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Table of Contents:
Protestesting the Israeli offensive against Palestine _ Toronto, CA
Gita Hashemi <[email protected]>
Petition to condemn Ariel Sharon for War Crimes
"Paul D. Miller" <[email protected]>
ISRAEL'S "NEW ECONOMY" AND THE INTIFADA: Notes on the Boycott Campaign
"Alex McN" <[email protected]>
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2002 18:26:21 -0500
From: Gita Hashemi <[email protected]>
Subject: Protestesting the Israeli offensive against Palestine _ Toronto, CA
Short report from Toronto, Canada:
On Saturday, March 30/02, several thousand people took to the streets
of Toronto, on the occasion of the Land Day, to protest the seige of
Palestine. This event was called by a number of Palestinian and
Jewish organizations, supported by peace, anti-globalization and
social justice organizations in the city, and joined by many
organizations, individual activists and Arab community members from
nearby cities.
The protest started at 10 a.m. with the ritual of draping and
decorating mock coffins in commemoration of the civilian victims of
the war on both sides. By 1:30 p.m. the protesters gathered in front
of the provincial legislature building began a procession toward the
Israeli embassy, carrying the coffins. Near the Israeli embassy, the
coffins were placed on the ground, covering the length of the street
for 4 blocks. The people then continued their march toward the U.S.
embassy passing through Bloor and Yonge streets, successfully
interrupting heavy Saturday shopping and traffic in the city's core.
Although the city and provincial police had a heavy presence, and the
emotions ran high because of the recent news from Palestine, the
protest ended without widespread confrontation. There were only 1-3
persons arrested. I witnessed the arrest of a medical doctor,
Padawi, from Hamilton who approached the Israeli embassy carrying a
Palestinian flag. I don't know yet what the official charges against
him are (if any). The police did not respond to my demand to know
why he was arrested. But Dr. Padawi, before he was transferred to
one of the all too present paddy wagons, said they had told him he
was "too excited." Unfortunately, there ware no legal observers
around at the time, but the arrest was captured by many cameras
including those of a couple of tv stations. Hopefully, he won't fall
through the cracks like many other Arabs and Muslims have since last
September.
Work for peace.
- --
======
We must organize against the seige of Palestinian people by the
Israeli army. Our silence implicates us in the genocide.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2002 10:14:41 -0500
From: "Paul D. Miller" <[email protected]>
Subject: Petition to condemn Ariel Sharon for War Crimes
The petition below will help the lawyers in Belgium who are suing
Ariel Sharon for war crimes.
They need 1,000,000 signatures. They currently have 307,551
http://www.petitiononline.com/warcrime
Please sign and forward the petition to all your contacts.
============================================================================
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe
they are free...."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Port:status>OPEN
wildstyle access: www.djspooky.com
Paul D. Miller a.k.a. Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid
Subliminal Kid Inc.
Office Mailing Address:
Music and Art Management
245 w14th st #2RC NY NY
10011
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 23:07:37 +0000
From: "Alex McN" <[email protected]>
Subject: ISRAEL'S "NEW ECONOMY" AND THE INTIFADA: Notes on the Boycott Campaign
ISRAEL'S "NEW ECONOMY" AND THE INTIFADA:
A note on the boycott campaign.
by Naxos
This article is Copyleft [see below]
December 2001. At one end of London's Oxford Street the Palestine Solidarity
Campaign has mounted a picket on Selfridge's department store, to persuade
the management to stop selling produce from Israeli settlements in the
Occupied Territories.
A similar campaign has been organised [March 2002] by Ya Basta in Italy
(http://www.yabasta.it).
In this article I take these actions as the starting point for a discussion
of the radical transformations that have taken place in the Israeli economy
during the past decade, and Israel's very specific location within the
global knowledge economy.
To Summarise:
I would argue that Israeli capitalism of today offers a precious microcosmic
possibility for the study of immaterial labour in action. It is also crucial
that we understand this economy, because in a real "world war" sense our
futures depend on what is happening here.
In recent years the Israeli economy has undergone fundamental changes. An
entirely new class composition was created by the ex-Soviet migrations of
the 1990s. Markets for traditional Israeli produce became more restricted.
