Falling of a rocket in Kiryat Shmona/according to Section 27 A of the Copyright Law
Last night Yuval Klein was sleeping in the apartment he rents in Horidim neighborhood in Kiryat Shmona.
Since the war broke out and it was decided to evacuate the residents of the conflict line, he moved to Jaffa, but he comes to Kiryat Shmona almost every week.
"My heart is here," he explained.
Four years ago he moved from the center of the country to the northern city and was the first entrepreneur to enter into the ambitious project of establishing a foodtech incubator in Kiryat Shmona, as the beginning of realizing a vision of turning the city at the northern end of the country into the foodtech capital of Israel.
After he got up in a neighborhood that was almost empty of residents, he went to Kibbutz Mahaniim near Rosh Pina, where a conference of seventy founders of startups in the Galilee was held, in an attempt to rescue the northern industry from the crisis it had fallen into and with the goal of returning to the north and restarting the wheels of the economy.
The conference was attended by Prof. Amir Yaron, Governor of the Bank of Israel, Shulamit Geri, CEO of the Bank of Israel, and Dror Bin, CEO of the Innovation Authority, and their participation illustrated how significant the industry is to the north of the country.
The meeting was scheduled for 12:30 and already at 12:00 it was impossible to find parking at the meeting place.
It seemed that the startups wanted to meet each other, get stronger and draw encouragement.
If they do manage to return and operate from the north, it is not certain that Klein will be one of them.
Klein is a tireless entrepreneur, among other things he was in the distant past one of the founders of the record store "The Third Ear" which has already become an Israeli cultural institution.
His attraction to technology, foodtech and entrepreneurship drew him to develop startups in the field - he was one of the founders of Blue Tree which developed technology to reduce sugar from natural liquids, and in particular from naturally squeezed orange juice.
Then he started establishing MAMAY Technologies.
It is about developing a computerized system to create a uniform and objective language for describing taste and smell.
Such a system can have significant advantages in the food industry.
"Together with the partners, we started working and then the legal revolution broke out that stopped everything. We managed to survive and continued working and then the war broke out. Uncertainty in the world of technology and industry is a bad thing. Right now it's difficult to raise investments and the Innovation Authority has announced that it will not help us."
Klein is skeptical about the future: "No one knows when we can return and for me right now it's all talk. I'm ready to return to Kiryat Shmona tomorrow."
Dying to return to Kiryat Shmona.
Yuval Klein/Eli Ashkenazi
The conference in Mahaniy was initiated by Arel Margalit.
Margalit is the founder and chairman of JVP and the foodtech center in Kiryat Shmona - "Margalit Startup City". "We are in the middle of a war, in every war you have to know when to fight and when to plan for the day after.
If Israel doesn't tell itself when it wants to enter the war in Lebanon, then it won't know when to reach an agreement here in the north and bring the people back home and the entrepreneurs back to their jobs - this is no less a victory than the military way," Margalit told Startupists. He told about his grandfather, Avraham Icher, one of the founders of the "Haganah" organization and a friend of Yosef Trumpeldor: "He explained to me that first of all there is the settlement and the role of the security system to protect it.
Settlement sets the tone and security protects it.
This is how the border in the north was determined before 48 and this is how we should do it today.
The place of the northern state is not turned away the way it is turned today - you are the entrepreneurs, you are the bridge that we expect from it in the near future to start slowly and wisely to return the stakes home and return to the north," he said.
Yesterday was the 11th of Adar A ) and Giura Zaltz, head of the Upper Galilee Regional Council, drew a line from 2024 to the battle of Tel Hai in 1920: "The Zionist idea that led Trumpeldor to say the immortal sentence at the place where the Jewish plow will plow the last furrow, where our border will cross" is still being tested today, Because the way the war will end, the sense of security that will be there will affect the residents' return home, where, how much and how the north will look a decade from now.
About five years ago a change happened here that today we see the results here, precisely today when I look at the future and the Zionist idea I say to all of us, we are doing every day what we must do to preserve the Zionist idea, that the North will not go back 30 years.
We need to create a different, new, economic reality here, which will be attractive to people for companies, for education, culture and many other things, and this can be done if each of us says "where can I help, what can I do more", so I promise you that in two years no We will be with 70 startups, but with 170 startups growing in the region," said Saltz.
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"We have already learned to time Hezbollah's fire."
Dr. Danny Goldstein/Eli Ashkenazi
A company that is still plowing until the last furrow is Tagra.
The company that operates in the Tel Hai Industrial Park specializes in microencapsulation processes for raw materials intended for use on the body and skin.
Microencapsulation is a process in which unstable active substances, such as vitamins and enzymes, are inserted into capsules intended for medical and cosmetic uses.
The company's factory stands right on the front line, between Metula and Kiryat Shmona.
Rockets and anti-tank missiles have already fallen in this area. The office of the VP, Dr. Danny Goldstein, a graduate of medical studies at the Hebrew University, is watching the Kfar Yuval settlement where Mira and Barak Ayalon, mother and son, were killed by a missile strike.
"It's a state of tension all the time ", said Goldstein, who came to the conference. "The windows are shaking, there are alarms and people are entering the shelter.
This is how we conduct ourselves every day, we have already learned to time Hezbollah's shooting," he added. According to him, about half of the forty employees come to work. We are from the jungles.
The orders are only increasing and development people are helping with the production line."
Some of the workers were evacuated south and Goldstein and his family also moved to the Kinneret settlement.
He and his family moved from Jerusalem to the Galilee 16 years ago and today he is not sure that they will return to their home in Dafna.
They will stay in the north, but south of the conflict line.
"The factory will remain in Tel Hai", he clarified, "also out of Zionism".
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Upper Galilee