Gotta love our beloved Israeli, when asked about his views on rising fuel prices:

“I don’t care about the price - I always fill up only 50 [shekels]“

When informed by the interviewer that he will be getting less fuel if he continues paying the same total, our friend says:

“No, not really, as you can see, I drive a scooter”

The video itself is highly recommended! To view it, visit the site here and skip exactly two minutes into the video. To make sure you’re viewing the right video, it should be the one that says (in Hebrew): “Einav Galili laughs at the whole world.”

The arrogance and silliness of Israelis reached an all-time low with what must have been the most disapointing high tech/Internet conference ever.

The TWS 2008 event earlier today assembled a group of 10 Israeli start-ups (although I’m not sure what Answers Corporations was doing there, almost 10 years after being founded) to present themselves to the Israeli marketplace, VCs and others in the Industry. In addition to the featured “start-ups” were panel discussions and other bonuses.

One of my main problems with the conference was that everyone was forced to speak in English. Just because someone is an entrepreneur, even a very smart one, doesn’t mean he or she’s a good presenter on stage. What’s more, it doesn’t mean he’s a good presenter when forced to use something other than his mother tongue. Worst of all, of coruse, is when people make bad jokes in their second or third languages. I understand there were several people from America who don’t speak Hebrew but translations should have been provided for them, not the other way around. Some presentations were entirely incoherent, defeating any purpose of trying to cater to the few rich foreigners (in the end no one ended up understanding anything).

Because most of the panel discussions were entirely boring, without direction and filled with nothing but buzzwords (”mobile is going to be big!”) most people didn’t even pay attention to what was going on on-stage. Certainly nothing new was shared or learned today. This was exacerbated by nearly every speakers’ silly habbit of polling the audience. Almost no one raised their hand for any question. “Eh, how many peoples in audience have profiles on the Facebook?” “If you do twitters raise your hands.”

The event opened with a game both excruciating to watch and painful to participate in. They has three different venture capitalists pitch the audience based on Powerpoint presentations they had never seen before. What could have been a funny 60 second excericse turned into 30 minutes of grown men making fools of themselves to an audience that couldn’t have cared less.

Combined, I think more harm was done to the impression foreigners have of Israeli high tech than anything else. The games we play here, the lack of professionalism in how projects are presented and the complete lack of respect we show for each other that leads us to leave cell phone ringers on and talk in loud conversations while some poor guy is trying to present his product in something other than his mother tongue.

This post isn’t meant to poke fun at a random Israeli speaking with a few mistakes. Rather, I am picking on one Israeli to make a larger point. For most Israeli companies to succeed they have to have their eyes and strategy set on international markets from the beginning. The Israeli marketplace simply isn’t large enough to sustain many large companies. So start-ups immediately set their sights on Europe, the Far-East or America as destinations to export their technologies and as targets for their marketing.

That’s all fair and good. The problem begins with a basic Israeli weakness - the overwhelming impossibility of a typical Israeli to admit his or her flaws. You’ll seldom hear waiters or public sector workers admit they don’t know something or that they did something wrong. This universal Israeli weakness is even more acute among those that become entrepreneurs and managers. Of course, if they are ambitious, have ideas and pursue them, they will almost never admit personal shortcomings.

A very blatant example of this phenomenon is seen in almost all Israeli attempts to market their products to American audiences. The false-confidence stems not only from general over-confidence but also from most Israeli businesspeoples’ belief that they know English well. “Ehhhh, of course, I spent one year in America with Shoshana and the kids, of course I am speaking the English goodly.”

In my line of work I get to meet a lot of Israeli start-ups and entrepreneurs. Those I like will surely hear from me this tirade and my bottom line of “get a native English speaker on your team to present your company to Americans! Do not assume you’ll do a good job just because you’re the CEO and grew up watching Seinfeld.”

What prompted me to write this post is a video by Israeli CEO Uri Shinar giving an elevator pitch for his company, Aniboom, which Techcrunch posted recently. Click here to see the video (sorry that WordPress won’t let me embed it here but I promise you its worth the link to watch this horrible video).

In my opinion the video is the perfect example of the over-confident Israeli CEO telling himself “of course I should be the one doing the pitch, I am the CEO.” What he probably didn’t consider for a second is that his English will not only be a detriment to the video but may even turn people off entirely because they won’t really “get” what he’s trying to say. And before you tell me that maybe he had no one else available to do the video let me say that I know for certain several native English speakers work at the company. One of them could have made the company’s pitch in even less than 30 seconds and wouldn’t have made people cringe from some of the mistakes Uri made: “eh, we get great feedbacks from the peoples.”