The Internet created the conditions for transnational exports of high-value
immaterial labour (knowledge) products to replace previous low-value
products with high transit costs. And the nature of the new knowledge
economies opened new interstitial possibilities for insertion. A new and
technically skilled workforce proves capable of creating the flows of
innovation that are the precondition for the survival of the large
capitalist firms of this and the preceding era (head-hunting of promising
new start-ups). Among other things, Israeli companies are particularly
well-suited to meet the new demand for biomedical products. They also have a
powerhouse of R&D represented by the Israeli Defence Force's high-tech
academies. And they have a guaranteed point of entry into the US
military-industrial complex by virtue of lines of communication between
"Silicon Valley" and the "Silicon Wadi" of Northern Israel. More than this,
Israel also exports models of behaviour � biopower � in the form of
knowledges of how to limit, constrain and eventually crush dissident
behaviours. This is marketed as "methods for defeating terrorism", but is in
fact a set of methods for the creation and freezing of an adversarial
"other".
I shall deal with each of these aspects in turn. In passing I would say that
this conjunctural shift in the Israeli economy, this radical change in the
composition of both class and capital in Israel, have been the necessary
precondition for � and partial explanation of � the Israelis' radical break
with the Palestinian labour-power which had served previous phases of
production (notable in agriculture and construction). Put briefly, the
inflow of Soviet ("Russian") Jews made possible the break with Palestinian
labour power. And simultaneously the Soviet Jews have turned out to be the
electoral bedrock of the Israeli government's "final solution" for the
Palestinians.
Thus the political and economic precondition for Israel�s radical break with
Palestinian labour-power was the shift from traditional forms of agriculture
and manufacture into the arena of immaterial labour which took place in the
1990s.
But more than that, I would argue that the Israelis' war with the
Palestinians operates as a "factory of immaterial labour export
possibilities". This war is, in a real sense, productive for the Israeli
economy.
Calls for boycotts of Israeli produce are symbolically significant and
completely worthwhile. A necessary element of ethical hygiene. They should
be supported. But the way in which the campaign is framed is simple-minded
to the point of naivety. We are not talking a few packets of pretzels, a
crate of Jaffa oranges and a face-pack of cosmetics. Two things need to be
said. First, Israel's new immaterial economy and its immaterial-labour
products are organically integrated into the very highest levels of the
globalised high-tech communications, military and security economy. Second,
and perhaps more importantly it appears that the trade-mark Israeli model of
suppression of opponents has been exported and projected onto the world
stage, to become the dominant paradigm of US foreign policy.
The characteristics of this model are (a) radical negation of the Other (for
several decades, in Israeli discourse the Palestinians have always and only
been "the terrorists"; (b) Preventive security strikes, extending
increasingly to assassination; (c) micro-level capillary monitoring of
populations at all levels, and installation of administrative and
technological means to that end; (d) intransigent and defiant unilateralism.
We are at a crucial turning point. After the first phase of the Afghan war
world opinion seemed to be expecting a Powellisation of Israeli policy
(towards negotiation). Instead we have seen a Sharonisation of American
policy [Note 1].
1. The necessity of leaving the old economy.
A large part of Israel�s �old economy� consisted of agricultural products.
Citrus fruits in particular. �Twenty years ago Israel�s main industry was
oranges.�
By the early 1950's, fuelled by mass immigration and large capital
investments, the citrus subsector grew rapidly. Hectarage rose from 14,000
to over 40,000 hectares. With the well respected "Jaffa" label Israeli
oranges and grapefruit dominated many markets. However, by the late 1970's
stiff competition from Spain, Morocco and Cyprus and changing consumer
tastes led to a levelling off of demand. The 1980's saw a major decline in
international competitiveness and profitability with more than 20% of its
planted citrus area uprooted, packing houses mothballed and volume levels
falling to 1930's levels. Several factors led to Israel's decline. These
included:- a) rapid cost inflation in the mid 1980's; b) the strength of the
$US vis � vis European currencies; c) a rise in international shipping costs
in the early 1980's; d) financial crisis within Israel's agricultural
settlements. [Note 2] We may also adduce the resulting dependence on
Palestinian or foreign migrant labour; the use of agricultural land for
housing (eg in Jaffa); susceptibility to international trade boycotts; and
the fact that water is a military resource in the Middle East. Exporting
oranges is to export water.
