In the past two decades, the Jewish state has produced numerous small companies specializing in innovative technology, bringing economic growth to the country and exporting new devices and software abroad. The most successful of these companies have been bought by large, multinational corporations, which have also been setting up their own research centers in Israel, hoping to tap into Israeli talent. But, explains Matthew Kalman, such international investment, while it has benefited the country in the short term, may be undermining its now-famous start-up ethos:

There is certainly evidence to suggest that the influx of multinational interest and investment is taking the fizz out of Israel’s start-up ecosystem. The number of start-ups founded each year is falling, while the number that close each year is rising. The total amount of capital raised by Israeli high-tech continues to climb, but the number of deals has fallen by 10 percent since 2015. . . .

[Furthermore], foreign firms don’t benefit the Israeli economy nearly as much as home-grown ones do. A recent trend has been for multinationals to buy Israeli companies and turn them into research-and-development branches. . . . Statistics show that for each employee of an Israeli high-tech manufacturer, two more local jobs are created. For each research-and-development center employee, [however], only one-third of another job is created. When a growing local company turns into a research-based subsidiary of a foreign corporation, then, those potential jobs are lost. So are any intellectual-property revenues and taxes that the independent local business might have generated. . . .

But the corporations won’t stop coming. That’s because they need Israel’s innovation. The converse is true as well, though: people with a start-up mentality need big organizations, says Saul Singer, one of the two authors of [the book] Start-Up Nation. “Start-ups are great at innovation, but it’s very hard for them to scale up,” he says. “Big companies are very good at scaling—but it’s hard for them to innovate.”

The Israel Innovation Authority, a branch of the Ministry of the Economy, is taking steps that could counteract some of these problems, while some Israel businessmen have begun initiatives of their own.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.