Israel Loses Out on Global Conferences, Few Still Attend
War impacts Israeli participation in major international trade events
Israel’s largest companies and trade groups have found themselves unable to attend the world’s biggest business conferences thanks to the ongoing war in Gaza. This is as conferences within the country have been canceled, and outside of Israel would-be participants are either serving in the reserves or unable to leave during this time.
Prof. Dan Ben-David, the president and founder of the Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research and faculty member at the Department of Public Policy at Tel Aviv University, told The Media Line that, while it is impossible to gauge the true economic impact at this point, there are certainly several missed opportunities to both initiate business contacts and foster current relationships. “It will put a major damper on things,” Ben-David said.
Prof. Dan Ben-David. (Courtesy)
In the month and a half since the beginning of the war, Israeli delegations that would have regularly attended big trade conferences have had to cancel. Two such large instances are the World Travel Market in London, one of the largest travel and tourism exhibitions featuring over 35,000 travel professionals, and the Dubai Airshow, a premier global air defense conference where Israeli giants such as Israel Aerospace Industries and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems would have otherwise been major exhibitors.
For the former, a spokesperson for the Tourism Ministry told The Media Line, “This is not the appropriate time to participate in a tourism fair.”
Ben-David said, “Israel’s economy has, in the past, shown a unique tendency to rebound quickly.” This, he says, is due to its high-tech sector which makes up nearly 50% of Israel’s total exports. He mentioned the 2008 recession and COVID-19 as examples where Israel’s economy showed great resilience in the backdrop of major international economic crises.
He also said that the tourism industry in the country has rebounded “very quickly” in the past, even following the last war in 2014 against Hamas. In fact, Prof. Ben-David said despite the constant conflict, tourism numbers have even continued their trend of rising.
High-tech conferences are typically places where companies are given the opportunity to showcase their technology and gain international partners. One such conference, Web Summit, the biggest in the world, saw no Israeli participants this year.
This is because one of their founders, Paddy Cosgrove, tweeted following Hamas’ attack against Israel about the IDF, leading to mass dropouts by Israeli firms, followed by tech giants such as Meta and Google—resulting in Cosgrove resigning from the conference.
Tehila Afota, spokesperson at AI21, a Tel Aviv-based artificial intelligence startup that has raised $274 million to date and is valued at roughly $1.4 billion, told The Media Line, “The predominant issue around international conferences resulting from the war was not necessarily the physical ability to attend. Even though some of our Israel-based team members have been called to reserve duty, we still managed to keep business going and have taken part in war-related efforts offering our technologies free of charge where relevant.”
“Rather, the dangerously biased and misrepresentative remarks against Israel by the likes of Paddy Cosgrave, formerly of Web Summit, led our team to choose not to attend the conference and led our co-CEO and co-founder, Ori Goshen, to cancel his keynote speech.”
Ori Goshen, CEO of AI21 (Roey Shor Photography)
Amit Serusi, who has a doctorate in business administration and is an angel investor to startups, told The Media Line, “In the beginning, it was impossible to do anything not related to the war, but I learned quickly that there isn’t another option—all business and relationships outside Israel have to continue to work.”
He said that outside of the country, people do not really understand the situation, so working is the only option.
Even with the challenges of war, he says he knows of founders who have been able to take days off from reserve duty to fly to a conference and quickly return.
AI21’s Afota said, “Since the war erupted, we have been able to attend select strategic conferences like AWS re:Invent.”
Coming up towards the end of November is arguably the most talked about international conference of the year, COP28, the UN’s international climate conference. Typically, Israel will send hundreds of delegates to discuss the issues facing the planet’s climate. However, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson told The Media Line that this year, “due to the situation, Israel has significantly reduced the delegation to about 20 people from all government ministries.”
It’s too soon to know for certain what the long-term impact of the war will have on international business and relationships, though, as Prof. Ben-David said. “Israel has this unique general resiliency to rebound very quickly.”
