Founder and editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine, Vitaly Friedman, is a proud supporter of Israel. In 2010, he wrote a piece named ‘Shalom! Showcase Of Web Design In Israel‘ which describes the ethnostate as “a young country with an old heart”, which “has been quickly built up over the last 60 years as an independent democratic Jewish state and is shockingly cutting edge for a country so new”.
He continues, “It is a tiny surreal sliver of land smack dab in the middle of the Middle East: a very European, modern civilization… just programmed to Jewish tradition.”
Describing the tech scene in ‘Israel’, Friedman goes on to describe how “it feels as if Israel has one foot in Silicon Valley and the other in ancient Canaan..”
Normalising the apartheid state whilst whitewashing its illegitimate existence, Friedman lauds ‘Israel’ as a “62-year-old country that is in a constant state of war, where every citizen has to join the army at the age of 18”, and how its “small size and the everyone-knows-everyone effect of being a bunch of Jews, cabin fever (and completion of mandatory army service for the younger generation) drives Israel’s citizens out on frequent travels across the globe”.