Israel Financial News

Web Summit Chief Executive and founder Paddy Cosgrave resigned on Saturday after comments he made on the Israel-Hamas conflict prompted some technology companies and investors to withdraw plans to attend its conference in Portugal next month. «Unfortunately, my personal comments have become a distraction from the event, and our team, our sponsors, our startups and the people who attend,» Cosgrave said in a statement.

(Reuters) -Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen said on Saturday a Jewish organization in New York City canceled a reading he was due to give on Friday without explanation, a day after he said he signed an open letter condemning Israel's «indiscriminate violence» against Palestinians in Gaza.

By Aidan Lewis and Nafisa Eltahir

By Aidan Lewis

Israel plans to step up its attacks on the Gaza Strip starting on Saturday as preparation for the next stage of its war on Hamas. Asked about a possible ground invasion into Gaza, Rear Adm.

Hezbollah vowed that Israel will pay a high price whenever it starts a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and said on Saturday that his militant group based in Lebanon already is «in the heart of the battle». The comments by Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, came as Israel shelled and made drone strikes in southern Lebanon and Hezbollah fired rockets and missiles toward Israel.

Amazon.com Inc. joined companies and investors bowing out of the upcoming Web Summit technology conference in Europe after the event's leader made controversial comments about Israel. A representative for Amazon Web Services confirmed Friday that the company wouldn't be participating in the conference, scheduled for November in Lisbon.

Israel-Hamas war becoming a wider conflict. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said he'd agreed with US President Joe Biden that the Rafah crossing should be open “sustainably.” The Israeli Defense Force said it was responding with live fire on Saturday to a number of launches made toward Israel by Lebanon. Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported earlier that Israel's military struck a village near the countries' border. Switzerland's top prosecutor announced the start of a criminal investigation into alleged payments made to Hamas weeks before the attacks on Israel, the Swiss public broadcaster reported on Saturday. Attorney General Stefan Blaettler said the accusation centers on financial support to a terrorist organization, while declining to say who the proceedings are directed against. Egypt opened its crisis summit in Cairo with the leaders of Italy, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and South Africa among those on hand, as well as senior officials from the EU, Turkey, Russia and China.

snapped food, water and power supplies to the besieged Gaza Strip since October 8, to retaliate against the raids carried out by Hamas fighters in southern Israel on October 7. The aid trucks “do not have enough supplies" for even one school in Gaza, a Palestinian spokesperson for the Rafah border crossing said, as per a CNN report. The news channel, however, noted that it could not verify the claim.

Rajiv Malik, president of the world's largest generics drugmaker Viatris, will retire in April next year, the Nasdaq-listed company has informed stock exchanges. Malik was instrumental in the $12 billion merger of Mylan with Pfizer's generic drug unit that resulted in the creation of Viatris in 2019. The combined entity's sales are more than that of Israel's Teva, which was previously the largest generic drug company in the world. «There are not enough words to express how much Rajiv Malik as both a partner and a leader has meant to me, first at Mylan and now Vitara's.

Joe Biden met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet during his visit to Israel, the U.S. president assured them: «I don't believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist.» The politicians and generals gathered in the ballroom of the Tel Aviv hotel nodded in approval, according to a U.S.

The Toronto Sun. According to the report, on one side Liberal MPs in Canada are joining calls by Muslim groups for Canada to push for a ceasefire in the region. In contrast, major Canadian Jewish groups have demanded Trudeau to retract an earlier comment where he lent credence to the claim by Hamas that Israel was responsible for an attack on a hospital in Gaza city.

BSE Sensex ended October's third week with a sharp loss of one per cent after five days of volatile sessions over geopolitical concerns arising on the Israel-Hamas-Gaza conflict. Domestic equity benchmarks Nifty 50 and Sensex ended in negative territory for the third consecutive session on Friday, October 20, as concerns about potential interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve, and the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas kept investors on edge.

