It is interesting to see a tournie in Israel currently. Over the years, Israel has had some decent players like Amos Mansdorf, Shlomo Glickstein (Shlomo did great things on grass one year and became a big name one summer - he won what was called the Wimbledon Plate, for all losers in the first three rounds, a 64 draw consolation event was held, in 1980 he had lost to Borg in round two, having beaten Ramirez round one, and went to win the Plate event. It had decent money, no ranking points, but was a decent event to win), Shahar Perkiss is the other I recall. Mansdorf reached the fourth round at both Wimbledon and US Open late 80's ish period.
I remember around the late 70's, the first ATP event was played there, that I can recall, and Jimmy Connors topped the entry list and also won the event one year, late 80's; it was in Tel Aviv.
Around the same time, the ATP organised a tennis circuit in the Gulf - Vilas, Fibak and others played in Dubai, Oman I think it was and Kuwait - they played 3 4 or 6 man events - this was late 70's, maybe 78, and the countries really didnt exist as countries, literally a few sky scrapers, some oil rigs and lots of sand! It was the first time tennis was played there and they took a few big names of the time - a bit like Thiem, Isner and the like playing now in some relatively small country.
Thats a shame for Giles but decent week. I noticed in looking at NCAA results that the Israeli beat Ali G in the NCAA opening round in 2021 in straight sets. So no shame for Giles