Israeli high-tech faces talent flight in wake of Gaza genocide: Report

A new Israeli industry report has warned that the occupying regime’s high-tech sector is facing mounting pressure as more employees seek to relocate abroad amid Tel Aviv’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

According to the annual report by the Israel Advanced Technology Industries Association (IATI), which was reflected across various news outlets on Monday, 53 percent of Israeli tech companies have reported an increase in requests from employees to move overseas.

The report described the trend as a long-term risk to the regime’s innovation capacity and, what it called, “technological leadership.”

The findings showed that Israeli employees working for multinational companies within the occupied territories were increasingly seeking transfers to offices abroad.

The report directly linked the rise in relocation requests to the genocidal war that Israel unleashed in October 2023, killing more than 71,000 Palestinians in Gaza since. 

Almost immediately following the war, the region’s resistance movements, hailing from Gaza itself as well as Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, began taking the territories under a slew of solidarity strikes aimed at forcing Tel Aviv to stop the genocide.

The movements would not hesitate to hit the regime’s sensitive and strategic hotspots with ballistic missiles, including hypersonic variants, and explosive-laden drones on a daily basis.

In June and amid a concomitant illegal war that the regime and the United States were waging against Iran, the Islamic Republic staged daring retaliatory strikes against numerous such targets, including the Zionist entity’s advanced technology hub.

The Israeli technology sector accounts for around 20 percent of the entity’s gross domestic product, provides roughly 15 percent of jobs, and makes up more than half of total exports.

Hundreds of multinational corporations operate branches in the occupied territories, including Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, and Apple, which have been found culpable of contributing to the genocide through provision of various services, while retaining an aura of corporate deniability.

The report said some multinational firms were now reviewing plans to shift investments and operations to other places. It noted that supply chain disruptions during the war have pushed certain companies to pursue alternatives outside the occupation territories, with some replacing their operations there with overseas options.

The report warned that once these alternatives prove effective, business activity may not fully return to the territories.

It also found that senior executives and their families showed higher demand for relocation, while more employees applied for jobs outside the territories during the genocide.

As much as 22 percent of the companies, meanwhile, said their business operations had been damaged throughout the war.

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