I shall not deal here with the question of the diamond trade, except to note
that it lies at the heart of some of the warmongering which is destroying a
good part of Africa. For example the gangster economy in Sierra Leone, and
in Liberia "a major centre for massive diamond-related criminal activity,
with connections to guns, drugs and money-laundering throughout Africa and
considerably further afield. Diamonds are a key part of Israel's economy.
[Note 3]
2. The material precondition for a new economy
The first precondition for the �new economy� is highly skilled technical
labour-power. That was provided by the mass arrival of the �Russian� Jews
emigrating from the Soviet Union. Coming in two distinct waves, with the
second in the 1990s. Upwards of 600,000 arrived, and many of them were
highly skilled personnel � doctors, lawyers, musicians, scientists and
computer programmers. More than 13,000 doctors arrived in Israel, more than
half of them women. The health service could only absorb 20%, leaving the
rest excess to requirements and needing to be redeployed elsewhere. The
�Russians� constituted 15% of the 4.5 million electorate, had their own
political parties, and were notoriously hostile to any negotiation with the
Palestinians.
A further 600,000 went to the USA and settled in the Los Angeles area. In
1999 an article in the Los Angeles Magazine spoke of an emerging Russian
underworld in the LA region: �They come from a dog-eat-dog �democracy� where
the shortest books in the library are the ones on business ethics and
criminal justice, they�re not only tougher and slyer, but their crooks,
according to our cops, are the smoothest thing since iced vodka.� [Note 4]
In LA there was talk of a Russian mafia, with organised gangs involved in
kidnappings, financial fraud and Internet crime. Some of this talk has since
been denounced as racist. However the newly emerging transnational diasporic
Israelo-American nexus constituted by "the Russians" clearly invites
analysis. A job for another time.
3. Conjunctural factors in the promotion of high-tech sectors
The global �knowledge economy� took off in the 1990s. Special factors
applied in Israel, assuring the rapid growth of a networked society. During
the Gulf War the threat of Iraqi rockets and gas/biological weapons set in
place �national emergency planning�, whereby communities used Internet and
related technologies as a means of civil defence, thereby turning Israel
into one of the world�s most wired societies.
By law, all Israeli houses built since the Gulf War are required to have a
secure room that can function as a shelter against terrorist attack. Israel
is also dotted with �neighbourhood response centres� �Located in the
basement of a community center, the command room is staffed by citizen
volunteers and army conscripts. Radios and ubiquitous cell phone links, as
well as homing beacons and microphones built into settlers� cars, allow
travellers to be closely tracked, and let authorities know right away when
trouble is developing.� [Note 5]
The presence of excesses of skilled and unemployed immigrant labour was a
pressure in the direction of innovation. By its nature the emerging
immaterial sector of the Internet and communications was a huge, lumbering
thing, open to experimentation, but most of all subject to the pressures of
its own growth. In growing very big very fast it opened interstitial
possibilities for small start-up companies. There was a huge need for
innovation. Small start-up companies could get big very fast. And
intelligent applications were required in order to clear the blockages
imposed by the scale of the sector�s growth.
�With revenue growth for PC chips slowing, communication chips have become
the hottest growth area in the semiconductor market [...] �The driving force
is the increased demand for bandwidth in every aspect of communications,
whether it�s home users accessing the Internet, providing a corporation, or
the emerging demand in the third world. The demand is literally
everywhere.�[Note 6] This sector has a strong presence of start-up companies
in Israel. The US-based giant Intel, suffering from the drop in demand for
PC chips, moved to buy up communication-chip companies. By 2002
Intel-Israel, with 5,0005 employees in Jerusalem, Haifa and Kirya Gat, had
exports of $2 billion, compared with $810m the previous year, a growth
deriving from the opening of a new plant at Kiryat Gat.[Note 7] The Israeli
government provided favourable terms and conditions for high-tech start-up
companies, creating �technological incubators� in areas such as Yokneam. The
Israeli company DSP, which has developed chips used in wireless and mobile
phone communications, was recently sold to Intel for $1.6 billion.[Note 8]
At this point a large part of Israeli intervention in the high-tech sector
was interstitial � seeking emerging niche possibilities within the overall
growth of the sector:
For instance when �Year 2000� (Y2K) emerged internationally as a problem
area, Israeli company Sapiens International [Note 9] built a Year 2000
remediation niche and staffed it almost entirely with immigrant Russian
programmers. These were people who had worked for Soviet governments
building computer systems for the railway, oil and auto industries. About 70
of Sapiens� s 100-strong staff were emigr� Soviet Jews. The firm also
applied itself to another window of conjunctural opportunity � Europe�s
changeover to the euro currency. And it built a specialisation in converting
computer systems from old languages into new languages (converting assembler
code into C code).[Note 10] Remediation was a key word at this stage �
upgrading and problem-solving in older computer systems.