Good luck Uri! I hope others learn something from this, seriously.

From our friend Esther: “Products like this one are the reason Americans will always laugh at Israelis.”

This is a new commercial airing now on Israeli satellite provider YES. In it, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces that by Monday he’ll destroy Israel but he’s then stopped by fellow Iranians declaring how much they love Israeli TV. Things then turn into a big ‘ole song and dance orama.

Thanks to Greg Levey, author of the new book Shut Up, I’m Talking: And Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned in the Israeli Government — A Memoir, for the post.

What’s wrong with this picture? Were they drunk when they designed the sign? Probably not…they were probably just too lazy to use spell check before spending all that money on getting a big ass sign made.

I know last time I checked…alcohol was spelled with ONE “h” and it isn’t located after the “c.” How did NO ONE catch that? Way to go, Smith Bar!

I don’t know about you…but I know that if I had a really fancy store that sold home decor in a really trendy area in Tel Aviv, I would DEFINITELY call it “Items.” Because you know…we sell items.

Y’ever notice how (who am I, Andy Rooney here?) Israelis tend to answer requests for advice with absolutely ridiculous non-sequitur suggestions?  It’s as if they decide to forget everything they know about the person and his situation and jump straight to advice based on who they are and what situation they’re in?  Okay, even *I’m* not following at this point, so, an example:

Jook: I’m looking to rent a house, somewhere in Hod HaSharon, my budget is approx. $1000/mo, I’m looking for something small but nice, maybe around 150 square meters…

Israeli Advice Giver: Why don’t you rent a trailer in somebody’s backyard?

…

Yeah.  So, for those that don’t think this is ridiculous, let me do a little recreation here, but let’s pretend I want an iPod instead of a house:

Jook: I want that new 16 gig iPod touch, it’s really cool.

Israeli Advice Giver: Why don’t you make a guitar out of a 1 x 4, rubber bands, and thumbtacks?

…

I mean, really? A trailer.  And this suggestion came from several people. Who am I,  Jethro from The Beverly Hillbillies?  No, I’m a 27-year old bachelor internet executive who’s gonna go live in a trailer.  Thanks, man.  I’m not looking for professional advice here, but is it too much to ask that they have the attention span to pay attention to the part where I describe what I’m looking for?  Just askin’ if you heard anything ’bout a house for rent, that’s all…Not that the trailer thing is so frowned upon around here, apparently.  Successful, self-sufficient salaried guys are going out and renting trailers.  I even have a friend whose friend built a tent in his parents’ backyard (and no he wasn’t Billy Madison) What’s with the infantilism?  Maybe it’s cultural (and maybe I’m imposing my values a little bit here), but does it seem to anyone else that Israeli men sometimes live in a suspended state of adolescence until they get married?  “Aw man, that Jook, king in the castle, with his SOLID WALLS and all…”

Maybe I should just go live in a treehouse for chrissake and instead of a phone, I’ll bring back the Campbell’s soup cans with the fishing wire between them and communicate that way.  Then I’ll put up a sign that says “NO GIRLZ ALLOWD” until the tomboy down the street works her way into my heart and I experience my first tryst with summertime love and permaturely ejaculate into my light blue Ocean Pacific shorts that one time in my uncle’s basement in 1991.  Huh? Right. House.

Lemme know if anyone hears of anything for rent!

Can it be? Are Israelis actually fashionable?

“STREET CLASH is an international style competition between blogs & photographers around the world. At the end, one city will be named best dressed 2007.”

I think we’re all stunned to find that Israeli street fashion blog ILook won! Christmas is indeed the time for miracles.

Thanks to Designist Dream for the heads up.

I don’t think too many words are needed to introduce you, our upstanding reader, to the Israeli sex/massage card industry.

You can either go for a “spoling massage” with sexy anime characters or listen as a sexy Israeli girl asks you to “come tave my tower out.”

Thanks to Designist Dream for a great link to an insanely out-of-touch article on Ha’Aretz.com today, titled How We Dress.

Apparently, the aging newspaper, while staying away from the yellow journalism of other Israeli papers, is nevertheless trying to exhibit more “inioot” (that is, the quality of being “in” in Israeli, pronouned “in-ee-yoot“). As a result, they interviewed a guy on the street who was dressed rather strangely. See, they’re trying to keep up with fashion trends. Get it?

