Ben Gurion Airport’s departures hall was nearly empty, a stark contrast to the long lines and holiday crowds typical of Passover. In the sparse queue stood the Ron family, traveling with three young children and multiple suitcases on their way to the United States via Madrid. Suddenly, a siren sounded, sending them and other passengers rushing to a protected area. The scene repeated itself twice more before and during passport control.
The family eventually reached Madrid safely. But after about half a day in the terminal, their phones and tablets began blaring alert sirens, startling other travelers unfamiliar with the situation.
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Gil Ron at the start of his relocation journey to the United States
(Photo: Courtesy)
The journey of Gil Ron, chief operating officer at Sela, to relocate to the United States sounds like the opening of a survival film — an escape to safety against the odds. Yet many Israeli tech executives reject the notion of “fleeing.” “This isn’t escape — it’s necessity,” one industry executive said. Global clients will not wait for a war to end, and missing a key conference can mean lost business and months of delay.
What was once a short business trip has become a logistical ordeal. Israeli tech executives now hop between remote airports, search constantly for available flights and route themselves through third countries such as Cyprus, Greece and Bulgaria. Journeys that once took hours now stretch into a day or more by air, sea and land.
“People are ready to fight for every seat on a plane and think outside the box,” said Gal Shor, SVP of operations at AI company Lightrun. Ahead of last month’s KubeCon conference in Amsterdam, the company booked multiple tickets per employee across different airlines and days just to improve the odds that someone would make it. “We reached a point where we bought 10 tickets per person just to create some chance someone would get out,” she said. “People left four days early with three exhausting connections just to attend a three-day conference.”
The lack of flights has forced creative — and exhausting — routes. Tomer Shapira of drone company HighLander described a 26-hour trip to a conference in Düsseldorf via taxi to Taba, then flights through Athens and Budapest. “We decided we were going no matter what,” he said, after multiple cancellations. “It felt like a post-army trip — a ‘transit day’ where you just keep going until you arrive.” In the end, he added, “we slept on chairs in the terminal.”
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Tomer Shapira and Shahar Amiel en route to the Exponential conference in Düsseldorf
(Photo: Courtesy)
Dor Eligula, co-founder of fintech firm Bridgewise, flew 50 hours via Dubai and Rome for just 25 hours in Bangkok to attend a client conference. “If you make it, they admire your determination,” he said. “But if you miss it, they may decide not to work with you.” He described scrambling for a return flight after cancellations: “We opened a kind of war room with three computers, searching for anything that could get us back. I managed to grab the last ticket from Rome.”
Despite the hardship, none of the executives viewed the trips as a waste. Many described strong support from international partners. “We met people from all over the world who came to hug us and say thank you,” Shor said. “We chose to represent Israel — to show innovation, resilience and the ability to keep moving forward even in a complex reality.”
Israel’s tech sector, which accounts for about 18% of GDP and more than half of exports, remains a critical engine of growth. But executives say it cannot function indefinitely under such conditions. “Honestly, I’m frustrated,” Shor said. “High-tech is the growth engine of the economy, but in a time like this it feels like we’re left to manage on our own.”
As the war drags on, economic pressures are mounting, and competitors abroad are quick to capitalize. The executives argue the solution is straightforward: ensuring mobility. While the industry is not asking for direct financial aid, it needs reliable access to global markets. “These flights are the oxygen pipeline of the economy,” one executive said. Maintaining them, they argue, is not just a business need but a national interest.