This new Israeli high-tech sector operated through the extended networks of
the Jewish diaspora, seeking opportunities for fleet-footed action and
innovation. In a sense the diaspora offers a metaphor for the new realities
of the cybertariat within immaterial labour. Networks and connections meant
that the �Silicon Wadi� which emerged in Israel became a fundamental,
necessary and integrated part of the �Silicon Valley� operating in the USA.
The technology park at Yokneam, for instance, has a twinning relationship
with St Louis. The American-Israel Chamber of Commerce organises trade
visits of small Israeli companies to St Louis, where future trade relations
are developed with the likes of Boeing. Similar trips were organised by the
AICC of Minnesota, which has the four largest medical devices companies in
the world (and the Israeli immaterial labour sector is developing a strong
presence in biomedicals and high-tech healthcare � see below) [Note 11].
4. Israel as a military economy
Israel is a highly militarised society. Decades of war (against the British,
against the Arabs, and internal war against the Palestinians) has created a
powerhouse of military techniques and technologies. These include hardware
(rockets, bombs, guns and ammunitions) and systems (integrated battlefield
computer systems), and also the �bio-power� spin-off of the production of
mindsets, philosophies and ways of being in the world.
Israel Military Industries was founded in 1933, producing munitions to fight
the British. In 1990 it became a government owned corporation. A 4,000
workforce, of whom over half are engineers, scientists and technology
experts. It recruits top-level skilled personnel, the product of Israel�s
prestige military academies. As well as traditional armaments, it also has a
telecomms subdivision, IMI Telecom, which �specialises in the field of
telecommunications and electronic commerce�.[12] Capitalising on its unique
experience as a wired society geared to daily disaster mitigation and
capillary counterinsurgency, it was well placed to exploit the niche offered
by America�s vulnerability to the attacks of September 11. On 5 February
2002 it organised an international �National Emergency Management� seminar
for foreign local and national governments and private companies. In a real
sense this is an Israeli export of imaterial labour. As is the output of
another of its �factories� � the IMI Academy for Advanced Security and
Anti-Terror Training, a large campus with an interdisciplinary team of
instructors who are �all former commanders from elite Israeli security
units�.[Note 13]
To this extent we can say that the Israelis� war against the Palestinians is
effectively a productive sector, a factory of expertises and techniques
which are then marketed worldwide.
Another case in point is Krav Maga. This is a self-defence martial arts
technique. Created and developed by the Israeli Army, Krav Maga is not only
the official combat system of the Israeli Army, but is also taught in
Israeli schools as part of the curriculum. It has a characteristically
Israeli vocation of democracy: "It is our belief that everybody, no matter
what age, weight, gender or body type, has the right to defend themselves
and their loved ones." The method was developed to suit everyone � men,
women, children, old people � as a way of saving their own lives or
minimising harm from attack. It developed originally in the 1940s, in
training elite units of the Hagana and Palmach, and embodies "preventive
self-defence". It is a stance, a whole way of being in the world, based on
objective paranoia and pre-emptive preparedness. Ariel Sharon (formerly of
the Hagana) is of this school. I suggest that as well as being exported to
the world as a martial arts technique, this stance is being marketed as a
geopolitical product.[Note 14]
5. Israel�s integration into the US military-industrial complex
The Gulf War provided moments of both tension and cooperation between Israel
and the US military-industrial complex. As the price for Israeli restraint
and inactivity in the face of incoming Iraqi missiles, the US and Israeli
military collaborated in the production of anti-missile devices. One of
these (designed to combat Katyusha missiles incoming from S. Lebanon) was
the Tactical High-Energy Laser (THEL). However there are also tensions. Ehud
Barak was forced by Bill Clinton to renege on a contract with China, already
signed, for supply of Phalcon AWACS surveillance systems.[Note 15]
The business opportunities accruing to Israel from the September 11 attacks
includes interest in a �revolutionary explosives sniffer device� � again a
spin-off from Israel�s war with the Palestinians. The MS-Tech company
developed the �Mini-Nose for Detection� with 80% of the funding being
provided by the US Department of Defense and theMinistry of Defense. Company
founder Moses Shalom is also negotiating with Ion Track Instruments, which
provides security systems for the perimeters of jails.[Note 16]
What is more interesting than these public manifestations of collaboration
is what happens behind the scenes in universities and research institutes.