There are only two problems: the interview itself is extremely boring and they didn’t even include a picture of the guy!!

Here is a typical Israeli line of thinking:

1. Trick people.
2. If caught, try again to trick people.
3. If sued, admit you were tricking people.
4. Continue tricking people.

This lesson comes to us in the form of Israeli fashion house Versace. Yes, I said “Israel fashion house” because the many Versace stores you see around Israel have absolutely no connection to the famous Italian fashion house that also happens to be called Versace.

I know what you’re thinking - “but its the same name?!” Yes, that’s true. You might even say - “but wait a second, isn’t that going to confuse people?” Yes, that’s the plan.

See number one above for the answer to this mystery.

The kicker to this little story is the sign posted at all “Israeli Versace” stores, as well as in the footer of their website:

The sign says: “This store is not connected in any way with the Italian Fashion house Gianni Versace S.P.A and the products on display for sale within are not produced by the Italian fashion house mentioned above.”

Wonderful!

Here’s a picture of a typical “Israeli Versace” store:

The following story comes from a dear friend of mine who recently made Aliyah. I’ve been explaining to him that life in Israel is full of really funny stuff and he’s been taking it all in. Yesterday, I got the following story in my inbox and I had to share.

For other funny stories, visit his blog. 

Here’s his story…

Living in Jerusalem is a great challenge, especially if you go around assuming that things make some modicum of sense, like an insane asylum, where the lines of insanity are clearly demarcated by locked doors (insane) and guys in white coats (sane). Here, it’s also like an insane asylum, except there are no clear borders, everything’s mushed together like a Jerusalem mixed grill, and the only guys in white coats are the ones who stand behind smelly counters all day at the shuk and their coats are smattered with fish guts and they’re yelling at you, “Fish guts! 10 shekel a kilo!” in 5 second intervals, each one louder than the next, until you come up to him and ask him what kind of fish guts he’s selling and he yells at you for disturbing him because he was in a groove.

So as to the belief that there is some sense in this city - only crazed lunatics believe such nonsense. Nobody here does. Everyone here is completely honest with himself, he lives in reality, he has no fantasies, he’s a realist, which is why he never assumes that when the Israel Museum attempts to charge you 37 shekels for entry during what was advertised as a free weekend, maybe, at least, someone would be at the counter to sell you the ticket, and that the museum wouldn’t be closed for renovations after you got one.This is what happened to me last week when, what was advertised as “Hamshushalayim” – Israel jargon for Thursday-Friday-Shabbat-Yerushalayim-free-weekend-we‘re-just-joking-we-wanted-to-see-if-you’d-fall-for-it – said that entry to the Israel Museum would be free for the weekend in order to attract stupid tourists who believe in logic and truth-in-advertising. So my stunt-double and I, whoever that is, walked to the Israel museum and attempted to walk past the guard, thinking he was just there to stop terrorists from blowing up the Aleppo Codex without paying an entry fee (”Excuse me, are you here to blow up the Aleppo Codex? OK, that’ll be 37 shekel.”), but not to charge us for entry that we assumed we didn’t have to pay for because that’s what the stupid Hamshushalayim pamphlet said.

But the guard asked us if we had a cartis, Hebrew for “give me money,” and we said, “No, it’s Hamshushalayim, it’s free.” And he said, “That was on Thursday from the hours of 9 to 9:02. You need a cartis.”

So we went to the ticket counter, and there was nobody there. We asked the Jewish-looking guy with the big gun who probably was the real guy charging entry for anyone trying to blow up the Codex, where the guy selling the tickets was, and he said he was in the bathroom. So we went to the gift shop, the one place that they didn’t charge entry for, and stood by the Museum-side exit from the gift shop, waiting clandestinely for someone to open the door so we could do theimpossible and get into the museum illegally, past the guy with an M16 at the front.

Then someone did, we had our chance, and we splurted through the door like bats in the night, except it was day and we felt more like lethargic mice, which would be a great name for a pickup bar in Tel Aviv somewhere.

