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.
The Communications Ministry engineers apparently refused to pass the device, since its WiFi operates to different standards than Israeli WiFi, which are similar to European standards. However, the instruction to ban the device was made without the approval of Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon.
“The head of customs at Ben-Gurion International Airport said yesterday they have confiscated 10 iPads, including those their owners declared,” Haaretz reported. The owners are being charged a fee for every day their iPads are held in a government warehouse and the government is refusing to say whether the iPads will be approved or how they will need to be altered to conform with Israeli law.
“Paging Captain Yossarian. Paging Captain John Yossarian to the customs authority, please.”
