Six months after Clalit Health Services released a series of instructional Arabic-language videos about breast feeding on YouTube, the health fund was shocked by their popularity – the combined million views they racked up eclipsed the number of breast-feeding women among the country’s 1.7 million Arab citizens.
Clalit found the solution to the mystery in the analytics: More than half of the views had come from Saudi Arabia, 16 percent from Egypt and 9% from Iraq. Only 4.5% were from inside Israel, while the vast majority came from countries that boycott its goods and refuse to establish diplomatic ties.
Arabic, which accounts for some 3.5% of online content today, is the fastest growing language on the Internet. It is projected to become the fourth-largest in 2015, up from seventh place at the end of 2012.
The growing market has created a unique opportunity for Israel’s Arab citizens.
As native Arabic speakers with access to the flourishing hi-tech ecosystem that has earned Israel the moniker “start-up nation,” they are uniquely positioned to fill the market void. As a result, the country has become home to a wave of hi-tech start-ups creating Arabic-language apps, Web content and programs for consumption in neighboring states.
“It’s very hard to find good content in Arabic, and I think that’s the case for many Arabs on the Internet, so there’s potential in this area,” says Bader Mansour, a Nazareth- born entrepreneur who runs a portal for sharing videos, pictures and articles in Arabic.
His website has already accumulated more than 1.5 million hits.
Omar, an Arab-Israeli entrepreneur who asked that his real name not be used to protect his business interests, founded an educational start-up that has already created more than 70 Arabic-language mobile apps.
Within the meaningful, drastic changes happening in the Arab world, there’s some respect for the brand or product of ‘Israel.’” The Clalit breast-feeding videos, for example, had clear links to Israel yet remained a hit.
“The Arab community is becoming part of the ‘start-up nation,’ and the start-up nation is becoming part of the ‘start-up region,’” says Chemi Peres, son of President Shimon Peres and a partner at Pitango Venture Capital, which houses the Al-Bawader fund.
Panet, a news portal based in the town of Taiba, east of Kfar Saba, uses Israel’s “co.il” web address suffix and gets 46% of its 1.4 million daily hits from abroad. On March 6, President Peres used the platform to conduct a question-and-answer session with Arabs throughout the Middle East as part of a public diplomacy effort.
