OpinionRecession of values: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a business prism
Opinion
Recession of values: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a business prism
According to Shirly Coifman, following the war against Hamas in Gaza, there is an amazing opportunity to rebuild Israel's economy of values for peace.
For the past decade, while consulting for SMEs, startups and corporates as well as promoting economic development across various arenas, I realized that cultural gaps hinder Israelis in business. Our product-oriented culture, characteristic of startup founders, scientists, and innovators, emphasizes innovation but often overlooks marketing.
Israel is our startup. It’s an “old-new” startup as Herzl called it in his book "The Old New Land" (“Tel Aviv” is the Hebrew translation of this concept), and it’s a startup envisioned by many. A crazy idea of returning to our home and renovating the ancient office building that we were longing for, for thousands of years.
We made it new and modern: we made the desert bloom, eliminated malaria, exported water and climate related technologies and more. Such a crazy idea that only the Jewish people could be stubborn enough to realize. We are risk lovers and takers – which is the only way to be founders of any startup as the statistics are that most startups fail.
So we did it. We have became a startup nation out of our necessity. We thought that by trying to do good for the world we would be forgiven for having the audacity to dare and exist in this harsh market of the Middle East.
In our red ocean-dominated neighborhood there were many newborn states post colonialism and WWII: all Muslim, non democratic states. We offered something new: the only democracy in the Middle East and the only Jewish state in the whole world.
Blue ocean strategy requires a different kind of approach. Instead of joining the sharks who made the ocean red by competing over the same thing, we had to refine our abilities. We had to build our value proposition from scratch: Innovation, modernity, democracy, and tech for good solutions for this arid environment we live in.
We don’t think we are better, on the contrary- as a startup, our main resource is our human resource - our people and culture. We just need to constantly create competitive advantages merely to exist and fight our weaknesses. Believe me, it’s exhausting because we make mistakes along the way like all the other nations in the world, but we are reprimanded for it much more than others.
But we can’t afford those mistakes like one of those big market players - the giants controlling the world. Any small mistake has the potential of bringing our own destruction.
Our big mistake was that we didn’t care enough about PR and advertising.
We just want to show people how strong and resilient our business is and then focus more on having the best product possible.
When called 'colonialists' by the empire who exported this idea to the world, we played along so they could cleanse their own guilt, when called an 'apartheid state' in the very country who invented this very “product” we said “it’s false” without pointing fingers back at the accusers.
We have been called “white supremacists” for being white, when it’s our ancestors’ families from Europe who were gassed to death for not being white enough.
We were blamed for being communists and blamed for being filthy capitalists at the same time - depending on the context (if quoting Ivy League presidents). We were blamed for being racist when Jewish culture doesn’t and can’t possibly have this concept of race as we are one group of people who come in all possible colors.
Everyone in business knows this rhetoric: if your product might cause unhealthy effects (cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases) the best practice is to just fund health associations while conducting well funded “academic” research tainting the healthy natural affordable alternatives in the industry. It's the oldest trick in the book, isn’t it? This is exactly what’s going on in the Middle East.
UNRWAs schools named after terrorists are funded because it’s just a “name”. We now know that under UNRWAs funding, young Palestinian souls are being corrupted daily by teaching them to kill and stab every Jew. Filling their hearts with nothing but hatred. In Hebrew we have a saying “words can kill” and we teach this to our children. It’s one of our enterprise core values. It's a cultural thing, one of those strange things our people believe in.
But what you see is just the tip of the iceberg of our organizational culture. We believe in the diversity of our people: Black, North African, Arabs, Sephardic, Ashkenazi - yes those white supremacy European Jews who weren’t white enough for nationalists in Europe and now are conveniently too white to exist in the Middle East and fit just right into the progressive paradigm and sense of justice.
Indeed we are the ones to blame. We, liberal Israelis, cared too much about becoming better and striving for peace and fighting for it among us, that we forgot about fighting the lies spread by our rivals. We only concentrated in curing our weaknesses with our strengths rather than tackling threats that we forgot the second part of SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats).
However, now it’s “recession” time. A democracy-free-world kind of recession.
Opportunities are born from threats - great companies can grow and bad ones fall in recession times.
Therefore, we have an amazing opportunity to rebuild our economy of values for peace. If you are a liberal like me, the time to stand for your values is now. It’s not just the right thing to do. It’s the constructive thing to do.
Endorsing the lies of Hamas and Iran by not condemning them; being silent about the truth; not calling terror for what it is; not acknowledging the atrocities that Hamas has committed, will only create the recurring cycle of suffering and hate in both sides. We shouldn’t praise the culture of hate.
Any business consultant knows that blaming others for your own failures will just amplify your weakness. No business can thrive like this. In order to create a state (like any startup), one must own their own failures.
Help ourselves by helping our Palestinian neighbors flourish and succeed. Sure, some government subsidies are needed, but just like any grants given to businesses in economic depression times, you need to monitor where the grants go and measure their implementation and success on the ground. Taxpayer money shouldn’t go to the corrupt CEO.
Now that Palestinians might finally be saved from the Hamas evil, there’s an opportunity to do things differently. No more lies, no more incitement for genocide in schools, no more corrupted funding, no more having a UN controlled by Iran perpetuating Palestinian poverty through their puppet corruptive leaders. Say yes to growth and prosperity for Palestinian people, for holding them responsible and accountable for their actions and choices. For their children’s education. Don’t the Palestinians deserve it? Aren’t they to be respected enough to be accountable for their part of the conflict?
It’s a minimum courtesy we can do for humans.
We are begging, we have no other place to go and we want to raise our children in peace. It’s up to you. At times, it seems that we are so strong - but this is what a startup does to survive. In the end we are a small enterprise.
There are only 15 million Jews worldwide with the majority in our HQ in Israel, so we need our offices standing. We can’t fail.
Be a conscious consumer and support what’s right. You need companies like us. Stand with Israel just like any brand who shares your values.
The author is a global business and strategy professional, drawing expertise from both the private and public sector.