₹7,357 per bbl, having swung between ₹7,317 and ₹7,474 per bbl during the session so far, against a previous close of ₹7,330 per barrel. Also Read: Indian crude basket to average $87/bbl, OMCs to bear the brunt as oil surges 6% over Israel-Hamas war -Supporting oil prices were wide forecasts of a tightening market in the fourth quarter after top producers Saudi Arabia and Russia extended supply cuts of around 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) till the end of the year.

West Bank home of a senior Hamas leader and detained members of his family, witnesses said. Saleh al-Aruri is the deputy to Hamas' overall leader Ismail Haniyeh and one of the founders of the Islamist group's military wing. Based in Lebanon, he is a key target for Israel following the October 7 attacks when Hamas militants from Gaza stormed into southern Israel and killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and seized more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli officials. Since then, more than 4,300 Palestinians, mainly civilians, have been killed in relentless Israeli bombardments, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry. Troops entered Aruri's home in Arura village, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Ramallah, at dawn on Saturday, arresting more than 20 people, including one of his brothers and nine of his nephews, mayor Ali al-Khasib and witnesses told AFP. Dozens more were pulled in for questioning. Outside the house, troops put up a banner of the Hamas deputy against the background of an Israeli flag that read: «This was the house of Saleh Aruri and has become the headquarters of Abu al-Nimer — Israeli intelligence», witnesses said, with images of it widely shared online. Village residents said Abu al-Nimer was an alias for the Israeli intelligence officer responsible for the area. In a statement, the army said the raid was jointly staged with the Shin Beth internal security service and resulted in the arrests of «dozens of Hamas members» among them relatives of Aruri.

Gaza's children are showing ever more signs of trauma two weeks into Israel's intense bombardment, parents and psychiatrists in the tiny, crowded enclave say, with no safe place to hide from the falling bombs and little prospect of respite. Children make up about half of Gaza's 2.3 million population, living under near constant bombardment with many packed into temporary shelters in U.N.-run schools after fleeing their homes with little food or clean water. Israel is expected to launch a ground attack on Gaza shortly in response to a cross-border assault by Hamas fighters on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed more than 1,400 people, with a further 210 taken hostage. «Children… have started to develop serious trauma symptoms such as convulsions, bed-wetting, fear, aggressive behaviour, nervousness, and not leaving their parents' sides,» said Gaza psychiatrist Fadel Abu Heen. More than 4,100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza so far, including more than 1,500 children, while 13,000 people have been injured according to the Palestinian health ministry. Conditions in makeshift shelters in United Nations schools, where more than 380,000 people are camped out in hope of escaping the bombardment, only compound the problem. There are sometimes 100 people sleeping in each classroom, which all require continuous cleaning.

The fallout from the Israel-Hamas war has spilled into workplaces everywhere, with corporate leaders from the highest ranks of prominent companies weighing in with their views while workers complain their voices are not being heard

Kotak Mahindra Bank on Saturday said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has approved the appointment of Ashok Vaswani as the bank's Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (MD & CEO) for a period of three years. Vaswani, who has worked with Barclays in the recent past, will succeed Uday Kotak who quit as MD of the bank effective September 1. At present, Vaswani is President of Pagaya Technologies Ltd — a US-Israeli AI Fintech.

The Times of Israel reported. Citing senior diplomatic sources, The Times of Israel reported that both governments acknowledge a high probability of a ground invasion by Israel.

Meta and Google have pulled out of the Web Summit, one of the tech sector's biggest annual events, after the organiser criticized Israel's actions following the Hamas attacks, the companies said on Friday. A spokesman for Meta confirmed to AFP that it would not take part in this year's event.

US Senate panel's Republican lawmakers sent a letter on Friday to tech companies Meta Platforms, Google, TikTok and X, formerly called Twitter, seeking information on their content moderation policies in the Israel-Hamas war, the senators said. The Republican lawmakers of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee said they asked the companies «to commit to fully preserving a documentary history of Hamas's atrocities.»