The air in the Tel Aviv high-rise was thick with the scent of ozone and triumph. From the panoramic window, Dov Landau, a veteran hedge fund manager whose career had weathered the First Intifada and the Dot-com crash, watched the city lights flicker. But his gaze kept returning to the Bloomberg terminal that glowed with the green of an all-time high. The TASE 35 Index was up another half a percent.
“Two hundred percent since the trough,” his junior partner, Elara, murmured, her voice a mix of awe and unease. “The Middle East’s best return. It’s… surreal, Dov. We broke the pre-war high in February, and now look.”
Dov nodded, his fingers tapping the glass. “Surreal is the word. While the North is still under threat, while the South is a ruin, the capital is flowing. Foreign institutional money. They see the strength, Elara. They see the resilience. They see a country that, even at war, stabilizes its economy faster than its neighbors can print money.”
But the numbers held a poison for Dov. They were the engine of his life, yet lately, they tasted of ash. He thought of a conversation he’d overheard, a cynical joke among analysts: “Israel’s biggest export isn’t tech anymore; it’s defiance, and the market buys that at a premium.”
He spun away from the window, facing Elara with a hard look. “Let’s cut the bravado, Elara. We both know what this looks like to the outside world. The market plunges 23% in October, and then, amidst the most turbulent regional backdrop in decades—war with Hamas, flareups with Iran and Hezbollah—we surge 200%. If a hostile observer were to argue that this military action was carried out with the primary aim of demonstrating an unshakeable national stability—a fortress-economy designed to raise stock prices and attract this ‘dramatic inflow of foreign capital’—then where is our defense?"
Elara frowned. “That’s unhinged, Dov. Soldiers are dying. People have lost everything. You can’t accuse the government of using blood as an economic lever.”
“Can’t I?” Dov’s voice was low and intense. “War is madness, yes. But I look at these figures, this cold, clinical, hyper-efficient rebound, and I think: It is the madness of war capital that causes wars. Capital is a predator. It hunts security and return. When a state demonstrates its willingness to go to the most extreme lengths to protect its borders and its economy—even if that means war—capital rewards it. This surge isn’t a miracle; it’s a vote of confidence in national militarism.”
He walked over to his desk, picking up a newspaper whose front page showed a photo of a destroyed neighborhood next to an article praising the TASE’s performance.
“We preach that capital should be free to move freely. That is the gospel of the free economy. But is it acceptable,” he demanded, his voice cracking slightly, “for that freedom to become a license for exploitation? Is it acceptable for capital’s pursuit of profit to trample on humanity, to create a system where the successful prosecution of conflict is the most bullish signal an economy can send? If the price of an all-time high is the sustained conflict that guarantees the inflow of foreign defense and investment money, then this cannot be excused. It is an atrocity disguised as an upturn.”
Elara finally looked away from the screen, her composure shaken. “So what is the solution? Are we supposed to tell foreign investors to stay away? To crash the market because it looks too good? That would destroy pensions, hurt every citizen, cripple the state’s ability to recover—the very people the ‘war capital’ hypothesis is supposedly exploiting.”
Dov looked at the glowing terminal, then at the destruction on the newspaper page. “That is the trap, isn’t it? The ethical dilemma has been baked into the system. Does a free economy have no way to stop war capital from running wild? The only leash on capital is regulation, and no government dares to regulate the impulse that fuels its own resilience. We are trapped, Elara. We are making a fortune on a market that has learned to thrive on the very instability it claims to be fighting. And that, more than any enemy missile, is what terrifies me.”
He slowly closed his laptop, plunging the desk into shadow. The green numbers were gone, but the chill of their implication remained. The war in the region was fought on the ground, but the greatest battle—the battle for the soul of the free economy—was being fought, and perhaps lost, right there on the trading floor.
All names of people and organizations appearing in this story are pseudonyms
Despite Devastating War, Tech and Foreign Inflows Send Israel’s Stock Market to Record High
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