TAMPA, Fla. — As the war in Israel and Gaza continues, Israeli business owners who have ties to Tampa share how they’ve been impacted by the conflict.
“One of our employees was kidnapped, and his daughter was murdered in front of his eyes,” said Nadav Solomon, president of Tabit.
Tabit is a hospitality and tech company.
He’s one of several Israeli business owners working with the Florida-Israel Business Accelerator, or FIBA, which is based in Tampa.
FIBA is designed to connect Israeli tech startups to the U.S. and establish and grow successful ventures in the Tampa Bay area.
Solomon has family, friends, and employees in Israel.
“I think the evil that emerged out of this situation was just unacceptable and was shocking for everyone,” said Solomon.
Depoint is another hospitality tech company working with FIBA that has employees based in Israel.
“We got used to missiles, we know missiles. We know being attacked. We know being shot. We know how it is to get into shelters. But this time, it was different,” Liron Samra, CSO of Depoint.
He’s also seeing direct impacts from the war between Israel and Hamas.
"It was just horrifying. Since then, it's affecting everything. It's affecting everything… I don't think there's a person right now in Israel that (hasn't) either lost someone or knows someone who lost someone,” said Samra.
MRGN is another business that spoke with ABC Action News. It’s a fin-tech company that’s working with FIBA in Tampa, too.
Employees there have family in Israel as well.
“We grow up number one in an environment that includes bombs and rockets going off on a regular basis,” said Yoni Rubin, CEO of MRGN.
Overall, the conflict in Israel and Gaza is heartbreaking and directly impacting how they work.
“It's challenging. We stopped sales. We're not doing sales anymore,” said Samra.
While there are still many tough days ahead, business owners are hopeful a resolution is possible.
