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Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, a multi-ethnic, multi-religious Israeli non-profit, has launched a game called "Safe Passage."

The group works in Israel toward establishing freedom of movement for Palestinians. The blockade by the Israeli government of the Gaza Strip is an object lesson in what they believe is wrong with current Israeli policy. So to express the trials of impinged movement they have leveraged game dynamics to share the experience.

Israel today lifted its ban on the iPad. After two weeks of banning the popular tablet computers, the Ministry of Communications is allowing them in and returning the confiscated tablets.

Moses Kahlon, the Minister of Communications, announced the lift in a press release. The original decision to ban the iPad was made without the minister's knowledge, inspiring a governmental squabblefest in Israel.

Haartez reported today that the Israeli government has banned the iPad.

"(T)he Communications Ministry has blocked the import of iPads to Israel, and the customs authority has been directed to confiscate them," wrote Bar Ben Ari and Zohar Blumenkrantz.

The ban appears not so much to be the result of a coherent technical decision as a nutcluster of bureaucratic infighting.

In the last few weeks here on ReadWriteStart, we've been chronicling various cities outside of Silicon Valley with thriving startup communities in our semi-weekly series Never Mind the Valley. We've told you how Boston is raking in venture funding, how Los Angeles is growing despite its northern neighbor, and even how Israel is an emerging tech hub overseas.

Despite these and other entrepreneurial cities popping up around the globe, Silicon Valley has held true as the mecca for startups. According to angel investor and Venture Hacks co-author Naval Ravikant, this is why being in the Valley is a must.

In this week's installment of the ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup, we analyze some industry predictions on social media and provide entrepreneurs with some stock tips to bring to the negotiating table. We also look into a man in Australia who's looking to turn some heads by launching a Web startup in just seven days on a $500 budget, and we run down the top 10 tools to help small business collaborate online. As usual we check in with our semi-weekly series Never Mind the Valley, which this week chronicles the emerging tech scene in Israel, and shows us how there's more going on in Austin than just South by Southwest.

American startups are not alone when it comes to the well of venture funding drying up. A recent report by the Israel Venture Capital Research Center has found that funding in Israel fell drastically to $1.12 billion in 2009, nearly half the amount from the previous year. The 46% decrease marks the lowest funding numbers since 2003 and ends Israel's streak of three consecutive years with increasing number of companies and funding dollars.

The numbers are a sign of the worldwide economic stress that is affecting countries large and small across the globe. While funding plummeted between 2008 and 2009, the number of companies funded only fell roughly 7% from 483 to 447, which means less money is being given to each company. In the fourth quarter of 2009, the average financing round was just $2.2 million, down from $3.61 million during the same period in 2008.

Last week, we told you about peer-to-peer and torrent file-sharing sites were being systematically shut down all over China. Not too long before that, we let you know about file-sharing being monitored by a major ISP in the UK.

Now, Israeli ISPs are throttling P2P network access, too, as confirmed in a report just released by an Israeli cyberlaw attorney and a partner news site. Whether you consider file-sharing an affront to content creators and copyright-holders everywhere or whether you see P2P networks as a permissible and valid way for users to exchange data, this trend is gaining considerable momentum around the world. Where will P2P restrictions pop up next?

During the 1990s and early 2000s, Israelis were considered gurus in technology, research, and innovation. While the dot-com boom infused the offices of San Francisco with color, creativity, hope, and foosball tables, Israelis were hard at work in a fairly strict environment creating and developing digital infrastructure, inventing new approaches to network security, and leading the field in hardware-oriented projects.

There was a myth that Israelis were not very good at creating consumer-facing products. Notwithstanding their creation of ICQ, Israelis were known as engineers and researchers who did well within the confines of a lab but not so well when reaching out to end consumers. Over the last couple of years, though, the high-tech industry in Israel has gone through dramatic changes.