For most of us in the U.S. and Europe, Israel is front-page news for much of the year, then it becomes the focus of Christmas stories about Bethlehem. We recently hopped on a British Airways flight (with the obligatory loss of luggage) to Tel Aviv where we saw:

• High-tech Israel. Nearly 10% of the Israeli population works in high-tech. Outside Tel Aviv there is the Silicon Wadi (a stream bed or arroyo) and its concentration of companies involved in research and development. The Israel of old focused more on diamonds and oranges (Tel Aviv is called the Big Orange), contrasting with US$12 billion in 2006 high-tech revenue. One footnote: Israelis schedule projects left to right, but they write from right to left (at least schedules don’t circle around the drain the wrong way as projects fail).
• An evolving market for localization. Israel hosts the biggest chapter of the Society of Technical Communication outside the United States. With so much of its technology exported, localization has become an issue for the tech pubs community. Supporting their efforts are Israeli language service providers who tend to be small, focused on niches, and serve more European clients than American ones. Localization buyers wear multiple hats, such as documentation or support manager; there are fewer that fall into the same profiles of translation buyer that we mapped for the U.S. and Europe. LSPs do very little translation work for the local market, despite its diverse population.
• A multicultural society. About 20% of Israelis are Arabic speakers, another 15% are Russian immigrants, and there are many Anglophones (called “Anglo-Saxons”). This means that signs are often presented in 3 languages (Hebrew, Arabic, and English). To make up for the shortfall of workers resulting from the unresolved Palestinian question, companies have been bringing in Thai laborers for agriculture (not high-tech). Expect more attention to multicultural marketing and government services. We also were exposed to Israeli viticulture – a wine tasting at the Golan Heights Winery demonstrated that kosher wine need not taste like the Manischewitz we grew up with.
• A different integration with the global economy. We frequently talk with clients about follow-the-sun support and development strategies. Because Israeli weekends include Friday and Saturday, most people work on Sundays but not Fridays. This causes problems for some companies, especially on Fridays, but it also means that Sunday workdays have conspicuosly fewer interruptions from e-mail, phone calls, chat, and SMS.

Finally, we found that Israel, like every business culture, has its stereotypes. We learned a few words that characterize the the product development life cycle: 1) “Smoch” means “trust me, sit back and relax, everything is under control.” Whenever you hear that, you can be sure that it’s not under control and that you should start worrying; 2)”such-buk” denotes an immediate familiarity with anyone, meaning that you are instant best friends with whoever you meet and have an immediate in-depth knowledge of the other (the “ch” is pronounced as in “chutzpah,” defined by Leo Rosten in “The Joys of Yiddish” as killing both your parents and then throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you’re an orphan; and 3) “il-tour” is improvisation, a key element in a country short on natural resources.