Amazon Launches Hebrew Site, Offers Free Shipping To Israel

E-commerce giant Amazon officially launched a Hebrew-language website on Monday alongside a promotion offering customers free international shipping to Israel on international purchases of over $49.

Customers in Israel will now be able to purchase millions of products offered on Amazon’s international platform in Israeli shekels and access customer service in Hebrew.

The global website in Hebrew, Amazon’s eighth dedicated foreign-language site, is a welcome addition for Israeli and Hebrew-speaking customers who are very active online shoppers. Amazon.com can already be viewed in Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, German, and Korean. Hebrew

The Hebrew site is in addition to the launch this past summer of Amazon’s Israeli platform, which only contains sellers in Israel. At this point, there are no immediate plans to build an Amazon logistics warehouse and Israeli sellers who wished to list their items had to supply them from their own centers.

Amazon wanted to make the “shopping experience” for their Israeli customers “even better” and “more convenient” said Samir Kumar, VP of Amazon Exports and Expansion, in a statement on Monday cited by the Jerusalem Post.

“Customers requested a shopping experience in Hebrew, with access to items available for shipment to them and in their local currency. Supporting the Hebrew language and free shipping benefits to Israeli customers simplifies the browsing, purchasing and shipping of millions of items,” he added.

The launch of the Hebrew site, as noted by several Hebrew media reports, came on China’s ‘Singles’ Day’ (November 11th), an online shopping holiday akin to Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the US. Amazon’s China-founded rival Alibaba, a favorite with Israelis, said some $12 billion worth of goods were sold in the first hour since the holiday began on Sunday at midnight.