Page 14 - TORCH Magazine #17 - Autumn 2020

Buy Israeli!
Israeli produce is already being embraced and the new flight routes are set to open even more opportunities for Israeli businesses. Anti-Israel groups in the West who boycott Israeli goods don’t want you to see Arab nations welcoming goods from Israel, but that is exactly what is happening! In fact, the inaugural sale of Israeli fruit and vegetables at Dubai’s famous Fresh Market was celebrated!
"Are you from Israel? Welcome! Nice to meet you."
- Mohammed, a seller at the Dubai spice market embraces Israeli Yaniv Halili, a correspondent for the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper (Twitter)
Celebrating the sale of Israeli fruit and veg at Dubai's Fresh Market.
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“It’s like falling in love”
One of Dubai’s most popular TV presenters, Youssed Abdulbari, hosted the leader of a delegation of Israeli entrepreneurs and executives. In a special programme titled 'Message for Peace' on state TV, Erel Margalit was the first ever Israeli to be hosted. “You can say it’s like falling in love,” Mr. Abdulbari said describing the excitement in the studios. “We are hoping to be able to do together something that is grand,” he added.
Mr. Margalit said that after London, Paris and New York, the place Israeli entrepreneurs most longed to reach was their own region.
Until the peace agreement, Israeli entrepreneurs had slipped in and out of the UAE incognito, but this will
no longer be necessary. During the delegation's visit, Emirati investors, Mohamed Mandeel, the chief operating officer of Abu Dhabi’s Royal Strategic Partners group, said he felt a sense of kinship with the Israelis. He recounted how he had taken a DNA test and found a match for his rare Babylonian gene in Tel Aviv.
“If we set aside the religious ideologies and 70 years fuelled by conflict, wars and the media, we end up with human beings,” he said in an interview. “We share the same food, the same DNA, the same look,” he added, describing the Israelis as “cousins.”