The low rate of ultra-Orthodox participation in Israel’s workforce is a major problem both for the Israeli economy and for haredi communities. But a growing number have founded high-tech start-ups, and one of them has launched a forum to encourage greater entrepreneurship. David Shamah writes:

For many Israelis, the terms “ultra-Orthodox” and “high-tech entrepreneur” don’t belong in the same sentence. Tech entrepreneurs are open to new ideas, experiment with advanced technologies, show independent spirit, and are at home on the Internet—quite the opposite of the popular stereotype of the average haredi individual.

But anyone who thinks that way is behind the times, says Itzik Crombie.

“Haredim are just as creative and imaginative, and as willing to succeed, as are secular Israelis—in fact, from what I have seen among those in the high-tech world, they are even more ambitious. . . . The problem is that they don’t have role models to show them how to navigate the business world and get to the point where they can build their own businesses.”

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].