One Day, Israeli Tech Founder Was Closing Deals. The Next, He Was Near Death On a Gaza Battlefield

livemint.com:

TEL AVIV—The last email Israeli tech executive Itamar Ben Hemo sent before a bullet ripped through his ribs, diaphragm and intestine was a note to a colleague. Ben Hemo wanted to know how close the startup he founded was to signing on a new client.For weeks, Ben Hemo—an Israeli army reservist who returned to active duty after Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel—had been using breaks in combat to fire up his laptop, messaging investors and working on making his next sales.

Then, on Jan. 8, Ben Hemo’s paratrooper unit was summoned into action to rescue a wounded soldier pinned down in Gaza. The 49-year-old major and his compatriots were ambushed by Hamas fighters firing rocket-propelled grenades.

Then there was a spray of bullets. Ben Hemo felt hot pain rush through his body. “I got hit!"Ben Hemo was fighting for his life.

And the company he launched in 2019 was leaderless.Tens of thousands of Israelis who work in the country’s vaunted technology sector have been fighting in what is already the longest war since Israel’s foundation in 1948. That is sapping the strength of one of the most important drivers of the national economy. Over the past two decades, economic output has tripled as the tech sector has boomed.

The money has turned Tel Aviv into a wealthy city, and meant Israelis, once familiar with economic austerity, became used to expensive cars, celebrity-chef restaurants and holidays abroad. But as Israel’s best and brightest are killed and injured, or just absent during long stretches at the front, their tech businesses back home are struggling. Investors are spooked by the fighting in Gaza and the prospects for a widening war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.