ליברטריאנים בישראל

Their complete report of the incident is available over here.

While it repeats  the points that we covered on this site in broad strokes already, this is an interesting detail:

Apple has long lacked a strong presence in Israel. That began to change in late 2008, after Nehemia Peres, the son of Israeli President Shimon Peres, bought the company that has exclusive rights to sell Apple products in Israel, iDigital. Israel’s first Apple store opened in Tel Aviv in January 2009. iDigital couldn’t be reached for commentabout the ministry’s decision to ban imports of the iPad.

Naturally we’re not implying that the whole thing is a deliberate favor to iDigital – we have absolutely no proof of such a thing, and if we had such proof, we’d be posting it (although, given the previous behavior of many of our government officials, it cannot be completely discounted).  What we are saying is that the regulatory state is, in this case, awesome for the big corporation and abusive for the common man.

On the other hand, it’s rare that reports of such incidents hit foreign media. For our Western readers, and those Israelis who haven’t been paying attention: this is how the government operates. All. The. Time.