Israel in 2017 is a country of contradictions. The economy is strong, but the cost of living relative to income is the second highest in the OECD. The high-tech sector is booming, but so is a massive fraudulent online trading and scam industry, which threatens to undermine Israel’s economic reputation and stoke anti-Semitism. Tel Aviv has become a beautiful, world-class, vibrant city, as well as increasingly unaffordable to all but the well-heeled. Meanwhile, a former prime minister is in jail for corruption, an ex-chief rabbi is headed there, and the current prime minister is under several corruption investigations, with each evening’s news broadcast seeming to bring fresh revelations from the police grillings of our elected leader or one of his family members.
And 2008 was also the year Israel passed an unprecedented tax law amendment that its critics say was essentially a nudge and a wink to would-be tax evaders and money launderers worldwide to settle in Israel and launder their money here.