When Israel’s controversy over judicial reform reached its peak earlier this year, there were dire predictions—some almost indistinguishable from threats—that an attempt to return to the constitutional status quo ante 1995 would send technology companies fleeing the country, and possibly tank the Israeli economy. Yet, although a judicial-reform compromise might still emerge, the country’s high-tech sector seems to be doing fine, notwithstanding some bruising from a worldwide downturn. Jonah Mandel reports:

The global economic slowdown and domestic political turmoil have not impaired the long-term prospects of Israel’s vaunted high-tech industry, officials and insiders say, despite a recent decline in hiring in the sector. Nearly 18 percent of Israel’s gross domestic product comes from the tech sector, which employs 12 percent of the workforce, generates nearly a third of its income tax, and constitutes half of exports, official figures show.

Worldwide inflation and climbing interest rates had caused a drop-off in Israeli tech jobs in 2022, with the number of hirings in the sector dipping 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2023—its first fall since 2008, said a newly issued report. The “stagnation” in tech hiring, however, had yet to have a negative impact on Israel’s GDP or exports, said Dror Bin, director of the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) which compiled the report together with the Start-Up Nation Policy Institute (SNPI).

IIA’s Bin noted the data indicated no immediate effect of the legal crisis on Israel’s economy. “I don’t see companies taking the operations outside of Israel,” he said. “We do see a trend of more entrepreneurs deciding to establish their legal entity outside of Israel, but the operation remains in Israel.”

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”