March’s Stock of the Month is part of our new subscription newsletter, Israel Opportunity Investor. You can find out more about the product and the opportunities we cover at www.israelnewsletter.com

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Aladdin is a leading vendor of hardware authentication tokens. The company is No. 1 in the software license authentication token market and No. 2 in the rapidly growing USB token authentication market. Aladdin also offers a digital rights management product for secure software distribution. (Continue »)

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Cimatron (CIMT) was February’s Stock of the Month as part of our new subscription newsletter, Israel Opportunity Investor. You can find out more about the product and the opportunities we cover at www.israelnewsletter.com

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Hi Dan, can you tell us what Cimatron does?
Dan Haran, CEO: Cimatron (Nasdaq: CIMT) is in the CAD-CAM arena for manufacturing. When companies manufacture things, they still need a lot of CAD-CAM or Numeric Control (NC). When people have to machine anything (milling, turning, etc.), this all needs to be computer driven.

What do you do for plastic manufacturing?
DH: With plastic-injection molds, it’s quite complex to make the mold. It’s not just two pieces of metal with a cavity. Manufacturers need to inject plastic, cool it, eject the part – the machine to do this is quite a complex machine. Molds have up to 5,000 parts (pins, screws, plates). To design these machines, it’s a very complex design task. Typically, one person designs the product, but another person (usually in another company) designs the molds for each part. Having good software is essential to managing this process. (Continue »)

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Jacada Ltd. (Nasdaq: JCDA), a leading provider of unified desktop and process optimization solutions for customer service operations, announced today that they’ve sold their Application Modernization Business to Software AG for $26 million. Effective date of the transaction is January 1, 2008.

This deal seems to be about focus — about positioning Jacada as a pureplay in the call center solutions business. The firm provides a single, unified workspace for customer service organizations managing lots of legacy and disparate software systems.

Jacada President (and new CEO, actually), Paul O’Callaghan, said of the deal, “During the past 3 years, our call center solutions business has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 61% and represents 95% of our $12.9 million backlog as of September 30, 2007. We expect that the growth we have seen in this business will continue at a similar pace throughout 2008.”

Sounds pretty good. We’ve written about Jacada positively before and like the direction the company is taking. Along with the deal, we’ve seen Paul emerge as the new CEO with the founder and former CEO, Gideon Hollander, sliding into the Chairman seat. This is a company maturing and taking the right, and albeit tough, steps of the founder stepping aside.

O’Callaghan joined Jacada as President in May 2006, after successfully holding senior management roles in companies including Optio Software, Cisco Systems, IMNET Systems, XACCT Technologies, Idapta and Network Systems Corporation.

His experience in sale-oriented tech firms has allowed the company to grow its pipeline of new deals and land material type deals like recently announced deals with Central Hudson Gas & Electric, a regulated gas and electricity provider serving approximately 367,000 customers in eight counties of New York State’s Mid-Hudson River Valley.

Keep in mind the company has a market cap under $80 million and a cash position of $35 million. Add another infusion of cash to a company that had guided for 2007 revenue growth of 23 - 27% and get the firm completely focused on the call center business growing at a CAGR of 60% + and you have a nice little Israeli microcap.

NEW! Introducing Israel Opportunity Investor, our monthly subscription-only newsletter. Stay ahead of the game and make smart decisions in Israel stocks. Go here to learn more.

Author does not hold a position in JCDA.

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Aaron Katsman
www.IsraelNewsletter.com

With news of the Israeli company NetManage(NETM) being acquiredby Rocket Software for approximately $69 million, a 95% premium over yesterday’s closing price, coming on the heals of HP’s(HPQ) purchase of Nur Microprinters(NURMF.pk) earlier in the week, Israeli M&A is back with a vengeance. In what was a very slow year up ’til now, has suddenly turned hotter than the New England Patriots.

With the focus squarely back on foreign firms picking up Israeli publicly traded firms for cheap, here at IOI, we would like to present our top 2 M&A picks for ‘08.

Ormat Technologies(ORA) engage in the geothermal and recovered energy power business. They have produced impressive growth with a 13% rise in net income last quarter. With rumours swirling that both Apax Private Equity and Goldman Sachs(GS), are looking at buying a 10% share of the company, and local business Chaim Katzman(no relation) continually raising his stake in the company, Ormat is a prime takeover target.

Amdocs (DOX), the telecom billings systems firm has been a poor performer for investors over the last 6 months , but with a sparkling balance and dominance in the billing field it could be a perfect fir for the likes of an IBM(IBM) or SAP(SAP), as they look to add another product to their offering. While I have mentioned these rumors before, with the stock 15% down, and ‘08 shaping up to be a great year for Amdocs, the time seems perfect for an offer.

Disclosure: Author’s fund owns stock in and is long ORA and DOX. He holds no position in any other stock mentioned, as of 12/12/07.

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NEW! Introducing Israel Opportunity Investor, our monthly subscription-only newsletter.  Stay ahead of the game and make smart decisions in Israel stocks.  Go here to learn more.

Aaron Katsman is Managing Editor of the Israel Opportunity Investor newsletter. He is lead portfolio manager for the Israel Growth Portfolio and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. For more information, go to www.israelnewsletter.com or call 1-888-327-6179, or email aaron@profile-financial.com.

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