Our first stop was the Codex, because we wanted to see it because it’s the oldest copy of the bible in existence written in 200BCE, except the Arabs burnt most of it in the 50’s. Then we went searching for the actual museum. The main path to it seemed closed, so we had to go around through the art garden, which consists of large swaths of empty nothingness with random rusty spikes and weird-shaped metal blobs meant to convey the despair you feel because you can’t find your wayout of this crazy place to get to the actual museum. We escaped, and, still trying to find the entrance to the museum, we went through the water art exhibit, which houses such artistic masterpieces as - as we saw at the entrance to the magnificent water art exhibit - a sprinkler enclosed in a glass cube, circling around and sprinkling…absolutely…nothing. I can’t tell you how much Jewish pride I felt looking at that…thing. It was something like, “All those empires that tried to conquer and kill us are gone, but we survived throughout the millennia, and now we’re back in our homeland, and we have the freedom to build wacknutty pieces of crap like this useless sprinker enclosed in a glass cube and put it in our national museum and nobody can stop us ever again! Damn you Hitler!”

We escaped that horror as well, and asked the guy at the front of the water art exhibit, “Where the hell do you crazy sadists hide the friggin museum?”

“Sagur la’shiputzim.” It was closed for shiputzations. They’re renovating the thing.”

So let me get this straight,” I say, “You charge us entry on a free weekend, but won’t sell us a ticket because the guy is probably still in the bathroom, to a museum that is closed for renovations?”

“Fish guts! 10 shekel a kilo!”

Speaking of funny translations of English phrases into Hebrew…

What about the time my roommate told me not to “Le’zag’zeg” in the traffic?
And what about the commercial I just heard where the guy said “Ani lo mevin klum…tess-em-ess li” (literally “I don’t understand anything…send me an SMS).

Keeps me on my toes.

As fellow Zabajnikit Maya (ok, well, not so much Zabaj on her as she’s like 90 lbs soaking wet) is nearing her Israeli rite-of-passage, the dreaded “psychometri” exam, we learned some fun things about how the test itself is composed and what it means to Israelis and Israeli society.

It’s divided into a few parts, including Hebrew, Logic, and Math, among others. The Hebrew part I’m sure is pretty tough, but I thought I could wrap my head around the Israeli Logic section pretty well. Israeli Logic…here are some actual* sample questions from the upcoming 2007 exam. The answers are below the jump, let’s see how you do!

Answer the following multiple choice (Americai) questions.

1. (5 pts) You are waiting in line at the bank where there are two windows with tellers, and eight without. You are thirteenth in line. Suddenly, another window opens. Do you:

a) Continue waiting, relieved that at least the line will now progress more quickly

b) Take the window opening as a sign that other windows should be opened as well, and let fly a good “ALLO ALLO!”

c) Quickly rush to the newly opened window ahead of anyone else, regardless of your position in line or trampling anyone in the way

d) Line? What are you doing waiting in line in the first place? Go *immediately* to the front and demand service, frier!!

2. (3 pts) You are driving on a three-lane in each direction highway approaching an intersection. You need to make a left turn, but you notice that there is a large buildup of cars also waiting to make said turn. The other two (non-turn) lanes are wide open. Select the logical solution:

a) Enter the queue of cars at the end and await a green arrow

b) Stay in the center lane and turn from there, screw the green arrow

c) Stop at the end of the center lane, block traffic in this lane, and force your way into the front of the line, honking profusely

d) Reverse around the corner from the other side, make a three-point-turn, and look at everyone you’re inconveniencing as “frierim” who should never look at you like that

3. (10 pts) You’re at a bar with Dudi, Hezi, and Motti. You order a rum and Coke, and Dudi and Hezi order a different drink from you but the same drink as each other. Motti is drinking something red, but then orders a drink with the same carbonation as you but served in the same glass as Dudi and Hezi. What are you drinking?

a) Goldstar

b) Vodka Redbull

c) Chaser of schoog

d) None of the above — all of you are sharing one beer that remains half-full all night

4. (3.5 pts) You and a passenger are driving and need to park in front of your favorite café, but doing so requires you to block in a parked car as well as disrupt traffic in the lane you’re blocking. But you want to park there. Select the logical response:

a) Let your friend off to buy you both coffee and drive around the block so as to not disrupt the flow of traffic

b) Stop in front of the café, but send your passenger as in a) and remain in the car with the hazard lights on in case you have to move

c) Stop in front of the café, enjoy a nice coffee break, but keep a good eye on your car and move it if neccesary

d) Go inside the café, take your sweet damn time, and if anyone says anything about you blocking them in and/or blocking traffic, make sure they understand that this is their fault, not yours, and “lo kara klum.”

Done already? Okay. Here are the answers:

1. d 2. d 3. d 4. d

Score:

0-3: Frier

4-10: Ma’afan

11-18: Gever Gever

19-21.5: Totach

*fake!