Nisan Zeevi was leading a tech revolution in Israel’s Galilee region, helping to transform the border city of Kiryat Shmona and the surrounding area into a food tech hub, creating dozens of startups and hundreds of high-salary jobs.
Kiryat Shmona, the small city on the western slopes of the Hula Valley, adjacent to Lebanon, was honored as one of the top 1,000 cities in the startup realm by a global tech mapping and research center.
“We thought that we were living the dream,” Zeevi told JNS.
That was in early October 2023. On Oct. 8, one day after Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel, Hezbollah, the Iranian terror proxy which controls southern Lebanon, began its own onslaught of rockets and drones on Israel’s north.
Zeevi’s dream was crushed.

Until November 2023, Zeevi led the region’s tech development as impact investment director of Jerusalem Venture Partners and as vice president of Margalit Startup City Galil, the region’s innovation center. Both are the brainchild of Israeli tech entrepreneur Erel Margalit, as is Kiryat Shmona’s Margalit Food Tech Center. The food tech development in the region has been supported heavily by the Jewish National Fund-USA.
“Economic development takes time to see the fruits, and in 2023 we finally saw some of the fruits. Five-seven employees in a company became 50-70 employees, which means families moved to the Galil,” with the process creating a housing shortage in the previously sparsely populated area, Zeevi said.
Then Oct. 7 came, leading to an evacuation of the northern border communities, which had long been preparing for a potential infiltration from Hezbollah—the kind that Hamas carried out along the Gaza border.

Zeevi and others remained behind to don the Israel Defense Forces uniform, with Zeevi serving as part of the Emergency Task Force of Kfar Giladi, his home village. The small unit is made up of members of the military reserves who were pulled from their regular units to protect the northern border. Response teams also hail from Kiryat Shmona, Margalit, Misgav Am and Metula.
He said he’s watched a catastrophe unfold before his eyes, from economic, demographic and security points of view.
“All the startups that we built, everything collapsed. In the beginning, we thought it’s going to be a month, two months, so we found for each company a temporary place in Yavne, in Tzemach, Caesarea,” Zeevi told JNS. However, not only were the businesses separated from their hub, but the employees themselves were often separated from each other.
“You cannot tell the private sector, especially for startups, to hold on a year and then come back. So it’s a real tragedy from one side. I’m sure that we’re going to rebuild everything but right now we’re in the middle of the crisis,” said Zeevi.

That rebuilding process continues to be put on hold. Zeevi told JNS that the government’s decision to disallow the return of residents at the turn of the new school year back in September was “a tipping point.” The challenge now, he added, was that bringing back life to the north “will not be only a result of the military operation. It has to be related to changing the state of mind and the priority of the government to invest much more in the Galilee and to create excellency in every aspect.”
Only around 20% of the north’s 80,000 evacuees have started returning amid a 60-day Israeli-Hezbollah ceasefire that took effect on Nov. 27. The government has recently announced aid packages for both communities and businesses, though many say the funding falls well short of the needs at hand.
Zeevi, who took on the role of leader of Jewish National Fund-USA’s Reimagine the Galilee project in September 2024, said residents of the north are leaning heavily again on the organization that has already invested so much.
“They were with us, building the ecosystem and the startups and everything. And then we all saw it collapse in one day,” Zeevi said. “And they were the first one to be there to help us, not investing in startups, but funding vests and protective gear and bomb shelters. And now the main mission of all of us will be to reimagine the future of the Galilee and to build the picture of the future.”
But that reimagined future must be shown, and not just talked about, according to Zeevi. It must include news schools and infrastructure to strengthen the communities. In essence, he says the north needs an upgraded quality of life to bring people back, not just through government measures, but through private-public partnerships, along with the philanthropic and private sectors.

The question remains, though: By and large, do residents of the north actually want to come back? And, if so, do they need the enticements?
Zeevi called it a tough and complicated question. He said many of the evacuees have been exposed now to what medical services, public transportation, the cafes and the theaters look like in Tel Aviv in the country’s center.
“I’m not talking about the people that don’t have any other choice … I’m talking about people like me,” said Zeevi. “I can choose not to live in the Galilee. I can choose, thank God, to live wherever I want in Israel. And this will be the real challenge. It could not be the same as it was on Oct. 6.”
That means that work in developing the area continued under daily Hezbollah fire, which finally ceased in November. Jewish National Fund-USA led the way on large projects, such as a new medical center in Kiryat Shmona and the Galilee Culinary Institute in Gonen.
“When we saw that, it was a great hope, even though it’s only cement. But when you are building under fire, it’s a picture that you know emphasizes the role of not only JNF, but the philanthropic Jewish communities around the world,” Zeevi said of the significance and impact of the projects.
He told JNS that the relationship between his communities and those of the diaspora was indirect prior to the Oct. 7 attack. But in the first six months afterward, when “the state did not exist, the government did not exist,” certain needs for sustaining the emergency task force, such as vests and helmets, were fulfilled by the diaspora, he said.
“It was not like this before. It was always through some ministry or some authority, and all of a sudden we’re meeting them directly. I think it’s very powerful,” Zeevi said of the help provided by Jews overseas. “And from the other side, we all see what they go through—antisemitism, protests and the violence and the riots. So I think the bond has become much stronger than it was before Oct. 7.”

Zeevi laments, though, that the Israeli government took the decision to evacuate residents for the long term, calling it “a huge mistake, because now, every time that there will be rockets or something, people will expect that the government will evacuate them and pay them money to leave their home.”
He said the mindset runs counter to Zionism, pointing out that the last time the area was cleared out Jews was in 1920, when the defenders of Tel Hai, including early Zionist activist Joseph Trumpledor, were either killed or pushed out by Arabs. Even then, the Galilee Panhandle only remained free of Jews for a few months.
“It creates a new takdim,” he said, using the Hebrew word for precedent. “And the second thing in this decision is we actually told Hezbollah that it is legit to fire on this specific strip, because there are no people.”
He said that he would have understood clearing the area for a few weeks due to the immediate threat of infiltration from the north.
“But to hold it for more than a year?” he said, pausing for a moment. “I see my two boys, my wife—you know, she’s from the Galilee. They live in a small room in Ramat HaSharon for more than a year out of their home as refugees in their own state. From a resilience point of view, the damage is huge.”
That, in part, led to his decision to run for mayor of the Upper Galilee Regional Council, which encompasses 29 kibbutzim. The election is coming up on Feb. 18.
Zeevi told JNS he never had plans to enter politics, “But we have an understanding that we need to take control of our lives. We need to put our hand on the wheel, and it’s our time now and we cannot wait for anyone else to come and build our home again.”
He stressed that younger, newer leadership is beginning to take over, not only in the Upper Galilee, but across the region, including in the Golan Heights and Tzfat.
“In this crisis, you see that, the ray of light. Our generation understood that it’s up to us,” he said.
A glaring weakness of the Galilee is that it is divided among more than 100 municipalities for only some 300,000 people, with politicians all too eager to exploit that division, he explained.
“If you are not united and you don’t have a big lobby, they can do whatever you want. They’re going to give a little bit to Kiryat Shmona, a little bit to this, they’re going to make sure that you fight with this one,” he said. “So this is some of what we will need to change, and for that, we need a regeneration of local and regional leadership.”