This is the week, when the Israeli economy is cautiously returning to work after ‘lockdown’.

The immediate damage can be measured in a dismaying 27% unemployment rate. We have yet to learn how many businesses have collapsed and to what level production has fallen. Nor do we know how many surgical procedures have been delayed and at what cost.

On a brighter side, if you look at today’s front page of the financial newspaper “Globes“, you will see headlines referring to around US$200m worth of investment into start up companies: Nexar – US$52m, Cheetah – US$36, Otonomo – US$46, etc etc.

In fact, “Israeli tech companies, which raised a record $8.3 billion in 2019, have raised $3.7 billion in the first four months of 2020.” And if it had not been for corona……. your guess is as good as mine.

And is the puff running out of the start-up nation drive? Just look at the news in the past 24 hours.

• Intel Corp. (Nasadq: INTL) is set to acquire Israeli company Moovit for about $1 billion. The company has developed a public transport and mobility journey planner app. Intel Capital, the venture capital investment arm of Intel, is one of the shareholders in Moovit.
• Mastercard and Enel X have won a tender to establish a new fintech-cybersecurity laboratory in Beersheva, with NIS 13 million (approximately $3.7 million) in funding over three years.

Back on the Israeli high-street, the shopping malls have yet to reopen. Politically, the country maybe heading for a new government next week or a fourth general election. Yet none of this seems to bother the entrepreneurs, who are continuing to have a field day in the Holy Land.