In May, 2025, we had the honor of being part of the historic reception organized by the honorable María Cristina Cevallos Calero, ambassador of Ecuador in Israel for H.N. Daniel Noboa Azín, President of Ecuador, and the honorable María Gabriela Sommerfeld Rosero, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador, who came to Israel with a large delegation of businessmen to mark 75 years of close friendship between the two countries. In the amazing event, it was evident that both Israelis and Latinos share a common human warmth, but the trained eye could also see that some Israelis found themselves a little bit out of the conversation.
In episode 10 of the second season of the Netflix TV series "Emily in Paris," Madeline Willer attempts to prove her French language skills only for the French client, who just told her that he will not continue working with her, to answer with the iconic phrase, "Darling you can speak all the badly accented French that you like, but I will never understand you and you will never understand me." This is true, of course, because language is not just words, but also culture, and when it comes to international business in general and international business negotiations in particular, knowledge of culture and language is no less important than experience (in general and in the type of culture in question) in conducting international business and conducting international negotiations. Only this expertise will allow you to hear the nuances (and without such expertise one may hear but not truly understand), avoid stepping on “landmines” that others do not even know how to see (and without such expertise one may see but not know how to identify them) and make it possible to evade or neutralize these “landmines”, when others do not even hear them explode.
In a case heard in the Haifa Court in August 2024, a company operating in Argentina and engaged, inter alia, in the manufacture, marketing and export of food products, including dried fruits, signed an agreement with an Israeli importer with payment terms stating that full amount shall be upon arrival of the goods in Israel. When the first two containers arrived in Israel with prunes, the importer refused to pay, contended that some of the cartons in the container were defective, and began a WhatsApp, email and fax correspondence between the parties, which ended in legal proceeding and a judgment that determined that the importer was required to pay the full debt and the legal expenses of the Argentine company, as well as rejecting the importer's claims regarding the quality of the goods. Among the other issues that the judgment dealt with was the question of whether the obligation to pay was contingent on the receipt of the goods in good quality or whether it is an separate charge, with the question of the connection between the parties' obligations and their classification being a question of the interpretation of the agreement and tracing the will of the parties to it - i.e., a question of language and culture!
The Court also dealt extensively with the correspondence between the parties after the eruption of the crisis - again a question of language and culture - when representatives of the Argentine company testified how they interpreted the conduct of the Israeli importer, and the Court in Israel saw fit to fully adopt their position.
Could the dispute have been avoided had the agreement been drawn up by a law firm with expertise in working with Latin America? Could the dispute have been settled amicably without the need to go to Court had it been managed by such a law firm? Would the outcome of the judgment have been different had the legal process been managed by a law firm with such expertise? We would never know, but certainly the chances of reaching an agreement are better, the chances of avoiding disputes are higher and the chances of winning legal proceedings are greater when they are conducted in the right manner. A law firm with experience in business between Israel and Latin America can act not only as lawyers but also as a cultural mediator, thereby reducing misunderstandings and increasing the chances of success in the market.