One of the new paradigms of military thinking is C3I � command, control,
communications and intelligence � operating in cyberspace. "The rapid
progress in computer power and miniaturization in the 1980s and 1990s made
it possible to think of introducing computers and computerized systems into
every element of combat, including the complex and often incoherent
environment of gound battles� Every component of US military forces is now
being designed and rebuilt around computerized weapons, systems, and
C3I".[Note 17]
It is no surprise that the Israeli military plays a role in the development
of these US military systems. Intelligence Online reported in 2000 that "The
US concern Mercury ComputerSystems, a leading manufacturer of computers able
to gather and analyse signal intelligence, has just signed a $1.2 million
contract with Israel's defence ministry" for research collaboration.[Note
18]
Israel is known for its military academies which provide advanced research
bases for the cream of the country�s high-tech personnel. However this
�national� personnel operates within the global context of the diaspora, and
is equally at home in the military-industrial complex of the USA. A detailed
search through lists of US university personnel would throw up many people
who trained initially in Israel and then moved to the US to pursue further
studies. One person whose research has both an Israeli and a US dimension is
Professor Ouri Wolfson of the University of Chicago at Illinois. His project
funding ranges between the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research and
the Isaeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He has developed a DOMINO
software, designed for tracking cars and aircraft, which was developed with
the US Army Research Laboratories. Wolfson�s early research was in computer
science at the Technion University of Haifa. (In a civilian spin-off from
this, a company has been set to provide systems for lorry freight companies
to track their vehicles).
I suggest that this would be a good time to return to the 1960s US radical
methodology of charting interlinking directorships between companies in
order to establish the true nature of Israel's involvement in this
newly-emerging global military-industrial economy. Some of this information
can be gleaned from NASDAQ share flotation documents.[Note 19]
6. A medieval model
The history of intellectual and scientific development of the medieval West
cannot be written without acknowledging the key contribution of the Jewish
intellectual diaspora in Andalus, Provence and elsewhere. The Ibn Tibbon
family, with their translations of Greek scientific texts mediated through
the Arabs, and the school of Jewish mathematicians, c.1250-1350. Their
contribtion the productive and military techniques and technologies of
their time was immense. The Prophatian Quadrant (a remodelling of the
complex Arab astrolabe onto a device that was simply a piece of card and a
bit of string) is one example, as theorised by Jakob ben Mahir Ibn
Tibbon.[Note 20]
There are tantalising parallels with the globalised diasporic intelligentsia
of today. One observer has suggested that the medieval Jews, with the daily
realities of comercial life in the diaspora, were in a real sense the
precursors of globalisation. As I suggest above, the Israeli capitalism of
today � the extent of its global reach, the deterritorialised space in which
it operates and the merceological nature of the commodities it produces �
offers a precious microcosmic possibility for the study of immaterial labour
in action within globalisation.
7. Visionics Inc � Biometrics as a growth sector
The unexpected domestic vulnerabiliy of the US revealed by September 11 mant
that fast responses were needed at the level of security. Paranoia,
xenophobia and the fear of dying provided a massive market opportunity. The
Airport Security Improvement Act (2001) was passed, requiring a dramatic
upgrading of security systems. Into the picture steps Visionics Inc. This
company produces face-recognition and fingerprint recognition equipment,
based on the new science of �biometrics�.
The chairman of Visionics Inc., Joseph Atick, lived in Israel (on the West
Bank) till he was 15. He dropped out of high-school and set about writing a
large textbook on physics � in Arabic. He was accepted into the Maths
programme of Stanford University in the US. And moved on from there to
become professor at the Rockefeller University. The elements of diaspora,
movement, Arabic, mathematics, university, radical conceptual innovation
leading to new technologies are strikingly reminiscent of the medieval
predecessors.[Note 21]
Here science and mathematics are used to generate a police-state technology.
