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Yaacov Benmeleh
Bureau Chief at Bloomberg LP
Koby Benmeleh is a professional with a strong educational background in Middle Eastern Studies from Tel Aviv University and Finance from the University of Florida.
He has held key roles in reputable organizations including being a Bureau Chief at Bloomberg LP, as well as previous positions such as Business Reporter at Bloomberg LP and Start-Up Reporter at The Times Of Israel.
Highlights
Intelligence is about to become a commodity.
What's left is the only thing that ever made a difference anyway.
Character.
You can be an idiot and still be someone people love to be around. You can be really smart and evil too.
Character is about following your conscience. Expressing the true you regardless of what other people think.
Our lives are defined by our moral struggle. The story is written with the choices we make.
We watch elite sports because the guys on the field and on the court worked really hard to improve themselves and their teammates. They sacrificed everything for their craft. To be excellent.
We feel part of the stakes. It matters to us because we want to see the best win.
Sports is possible because of tech innovations like radio, TV and the internet. AI opens up endless possibilities to pit our moral striving against our former selves, and against each other.
The moment you dedicate yourself to constant improvement is the moment you drop the fear of AI.
You then become the kind of person who will figure out the next big thing and share it with everyone else.
Some things never change. You can spend years thinking about that. Or you can have faith in the overwhelming evidence that it pays to be good.
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Is Israel an apartheid state?
Depends who you ask. Those who don't like the idea of a Jewish democracy will say that it is. The game they are playing requires them to say so.
They have some evidence to point to. They will shout "Ben Gvir" and "Smotrich" as if to say the spirit of the country is one which seeks to terrorize Arabs into compliance, which shifts according to how threatened the Jews feel.
The problem is that there are such things as red lines for any society. A country cannot tolerate citizens trying to destroy it, especially when the social rules allow for their flourishing.
Proponents of the apartheid case will say that Israel discriminates against Arabs. Well, they have every opportunity to join the government and make changes. They can even become prime minister.
The rules are the rules, and wouldn’t you know it, when @mnsorabbas played by them, it worked for him. When he joined the government in 2021, he got it to spend $10 billion to improve the lives of the Arab communities in Israel.
Now, Abbas is a religious Muslim, which if we are to believe the media, means that he should be the last guy to want to join an Israeli government, let alone defend the country on October 7.
Was he playing politics? It would be naive to think that he wasn’t. But interesting politics he chose, no? Either the man has a spine and follows what he believes is right, or he sees where the winds are blowing and set his sail accordingly.
Any limits on Arabs in Israel are ones they place on themselves. Jews are still people, and they wouldn’t be able to resist an ultra-competent and good-hearted leader, “even if he were an Arab.”
Frankly, it's insulting to think that has any relevance to making things better.

