Israel: a country too far from Mike Arrington’s house

In other news Scoble discovers that there's life outside Silicon Valley. So, there's a hot start-up scene in Tel Aviv, big deal. There have been hot startups coming out of Israel for a long time... ICQ anyone? CheckPoint?

I've personally been involved with a few who moved operations from Israel to SV (which is quite common). One recent interesting one is Dapper: http://www.dapper.net/

I love how he gives the headline then basically goes about explaining that it's just linkbait and not really accurate. Shameless.

I lived just outside of Tel Aviv for a few years; it was an amazing place.

I was there just before this newfangled internet became a big deal, but just after a lot of high tech companies started moving to the area. There is a lot of technical talent in Israel, they have an incredible technical school- Technion.

Just a plug, FYI -- anyone 18-26 and of vaguely Jewish descent can have a free trip to Israel via the Birthright organization. There is minimal religion and maximum Zionism. Also no time to check out the startup scene, but it's still a lot of fun.

Free means free, they cover airfare from NYC or LA and many meals. $250 deposit is required to reserve your spot. Email me if you have any questions.

And the concentration of tech companies is so great in Israel that even Yahoo and Google share a building (http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2229/2419149286_0dfc4bbab4_b....).

I think my country produced more successful startups than any other country comparing its population (the whole country including the occupied territories has less people than NYC or London)

Great point. This has always stuck out as an incredible demonstration of the failure of online tech journalism. I'm surprised that more have not written about this.