The software and technology involved in these products have a strongly
Israeli dimension. Biometrics is one of the fields being explored by Israeli
software companies, and these in turn have a symbiotic relation with the
Israeli military. One of the earliest uses of Visionics face recognition
technology was to monitor the faces of commuting Palestinian day labourers
at Israeli army checkpoints.
An article describing this Israeli-American productive node as it operates
in Minnesota speaks of "high-tech companies joining in a mad dash to develop
and market a dazzling new generation of security devices". It is worth
noting the extent, the depth of intellectual labour that has gone into this
venture. We are just now at the point where our entire picture of the
physical composition of the universe is being revised way from particles to
superstrings. This is frontier science. Atick's work on biometrics and
facial recognition derives precisely from his earlier work as a physicist at
the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, where he researched
superstrings and the related theories of supersymmetry.[Note 22]
8. Loosening up the lumbering monster
I referred above to the success of Israeli companies in the "increased
growth in the demand for bandwidth in every aspect of communications".
Characteristically, the boom new-technology economy has internal problems
created by the very speed of its growth. A large, lumbering monster creates
for itself blockages and restrictions which need to be overcome. This has
proved a characteristic area of intervention by small Israeli start-up
companies monitoring and removing problems of blockages of delivery,
bottlenecks, restrictions of bandwidth etc. Speeding up the flow of
information-as-capital. The following is a small list of such ventures:
Foxcom Wireless: Makes an RFiber optic-fibre product, which enables wireless
technologies to operate in hard-to-reach urban and shadow areas such as
railway stations, tunnels etc.
Chiaro Networks: Uses the scalability of optic fibre to remove capacity
bottlenecks from intersections of optical carrier backbones. Unique optical
switching technology. These expand the availability of bandwidth.
Xact Technologies: of Ramat Gan and Santa Clara: "A Santa Clara start-up"
which monitors Internet customers' usage of the network on the basis of how
much bandwidth they use. Like estimating a gas bill. The crucial aspect of
Xact software is that it enables Internet usage to be monetised.
Mavix: Produces a multimedia streaming system for monitoring and security.
It routes all security inputs into one control unit. Can be used for
surveillance of football stadiums, metros, ferries, prisons etc.
Mercado Software: A product entitled Intuifind which adds more refined
searchability to e-commerce search engines. Integrated search and browse
facilities.
Sapiens International: Specialises in programmes that gather discrete
packets of information and shuttle them around at speed. For instance,
remediation of insurance quotation systems, where installation of new
systems would be hugely expensive. Operates via internetted cyberspace
conferencing for its global marketing.[23]
9. Biomedical production
As we know, the concept of immaterial labour extends far into the fields of
the caring and the corporal, and here too Israeli companies have made major
interventions. This development is driven in part by commercial spin-out
interests of teaching-hospitals in Israel, and in part by the excesses of
medical skilled labour-power in-migrating from the Soviet Union in the
1990s.[Note 24]
"The evolution of new medical device companies in Israel continues its
unabated growth, spurred by the influx of highly trained immigrants in the
physical, biological and engineering sciences, and expanding sources of
capital from venture firms in Israel and the US, as well as from corporate
strategic partners." [Note 25]
This growth is so marked that the multinational pharmaceutical giant Johnson
and Johnson maintains a permanent office in Israel to search for start-up
companies in which to invest. The following is a small list of such
ventures. As is the case with the companies cited above, most of these
companies have one foot in Israel and the other in the USA, clearly catering
to the massively emerging US market for health products.
Applied Spectral Imaging: Techniques for treating retinal eye diseases that
otherwise might lead to blindness.
Biocontrol: An electronic device to control urinary incontinence.
Vision Cure: Implantable telescopic lenses for treatment of macular
degeneration.
Or Sense: A non-invesive technology to measure cholesterol levels and blood
viscosity.
Novamed: Clinical diagnostic tests.
Transdermics: Through-the-skin non-invasive drug delivery technology.
Advanced Monitoring Systems: Home-use salival testing techniques, to monitor
safe levels of drug administration.
It is important to stress that in no sense are these "caring and sharing"
technologies separate from the military industrial complex outlined above.
For instance:
Given Imaging has delivered a pill-sized capsule for transmitting pictures
as it passes through the patient's intestine. This is a spin-off from a CMOS
device developed by NASA.
