding hardware was made by an Israeli company and wanted us to cancel everything.<p>What was interesting was how all engineers I talked to the next day went out of their way to apologize and tell me how completely stupid this whole matter was. Few months later, when the client found out there was basically all alternatives to this card basically sucked, the finally changed their mind :)
I worked with an Israeli company that had to do something like this.<p>While in the country I was going to visit their office, but I couldn't find the address anywhere on the website, only their NY satellite office. I was later told this was because they have manufacturing customers in Pakistan and Bangladesh, from which they hide their true identity.
>If it’s a country which is not hostile to Israel that we can help, we’ll do it<p>To say Saudi Arabia isn't hostile towards Israel takes one heck of a lot of mental gymnastics, or a burying of your head in the sand. Wahhabism isn't exactly known to be pro-Judaism.
Many of the Intel processor chips are designed in Israel as is the Apple iPhone/iPad processor. Intel employs about 10,000 in Israel and I think Apple around 800.<p>There are many, many other US firms represented in Israel -- often for buying up Israeli startups.
> Moreover, common sense tells us that in order for Saudi Arabia to get any weapon systems, they have to be bought under trade agreements made with friendly countries that manufacture those systems with official and approved export trade certificates from their governments. It is also certain that Israel is not among the countries that have commercial relations with the Kingdom.<p>I thought software sales were exempt from trade certificates ?
Saudi Arabia govt & Israel govt are friends as a result of being friends of US foreign-policy, and because they share the same major enemy of Iran.
they are buyer's of ISIS cheap oil.
<a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-paper-claims-israel-biggest-buyer-of-islamic-state-oil/" rel="nofollow">http://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-paper-claims-israel-bigges...</a>
I wonder if these machinations are necessary.<p>I mean what if the company didn't try to hide its affiliations (for instance, on the website or when customers visited).<p>They assume that the customer would react negatively, but do we know this or is it just an untested assumption?