Last summer, when Hamas rockets set off Tel Aviv’s sirens, sending everyone from business owners to toddlers scurrying for bomb shelters – sometimes multiple times a day – entrepreneur Inbal Arieli saw a lesson for her three boys.
“I feel that in the context of entrepreneurship it develops some relevant skills,” she says, including coping with uncertainty; trusting yourself; and the ability to count on others, use a network, and collaborate with community.
“As a mother, I think my role is to best equip my kids with the tools and skills that will help them overcome those circumstances now – and, in the future, others.”
Ms. Arieli spent five years in the Israeli military’s elite technological unit, 8200, and went on to work in hi-tech. She’s been in that world for two decades now, including as general counsel for a company that developed the world’s smallest smartphone, and most recently as an entrepreneur.
Israel has the highest density of tech start-ups per capita in the world, which has been attributed to its desolate environment, pioneering mentality, status as an immigrant nation, and mandatory military service.
Arieli, the daughter of a Polish mom and an Egyptian dad, says there’s another key ingredient: the hands-off Israeli parenting style. She lets her 9-year-old son walk by himself more than half a mile through their Tel Aviv suburb to judo lessons. And she’s not alone. The majority of Israeli parents let their kids scamper where they please with little oversight – as they did.
“I really believe that there is something so liberating and so fun to grow up in Israel as a kid,” even if it means taking more tumbles, says Arieli, who is working on a book about the topic.
She recalls camping near the Lebanon border with her friends as a teen, without even so much as a payphone to check in with home. And she remembers failing a high school history exam – and not being allowed to retake it.
Her generation was raised on a TV show featuring Yatzek, an adventurous if bumbling character who was always running into trouble. He fell in the Jordan River, he fell in the muddy cow pen at a kibbutz, but he would always stand up and say, “Kids, you don’t need to worry at all. Yatzek always falls and gets up.”
And so, whatever the security challenges facing Israel today and in the future, Arieli is confident that the nation will prevail over any future challenges – and potentially help its neighbors, too.
“I know more and more Israeli entrepreneurs who are targeting the Arab market,” she says, noting that cultural similarities and Israelis’ familiarity with Arabic can help facilitate business ties in the region’s growing market.
“Regardless of political instability, the markets continue to grow, to have needs, and the tech community is here to solve them.”