Galil Medical: Cryosurgery techniques which enable minimally invasive
treatment of prostate cancers. This is an outgrowth of the Rafael
Development Corporation, the largest R&D organisation in Israel, which seeks
commercial applications of defence technologies.
We should also be in no doubt about the radicality of some of these
interventions. They will affect our lives fundamentally. For instance, I
have spoken of Israeli start-up projects involving the monitoring and
resolution of problems of blockage and delivery. In this vein, Labour
Control Systems of Nesher, Israel, has produced a vaginal electronic monitor
which will reduce the need for frequent examination of dilation during
child-birth. Such a process is likely to contribute immensely to the ongoing
factoryisation of the birth process.
10. Back to the start
In a moment it will be time to return to Oxford Street, December 2001.
But first we should look at the case of one of the most famous Israeli
new-technology start-ups. Mirabilis, founded by "legendary high-tech
entrepreneur Yassi Vardi" produced an internet messaging system which
identifies which of your Internet correspondents are on-line at any given
time, and enables you to exchange messages with them.[Note 26] I imagine
that this is a direct spin-off of Israeli electronic battlefield technology.
The product was known as ICQ ("I-seek-you"). In a very short time Mirabilis
built a community of users of over 50 million, covering most of Western
Europe. In 1998 Mirabilis was bought by AOL.com, and the system became an
industry standard in messaging technology. It is now part of the operating
system of AOL, the world's biggest Internet, e-mail and chatroom operator.
The most notable political characteristic of this Israeli export-product is
that it disappears, it becomes invisible, it becomes grafted into the very
flesh and bone of the operating systems of today's capitalism. In short, it
is more or less immune from being boycotted. And that characteristic is
shared by many of the products described above.
Which brings us to Mercado Software, a company with Israeli roots and a Palo
Alto headquarters. Mercado produces the Intuifind software system. This
product is the outcome of advanced studies in psycholinguistics combined
with new search-engine technologies. In provides an "intuitive and easy to
navigate on-line shopping experience". Put briefly, on-line shopping is
developing very fast. But the systems are stupid, monolithic and lumbering.
A shop's catalogue may have many "lamps" in store, but if you search on-line
for a "light" you will get no result. Therefore, teaming up with technology
from Backweb.com (Ramat Gan and San Jose), Intuifind has built a system
"utilising more that 50 powerful linguistic knowledge banks, including
stemming, spelling and thesauri, which help customers define requests in
their own words." A truly immaterial labour product. This system has been
installed at Macy's, Caterpillar, Sears, Blockbuster Video etc.
And now the irony. At the same moment that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign
was picketing Selfridges Store against the sale of Israeli goods, at the
other end of Oxford Street the John Lewis store (much frequented by
Britain's liberal middle classes) was installing a new Israeli export
product � Mercado's "Intuifind" search-and-shop technology � as a central
part of its operating system. Grafted, invisible, immune to boycott.
11. A note on Jaffa Oranges
To end, I would merely add that many people in the Internet community have
had the experience of using the opportunites for anonymity which the
Internet affords. Israeli capitalist companies are no exception. They begin
their life as small locally-based Israeli start-ups. In no time at all they
set up their websites. They provide themselves with a nominal HQ in the
leafier high-tech glades of the USA and UK. They market their produce
on-line, often by offering on-line cyberspace teleconferencing facilities
which transcend national border problems. Then, very quickly, these
companies merge, blend, are bought up by bigger non-Israeli companies. There
is a tendency to conceal their "Israeli-ness", which anyway becomes effaced
in the merger process. Thus they become a neutral capitalist product, free
of the taint of association with the country in which they were produced.
Incidentally, those among us who are boycotters of Jaffa oranges might note
the following. On 27 December 2001 the Jerusalem Post reported that the
Chinese government is negotiating "to market its own fruit under the Jaffa
brand name and purchase the rights" from the Israeli Citrus Marketing Board.
Jaffa is now playing the logo-game. So it could turn out to be a Chinese
orange that you are boycotting�[Note 27]
NOTES
1. Interview with Alain Joxe, Multitudes No. 7, Paris, December 2001.
2. S. Carter, Global Agricultural Marketing Management, FAO, Rome, 1997.
Available on-line at http://www.fao.org.
