Israel doubles sales to UN institutions

A report showed the Jewish state sold $91.8m worth of goods of services to the international body

Over the past two years, Israel has more than doubled its sale of services and products to the United Nations and its branches, the country’s UN mission said.

A recent report released by the United Nations shows it acquired goods and services from Israel totaling $91.8 million in 2015 — a significant increase from 2014’s total of $69.8 million and more then double the 2013 level of $45 million.

Last year’s total places Israel fortieth out of the 193 member-states in terms of procurement from the United Nations, which purchases goods and services worth more than $15 billion annually.

Israel has frequently accused the United Nations – whose general assembly in 1975 labeled Zionism a form of racism in a resolution that was later reversed — and many of its branches of anti-Israel bias.

Last year, the UN General Assembly adopted 19 resolutions condemning Israel, and only one resolution on the civil war in Syria, where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed.

Notwithstanding, “The United Nations understands that Israel is the ‘Startup nation’ and that Israeli goods and services of are of the highest quality in the world,” Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said in a statement Friday. “We will continue to promote the Israeli economy and assist and encourage our companies to work with the UN procurement offices,” he added.

Most of the Israeli goods purchased by the UN were from the medical, bio-tech, computer and communications industries, Danon’s office wrote. Services accounted for just under half the transactions, totaling in at $44.7 million last year. The remaining $47.2 million were paid to Israeli entities in exchange for goods.

Separately, the US automaker Ford revealed at a press conference in California Tuesday that it has acquired SAIPS, an Israeli company focusing on machine learning and computer vision, as part of Ford’s drive to produce driverless cars.

SAIPS’ technology brings image and video processing algorithms, as well as deep learning tech focused on processing and classifying input signals — all key ingredients in autonomous vehicle tech, TechCruch reported.

According to Calcalist, the transaction, whose scope was not published, was for dozens of millions of dollars. (JTA)