Who is going to be Europe's main technology hub? While London and Berlin both see themselves as claimants to the title, if you look at the numbers (and you take a Eurovision Song Contest view of the Continent) arguably neither can challenge Tel Aviv.

It was Ron Huldai, Tel Aviv's 13-year mayor and a former combat pilot, who, while London's Tech City was not even the subject of an interdepartmental memo, had got on with building a tech center second only to Silicon Valley. He did it not by installing high-speed fiber or hosting...