3. "Criminal diamond trade fuels African war, UN is told", by Victoria
Brittain, Guardian online edition, 13 January 2000. I cannot say whether
Israeli companies are involved in the dirty side of this trade, but in 2000
the American Drug Enforcement Administration sent a team to train Israeli
police in how to detect and seize money from drug dealing. Article in
Intelligence Online, at http://www.indigo-net.com/intel.html. See also Note
19 below.
4. Thomas Cornay, in Los Angeles Magazine Internet edition, March 1999.
5. Eli Lehrer, in The American Enterprise Online, December 2001, p. 2.
6. "Specialty chips find their niche", by Wylie Wong, http://news.cnet.com,
5 April 1999.
7. Article at http://www.start-ups.co.il, 12 February 2002.
8. ibid.
9. The name itself suggests a vocation for globalised immaterial labour.
http://www.sapiens.com
10. Article at http://www.cnn.com, 19 September 1999.
11. http://www.aiccmn.org
12. http://www.imi-israel.com
13. ibid.
14. http://www.krav-maga.com. There was a similar export of "stance" in
Britain's global marketing of Margaret Thatcher's privatisation agenda in
the 1990s.
15. Articles in Pravda On-line, 20 December 2001 and Arabicnews.com, 14 May
1999.
16. Dror Marom. �US Cos interested in Israel�s MS-Tech explosives sniffer�,
http://new.globes.co.il, 18 December 2001.
17. Rochlin, Trapped in the Net, Princeton University Press, 1997. Online
summary.
18. Article at Intelligence Online, at www.indigo-net.com/intel.html.
19. Where are they now? For instance, Tamir Segal, whose "Truster"
technology featured in the Guardian On-line on 21 January 1998: "How much
would you pay to know when people are lying to you? How about $149? Because
that's what Israeli based Makh-Shevet is asking for a software package that
turns your multimedia PC into a lie detector." The technology was
"originally envisaged for the security forces at entry points into Israel (a
military version is undergoing tests)". http://www.truster.com.
And "Danny Yatom, who was forced to resign as head of Mossad last April
following an abortive attempt by Israeli agents to assassinate Khaled
Meshal, the political boss of Hamas, in Amman in September 1997, has
switched to making a living in business." Yatom, "infamous for his creative
torturing techniques and well known to many Palestinians who were tortured
under his supervision" (Ghazi Saudi, article at http://star.arabia.com,
November 2000) is cited in an exemplary article by Christian Dietrich, in
connection with the firm Strategic Consulting Group, and its involvement in
Kazakhstan, Algeria and "a large security project in Angola". Angola,
significantly, is diamond country. Christian Dietrich, "Blood Diamonds:
Effective African-based monopolies", in African Security Review, Vol. 10,
No. 3, 2001, available at http://www.iss.co.za/Pubs/ASR/10No3/Dietrich.html.
20. http://www.astrolabes.QUADRANT.HTM
21. International Herald Tribune, 23 January 2002.
22. Superstrings � http://www.sciam.com
23. Other Israeli high-tech companies which can be search-researched via the
Internet include Opticom (integration of biometric technology), Shonut �
Probabilistic Solutions Ltd (voice recognition, fingerprint analysis), TeKey
(biometrics and human recognition simulation), Tadiran Co. ("over 40 years
experience in military communications technology"), Proneuron, Net2Wireless,
Batm Advanced Communications, Luz Industries, Mercury Interactive, Team
Computers, and SAFe-Mail..
The strength of the Israelo-American diasporic nexus in military-security
technologies can be gauged from the following. On 27 November 2001, BIO-key
International (formerly the Israeli company SAC Technologies, optical
fingerprint scanning, founded 1993) announced from its US headquarters in
Minnesota that it was taking on former prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu as
its Senior Strategy Advisor. "The current addition [sic] of his book
"Fighting Terrorism" is a terrific example of the insights he possesses to
combat terrorism and secure freedom for us all". Article at
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw011127/272262_l.html.
24. See Note 10 above.
25. Jeffrey Berg, in The BBI (Biomedical Business International) Newsletter,
September 2000.
26. Article at
http://www.malibutel.com/mobilemediaworld/features/israeli.html. The AOL
buy-out of Mirabilis was "an event which spurred Israel's high-tech frenzy".
27. Jerusalem Post Internet edition, 27 December 2001.
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