High-tech entrepreneur Nir Zuk, the founder and CTO of cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks, slammed the high-tech industry’s pre-October 7 protests against the government, saying that it was their empty threats about the “crushing of democracy” that drove investors away, rather than the actual political situation in Israel.

Speaking on Tuesday at TheMarker conference in Haifa, Zuk said. “High-tech workers should shut their mouths. They enjoy the wealth that exists here. The high-tech workers’ protest is perceived as privileged by the people who don’t benefit from high-tech.”

“At the beginning of the judicial revolution, there were people who went out to the world and said that it would be terrible, and that they should stop investing here,” he continued. “When you tell investors abroad that it will be bad, they stop investing.”

“In reality, they were wrong, but this has led to the fact that it is difficult to recruit for any startup that is not cyber, not in fintech, health-tech, or defense-tech.”

“There is a small group of people in the country who benefit from the economic boom in a disproportionate way. Israel is very rich. We are among the first in the world in terms of entrepreneurs and startups relative to the population. The reason is private education – those who have money send to private education and to the technological units, and it continues. Those who don’t have money don’t benefit from it.”

Zuk also attributed the departure of high-tech workers abroad to the leftists’ baseless threats. “The departure is not related to taxes but to what is happening here,” he said. “The threat did not materialize. Yes, they left, not a lot. Senior high-tech workers left, including senior workers at Palo Alto Networks, who moved to work for us in Silicon Valley. My fear is that these are the people who will establish the next generation of startups abroad. I hope they will return here.”

Many high-tech companies and individuals led and participated in the pre-October 7 protests against the government, even giving their employees days off from work on the condition that they participate in the protests.  In July 2023, the Hi-Tech Protest movement, a left-wing organization comprised of business owners and hi-tech employees, spent $300,000 to run full-page ads against judicial reform on the covers of four Israeli newspapers.

The lies and harsh rhetoric against the government’s “crushing of democracy” were so pervasive that high-tech employees who disagreed with the protest were forced to remain silent or face dismissal from their positions.

In an ironic twist of fate,  an Israeli company had $100 million in the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) when it collapsed in March 2023 because the CEO refused to transfer the company’s funds to an Israeli bank when SVB’s shares began to plummet due to his oppositon to the so-called “judicial coup.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)