Israel: Not Where We Should Be at Year End

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Service Now, the California based software company that supplies a cloud computing platform for the creation and management of automated business workflows, yesterday entered into an agreement to acquire the Israeli cyber company Armis for $7.75 billion in cash. Armis, a leader in cyber exposure management and cyber-physical security, manages cyber risk across the full attack surface in IT, operational technology (OT), medical devices, and other environments for companies, governments, and critical infrastructures worldwide.

Amit Zavery, president, chief operating officer, and chief product officer at ServiceNow was quoted as saying: “Together with Armis, we will deliver an industry-defining strategic cybersecurity shield for real-time, end-to-end proactive protection across all technology estates. Modern cyber risk doesn’t stay neatly confined to a single silo, and with security built into the ServiceNow AI Platform, neither will we.”

I am living in Israel 42 years and if anyone would have predicted in 1984 that there would come a time when an Israeli company would be valued at $7.75 billion, they would have found themselves hauled off to a mental institution for evaluation and treatment the very same day.

Remember that in 1984 Israel was experiencing extreme inflation, peaking at over 400% annually, with some reports citing figures at year end as high as 444.9% or even touching 1,000% on an annualized rate. Commercial firms paid bills in the afternoon because it was 1.5% cheaper to pay in the afternoon rather than the morning and checks for such payments were delivered by messenger as they would be worth considerably less on arrival if they were sent by mail.

Given all of this, one would think that everything here must be wonderful now that we have peace in the Middle East for the first time in 3,000 years, as President Trump has said so often in the past month.

Except that, truth be told, we don’t have peace in the Middle East.

Yes, we have a cease-fire in place with Hamas, but Hamas is rearmin,g not disarming as they were supposed to do under the US brokered cease fire agreement. In addition, they have reasserted control in all of Gaza not presently controlled by Israel, and still have the remains of one hostage even though all the hostages were supposed to have been returned to Israel in the first 72 hours of the agreement.

In Iran, whose air defense capabilities were destroyed by Israel prior to the joint US-Israel attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities in June, is now rearming as well, eager to replenish their attack missile inventory so that they, presumably, can launch another volley of rockets, ballistic missiles and drones at us once again. It would appear that they did not get the message, as it were.

In Lebanon, the government is trying to eliminate the remaining fighting capacity of Hezbollah, but the Hezbollah leadership is definitely not cooperating and Israel continues to take out terror clusters there as well on a regular basis.

Finally, with the fall of Assad in Syria, there was hope that Israel would have constructive diplomatic relations with the new leadership. To date, the best that can be said is that we are not fighting each other. The good news is, of course, that the latest Syrian government maps of Syria do not show the Golan Heights as part of Syria but rather as part of Israel. Nevertheless, real negotiated peace still seems a bit out of reach.

The question is, what went wrong? Israel’s defense establishment successfully brought Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah to their knees, to levels way beyond what anyone could have expected. Just as in the financial sector, if anyone had predicted in 1984 that at some point we would have effectively castrated the military machines of all of our regional enemies, that would also have gotten them an express ticket to the psychiatrist to determine what they had been drinking.

A cursory examination of what has happened here over the past year can only lead to one conclusion and that is that as successful as we were in all these efforts, we simply did not finish the job. When the enemy is on the ropes, the victor needs to capitalize on that and at a minimum, conclude written non-belligerence agreements between the parties if a full peace agreement itself cannot be accomplished. Lacking that, it is only a matter of time before the vanquished, as it were, will rearm and be ready for the next battle to try to reclaim their honor.

Not having done that, we find ourselves in the counter-intuitive position where on the one hand our economy has more or less successfully survived the longest war in our history while on the other hand we are preparing, once again, to defend ourselves should we be faced with another onslaught.

Given our overall capabilities, it is simply inconceivable that this is the best we could have done in trying to bring meaningful change to our situation, and in respect to the memory of the almost 1,000 Israelis who died defending the country and the 1,225 who died on October 7^th. Frankly, we do not need a politically appointed commission of inquiry to tell us that our leadership failed us. We already know that, and those who were in charge these last two years need to leave, and the sooner the better.